I'm sure your neighbors were happy to see veggies, even bolting crops, over the weedy yard, Spaghetina. Here's a couple of suggestions I have from my time growing organically up in SF and Marin. 1) Most of those flowers of the bolted veggies are edible and tasty. While the leaf flavor has turned bitter through the winter and the taste change that comes with bolting, the blossoms often gain a very interesting taste that is great topping salads or lightly fried in certain dishes. 2) If like germinating your own crops from seed, remember which of your crops are heirloom (their seeds will usually produce true) and which are F1 or other hybrids -- it's seed is typically still viable, but may have very different characteristics than the parent. The GW seed exchange forum is a great way to get those exotic seeds you mentioned w/o having to pay catalog prices or drive all over the Bay area, but you need your own seeds to reciprocate. Some of the best plants & veggies in my yard are from trades I've made with other GW members. 3) To my way of thinking, your soil mix seems too heavily focused on decomposed organic matter and doesn't take advantage of the alkaline SF clay topsoil and it's associated soil flora. The compost/purchased soil is great for nitrogen and drainage and you can artificially pump up the P/K/Fe to grow good veggies & plants in it, but organic amendments like blood & bone meal, fish emulsion, seaweed and others need bacteria & fungi to free the nutrients for your crop's roots. That's generally not true for soluble inorganic amendments, which is why they are popular. There's definitely a risk of adding weed seeds by using your yard's topsoil in the garden beds, but that soil food web is necessary for growing good organic crops, IMO. For plants that need lots of N and like great drainage, I go 2/3 purchased soil/fully composted organic matter and 1/3 native topsoil. For tomatoes, peppers and others that suffer in N-rich soils, I use 2/3 native, 1/3 organic matter.

Wow! What a garden...I scrolled back up to see what zone you were in figuring it had to be warmer than mine and you're in zone 5 versus my zone 6. You got the touch and a LOT of it after seeing all those sprouts and actual PLANTS in those containers. What a great job. I have Zinnia envy and not just the Green Envy ones...LOL. I can't get enough of them but since I've moved some newly sown ones up to windowsills in my father's "office" to get them to germinate in warmth (40s for weeks at night) we've come to a standoff. What a job you did...so impressed and you're going to have gorgeous bloomin gardens. Congrats on gardens and son's graduation. Awesome.

oops, never noticed that the pic for the cosmos psyche didn't go through correctly. sorry about that but here is the cosmos psyche Northerner, I surprised that your double click are only about 18 inches tall. It's supposed to grow to 4 feet. I had some last year and they did get that tall. I wasn't impressed with them so traded the seeds from that last fall and didn't grow them this year. Finally figured out what the orange and yellow cosmos is. It's cosmos diablo and I forgot that I had WS those seeds this year. Just have no idea what the orange ones are and the red one. I didnt' have those last year and only sowed seeds that I saved of gazebo lavender sonata fushia psyche white candystripe picotee diablo gloria sonata lavender daydream seashells white seashells pink pied piper versailles red sonata white so where it came from, the red is beyond me. I have no idea what that little white and purple petunia is either. I only know that the seeds came from a very dark purple petunia and or a very pale pink petunia that my neighbor purchased just before a local nursery closed for the month of August. She couldn't say no to the price and she planted them all in one pot. So the seeds where a mix. I have a string around the flower so that I can save seeds from it and not mix them up with the other seeds. Highaltransplanter, my plants are huge, but the toms are still small. Last year some of my cherokee purple did crack on the top but they still tasted wonderful, wouldn't be without them. The extremes in weather temps and water can cause toms to crack, but to me that is part of growing your won tomatoes in the garden and enjoying them. Tiny tim has a sweet but a bit tart flavor to it, and I didn't find the toms that small when ripe, about the size of a sweet 100. My 25 year old daughter likes them better than the sweet 100. I never heard of the mini bush yellow cherry and couldn't find much about it when i did a search. sounds interesting though and one I would like to try as well. I should have plenty of saved seeds from the tiny tim and my other toms for trades in the fall. Angie, thanks for the complement, not sure I would say I am an awesome gardener though. Some of my plants are about as sick looking as you can get and not sure why. Some has to do with the craziest weather I have seen in my life. At the moment the news and weather people are telling me that more rain has fallen in the month of July where I live than has fallen since the 1920's. Gee, didn't need to make me feel worse about the weather and all the rain than I already do. And the severe thunderstorms that have moved through on almost a daily basis for almost 2 weeks has been unreal. But that's the life of a gardener. Some years are better than others and it's either feast or famine when it comes to good weather. A pic of one of the storms that went through about 2 weeks ago, taken from the back door. No, I don't live in the tropics or a tropical rain forest. I live in a suburb northwest of Boston MA.

The willow in the pictures above is growing about 15 feet from our house. It is also planted only 10 feet from our Water Well. The water is over 120 feet down. So far (knock on wood), we have not had any problems with our well system - not even during droughts and we have not found the well core clogged with roots at all. Willows have been given a bum rap. All trees drink thousands of gallons of water a day and tens of thousands of gallons of water a year. Pines are some of the thirstiest trees on the planet! They don't have that stigma. Our big Cottonwood tree out front, for instance, takes in approximately 80,000 gallons or more of water every month! Isn't that amazing? (having a nerdy Einstein-like scientist for a hubby can be interesting...) All trees seek out water. Everything on this earth is in competition for the same water...which gets recycled over and over and over again. If that ever changes, we are done for. If your sewage system has tiny leaks in it, all trees will seek it out and grow into to it, no matter what kind of tree it is. Willows propagate themselves with the aid of water, so they will seek out any source for that and their roots can really clog up pipes. I know this. They also drop a lot of plant debris and old limbs need to be pruned so they don't drop on your house. You also have to trim them so there is one main trunk. A split trunk looks pretty, but it is trouble in the making. An off-shoot limb that tries to become the dominant trunk will cause a willow to split. They also invite pests. They are not a care-free tree. All trees help to not only clean the air, but their shade cools the air temperature which helps conserve water - there is less evaporation. Their roots hold the earth, so their is less erosion. That area was the hottest, driest place in our yard before the advent of the willow. The grass was thin and the ground hard as a rock. Fire ant city! Now it is an inviting place to be and the grass is lush and green. The soil is no longer hard and compacted. I have to believe the weeping willow had something to do with that. I haven't done anything that would have caused those changes. My rose garden (formerly the potager) has filtered shade in the afternoon now because of that tree, and in Oklahoma's hot summers, your flowers and veggies will thank you for some afternoon shelter. I am not advocating that any of you just go out and plant a Weeping Willow right up against your house or over your sewer system for gosh sakes. Heavens no! I sure as heck don't want to be responsible and blamed by some furious spouse for one of you thinking I mean you shouldn't be responsible, but just be more knowledgeable. I am just throwing out a few facts for you to think about and consider. ~Annie