How does your garden grow?

It grows like absolutely, completely and totally CRAZY!! No, it's not an optical illusion; those tomatoes are WAY taller than Lily. They are covered in masses of green tomatoes, with the first few just starting to change color. If we have some warm weather in the next couple weeks, we will be floating in an ocean of tomatoes. Hooray!!

And does anyone like squash and pumpkins? Because we've got "a few". Currently, Lily's school science class pumpkin plant is in the lead for biggest pumpkin - it's already bigger than a basketball, and still green.

Lily's pumpkin plant is just a nifty little surprise/success story. In science class at school, in about April, the kids put some seeds into wet paper towels, and then in clear plastic bags to observe what happened to them as they sprouted. After that unit was over, they took home their "baggie gardens" with seeds which had sprawling roots sprouted, but no leaves. We didn't know what would happen if we put them into some soil, but we tried it. The bean seeds were a flop; we got strange stems with no leaves, and soon they just withered and died. But Lily's pumpkin seed grew extremely vigorously into a gorgeous plant ... that was MUCH too big, MUCH too early in the season. It's hard to keep squash plants indoors for very long; they really want room to spread out, as well as lots and lots of sunshine. Her plant was seriously overgrown and starting to die by the time the weather was warm enough to put it outside. But we got it out there and watered and fertilized it, and hoped for the best ... and now, it's the biggest plant out there by a wide margin, and has the biggest pumpkin by an even wider margin. And those big, tall marigolds you see mingling in there with the pumpkin plants? Those are Lily's science fair plants. Marigolds are great for pumpkin patches, since they discourage certain harmful insects.