Karen, I like her where she is too in the arrangement, I just want to have her higher off the ground so her face can really be seen when one is standing up. PM2, that sunflower is supposed to be 2 feet tall and you grow it in a pot. How did I keep the critters away? I didn't after all. Found it flopped over yesterday morning. Went to check it and those chipmunks peeled the green off parts of the stem and the stem has a partial crack in it from where it flopped over. It's staked now and I'm hoping it will survive. They got another 2 of them that I have in the ground. For chipmunk control, check out the link below. Don't look at if if you are squeamish though or don't like the idea of killing chipmunks. The water bucket really works, so far 32 tried to swim. Fran Here is a link that might be useful: swimming pool for combating chipmunks

Grant - Thanks for the link. I'm bookmarking it for now since I don't want to murder anything else in this heat. If I still can't find any here early this fall I'll take the plunge and order them then. Maybe even seeds... if I feel particularly brave. I've only grown really simple things from seeds... like grass, lol! Pagancat - Have you been peeking at my backyard? I've got the shadecloth draped over both the chairs and fence - it's working fairly well. They're wilty but hanging on. I think some of the problem is shock because I still have one in a pot that I put out there and it's actually doing a little bettter than the planted ones. *sigh* I took all five vines that they had at Rillito (in Tucson on La Cholla near Orange Grove). I think they only started with 16. I don't know if they're getting more or not but for months all I heard from various nurseries was that the suppliers didn't have them. I appreciate all your help, folks! Jen

Mia, Yes , I think it will work. Interplanting tomatoes with other crops is something I do all the time. I often grow smaller plants like lettuce and carrots underneath and between tomato plants, essentially using them as a living mulch beneath the taller tomato plants. I also mix all kinds of herbs into the tomato beds as well, and think those herbs help explain how I grow so many tomato plants and yet only rarely see even a single tomato hornworm or fruit worm. You sometimes will get less yield per plant when you interplant multiple kinds of crops together using close spacing, but since you have a lot more plants occupying the soil, you still get a good harvest . The best carrot crop I ever had was a result of me broadcast sowing lettuce and carrot seed randomly into the tomato bed after the tomato plants already had been transplanted into the ground. My garden was smaller then and I had run out of space, so was packing as much into each bed as I possibly could. I just thinned carrots and lettuce after they sprouted. When I grow onions with tomato plants, normally I hammer a stake into the ground where each tomato plant will be planted later, and leave a small unplanted spot there as I plant the onions. When it it time to transplant the tomato plants into the ground, I put one tomato plant next to each stake. If I have to pull up a couple of onions to make room for a tomato transplant, it isn't a big deal . We eat those onions as scallions. I started interplanting multiple types of plants together long ago, after reading John Jeavon's book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." book. It is amazing how much you can pack into even a small space when you interplant. Even when I grow tomato plants in molasses feed tubs, I generally have pepper plants, herbs and flowers mixed into each container with the tomato plants. Look at how Mother Nature mixes everything up together. On the eastern edge of our woodland, for example, we have native pecan and oak trees growing as the dominant plants, but underneath them we have wild cherries, American persimmons, possumhaw hollies, and redbuds, and beneath those understory trees we have American beautyberry bushes, native blackberries, inland sea oats and brushy bluestem, peppervines and several native wildflowers which ebb and flow with the seasons. All of them happily co-exist. Why can't our gardens be the same way? To garden bio-intensively in this manner, you need to pay careful attention to soil fertility and irrigation (if adequate rainfall is not being received). Obviously when you interplant several types of edible crops together, the plants will be competing with one another. I get smaller onions in interplanted beds than I get from onions grown in a monoculture with recommended spacing, but still get tons of onions. We still have several dozen onions from last year's crop, though now they are starting to sprout. There pretty much is nothing grown in our veggie garden that isn't interplanted with several other things. If I ever were to plant even one single monoculture bed, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like the way it looked and would be out there trying to fix the bed by adding more stuff to it. In fact, I do have my onions planted as monoculture beds right now, but that is because they are the only thing I've put into the ground so far this year. The onions will not be alone in those beds for long. Hope this helps , Dawn

Robin, I looked up pictures of that and it's a real looker! Congratulations on getting flowers! Come spring I may grow St. Vincents Lilac again. You probably know that it has purple flowers,is related to the tomato, and is in the nightshade family. My seeds are old, but may still germinate. I've had a love afair with JMG's, and it seems I've not had room for anything else. Vines are so charming, aren't they? :) Arum