Overall Garden Update

Since yesterday's post was kind of a downer, I thought I'd follow it with a garden update that's a little more upbeat.  When I initially posted my question about pests to Facebook and Twitter (pre-blog post), several people suggested surrounding the at-risk plants with ash. Apparently snails do not like ash, and won't cross the borders? We just happened to have a bit of ash in our fire "pit" outside, so I scooped up a bucketfull and began to distribute it.

Ring around the rainbow chard.
Reminds me of that scene in Hocus Pocus,
where the kids make a ring of salt to protect
themselves from the witches.

Smaller ring around the spinach, and one
around the only pepper plant that's been
eaten. I'm sure I'll have to do the others
eventually as well.

The kale is doing great! Pests don't seem to
like it much! Hooray for us!
And say hello to that little Nasturtium poking
through the fence - these guys are everywhere!

We've already lost one sunflower (out of 12),
and I think we're about to lose two or three
more. Not exactly sure why, since the others
seem to be doing ok. We started with 12
though, so I'm not too concerned. 

The whole garden, as it stands now.

And now, a garden progress breakdown:

Along the back wall: 

sweet peas (mostly doing ok, though they're not growing much)

climbing beans (growing a bit, they look leafier!)

Directly in front of those:

basil (not growing super fast, but not dying either)

cherry tomatoes (3 varieties, 4 plants, look like they're doing ok?)

Directly in front of those:

parsley (surprisingly doing ok, I thought for sure it'd be dead)

marigold (no flowers yet, but it looks strong)

strawberry (plant looks good, but we're going to have to fight the squirrels for the berries)

Directly in front of those:

lemon cucumber (leaves look fine, no growth yet)

zucchini (leaves look fine, no growth yet)

crookneck squash (leaves look fine, no growth yet)

spinach (looks like death; see pictures above, and previous post, for a taste of how deathly...it looks worse in person. I'm hoping that once the pests leave them alone they'll get a surge of healthy growth)

Front row:

rainbow chard (see above, and previous post, sigh)

kale (awesome possum!)

peppers (lookin' good, aside from the one that was starting to get eaten; it now has an ash ring)

Along the right side:

sunflowers (see above; they look taller, but no flowers yet of course)

lemon tree (looks super much happier since we staked it with bamboo and it's standing upright! I guess it likes not having droopy branches)

anise and poppies (not pictured, but they seem to be doing well!

Sunlight Report:

According to the SunCalc, which I placed in an area of the veggie garden that I thought was the least likely to be getting awesome sun (near the chard and cucumber), we have Partial Shade.  Not as good as Full Sun or even Partial Sun, but I've heard tell of Bay Area gardeners having luck with these types of plants in Partial Shade. Plus, the other half of the garden gets better light. I'm going to test the other side (closer to the spinach) tomorrow or later this week, depending on which day I get out of bed early enough to get a good reading.

Things have grown quite a bit since the first pictures were taken two weeks ago!