So You Think You Can Garden?

I tried my hand (or thumb) at a vegetable garden again this year and the results have been... kind of what you'd expect from me. Let's take a look.

My cilantro plant is my only claim of success. We've harvested lots of cilantro already this summer and it just keeps growing back:





Basil, not so much. This is my second attempt at growing basil from seed this season as my first attempt basically drowned from all the dang rain. The second batch isn't really doing much better. That guy there on the left isn't putting up much of a fight:

And for the vegetables:

In the very front is a cucumber plant, my second effort, that doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot of growing. Behind it is another basil plant that I just bought this morning at the farmers' market to replace another cucumber plant that we declared hopeless and had removed.

The monstrosity in the back of the box is a zucchini plant on crack. Crack. This thing is enormous! It is so big that it is blocking sun from reaching the other plants in the box. There was a second zucchini plant (who apparently abstains from drug use) behind him that basically just choked to death from lack of sun.

Does anyone who knows anything about gardening know if I can like, cut those big leaves off of the plant? Their isn't any fruit growing on them... and they may be plotting to take over the world.

If you pull back the evil zucchini leaves, you can see that in the middle are my eggplant (front) and red pepper (back) plants. I bought these rather than trying to grow them from seed and they seem to be alive and kicking, just not producing anything that looks like it might turn into a vegetable.

Something seems to be snacking on my pepper plant. There are always big pot holes between the eggplant and the pepper, like something is crawling through to nibble at the pepper. The bugs seem to really enjoy the pepper leaves too. What to do? What to do?

So, if any green thumbs out there want to help a sister out... I'm all ears. I'm really hoping to beat my record from last year of two cucumbers. And seeing how the cukes aren't looking so hot right now, maybe I'd go for one monster zucchini.