It looks like you don't have enough corn for good pollination. My understanding is that you need at least 4' x 4' of corn for decent pollination. Do you have a plan on how you will get to the plantings in the back for care & harvesting? I think you might want to consider some stepping stones at least. Consider also that your plants will bush out - when we grew cukes & beans on a trellis in a bed 2 feet from the fence they bushed out so much there wasn't much room to get behind them. Also, I have never grown okra, but I've heard the plant can be irritating to the skin. I think it gets pretty big, too. You might think about putting it together & somewhere you won't have to come into contact with it until you want to. Why are you mixing things up? Are you trying to avoid cross pollinating varieties, or going for aesthetics? Or is it for another reason? I would consider putting same plants together because they will have the same needs & you can more easily deal with them as a group. Beans are great & can be very productive. You could substitute them for the corn along the back. Perhaps you could do a block of a short variety of corn (so it doesn't shade other things too much) if you move things around a bit. I am not familiar with your growing area, so I'm not sure what else to add. I see you have cukes growing on the fence, but you have a line of them down into the bed. Will those get a trellis, or are you putting bush varieties in front? Definitely (IMO) put as much organic matter into your soil as you can. We have terrible soil here (sand), but my small gardens are looking lush. We found a local coffee shop that gives us bags of their compostable material regularly. We add that straight to the garden beds (coffee grounds, veggie scraps, egg shells) with some manure (we use quail because it is inexpensive & convenient). Also, we added in some peat moss & vermiculite the first couple of times we were turning over the beds. Hopefully someone with more expertise will give you some good tips. Best of luck!

zarah Your containers are cute and good that you made sure about drainage holes - how many holes? - you could poke few just to make sure. Are they some kind of plastic? I would point out that with your humid climate you need to make sure about good air flow besides the drainage. I think your plants are planted little deep - especially ones in oblong containers. If you could make sure they are sitting higher, the air circulation would be better. The container should be filled to just touch below the rim. There isn't that much space in your individual pots to raise the level of mix since the handles have openings, perhaps just a little mounding in the middle would help. And what did you use for topping - is that rice husks? It looks pretty good, but I don't know anything about their water retention - but have seen them mentioned few times.If you think they hold water for too long, maybe a pebbles/stones could be used for top dressing, they could be bigger than what you use in the mix itself. The little 'stones' you mentioned that you buy along the road - are they the white particles visible in few photos? (the white granules - they look almost like perlite) - if yes, I think that's good sized grit. Rina

1a/b. Weeds, obnoxious ones. Name doesn't come to mind. 2. Maybe jasmine 'nudiflorum' (winter jasmine) or some type of horizontal-growing cotoneaster. Both can make, as you say, a tangled mass, but both are well worth growing if you don't mind a little judicious pruning every year or so. 3. Some type of hydrangea 'macrophylla'. Yours looks better than the dozen or so I've managed to kill over the years - I'd say it's a "keeper". The holly seedlings are an all-too-common pest. Pull them early and often, plus they come up in the very worst of places! 4. Some type of azalea? If so I say toss 'em in favor or something else that would appreciate the space. They look to be the cheap, common (Walmart) variety that are overused by landscapers as "foundation plants". 5. Welcome to the Alabama forum! 6. ROOT for Alabama ;-D 7. Consider attending our Fall plant swap. We are meeting in Gadsden this year on the 17th of this month and would love to load you down with plants, especially since you seem new to the area. I never miss the opportunity to shamelessly post a picture from the yard. This one is 'Incense' passionflower. Nelson

Thank you, that's very close to what I came up with. I thought it could be Euphorbia cupularis which also goes by Monadenium cupulare and Synadenium cupulare. Also considered Euphorbia bicompacta var. rubera. Again, thank you for the help, I guess I'll have to wait for the cyathia to be sure. I also heard this is one of the more toxic species of Euphorbia, but don't exactly want to find out for sure. I'll be careful for sure.