STAKING MY LIFE AWAY

It's been so warm here the past week that the garden (specifically the greens and tomatoes) have really taken off.  I wanted to get some tomato stakes in before it was too out of control, so today I went and bought some stakes and jute twine.

 

 This bed had herbs, eggplant, cherry tomatoes and black krim tomatoes.

Oh and a random sunflower named Mary Ruth.

Last year I had used the wire round stakes for the tomatoes, but they just weren't stable enough and kept falling over and it just became this big mess.  So I'm trying a different method this year that I hope works.  I planted a ton of tomatoes (Purple Cherokee, Roma, Cherry, and Black Krim) so a majority of the garden needed to be staked for their support. 

The bed to the left has roma tomatoes, sweet bell peppers and purple cherokee.

The whole process took up a good amount of time, but I'm really happy with how it looks so far.  I might need to push that top row of twine down to the middle section more when they really take off!  Yeah summer!

Also, on the caterpillar update, I found yet ANOTHER caterpillar on a Romaine leaf yesterday morning! So the battle continues, but I am feeling more confident in this round.

DON'T TRUST THIS GUY.

The garden is looking awesome overall, and I'm about ready to harvest some collards and more lettuce!  Possibly some green onions too! 

I'm also looking into starting to can preserves and such soon.  This could shape up to be a really awesome and productive summer.