Gardening in Aptos, and looking for advice!

We moved into our house share with lots of property waiting to be gardened.

I've never gotten to garden before, so I'm doing this for the very first time. Before my 50th birthday, I've got a new hobby. We got started with lotsa japanese seeds~

but bought some herb starters~ though the chive seeds are totally not making it.
We got one little bunch of chives, but all in the center I've been watching tiny little chive leaves coming up, but oh-so-slow, and not seeming likely to make it.

Trader Joe's basil has always struggled whenever I've bought the planted pots. Even putting it into the ground. So I bought basil seeds and I started a few pots of them and am hoping we can get some nice basil- some day

Back at the end of April, I planted some shiso in a planter, but those guys just aren't happening. And now, 2 1/2 months later, it's totally...weak...and bugs are eating at them.
I did plant some more shiso (good in salads but so popular around SASHIMI or as tempura) in another plot a few weeks ago, they are very slow coming up. And the Mizuna looks like they weren't planted deep enough... : (

I need a better, finer, watering pot...and must mulch here too it seems.

Back in the beginning of June when I was starting sunflowers for sprouts, I put some in the yard in places...here alongside two beds of veggies:
mid July they've gotten to be more than a foot tall~

and beyond the sunflowers, pumpkins are growing from one sugar pumpkin a friend gave us last winter. I had save the seeds in the fridge, and planted them the beginning of May.

Funny, two pumpkin seeds found their way into another spot, and here they are growing all the larger and quickly

I have had a hard time thinning things out. Feeling sorry for the baby plants. But I got to taking out about 17 pumpkins from the 4' by 5' plot. Now there are about 10 left. Is that still too many? Maybe...

The first time in almost 30 years I grew sunflower sprouts!:

Taka build two beds, in one of them I planted CHINGENSAI, CILANTRO, red radishes &MIZUNA,

it looks like too much CHINGENSAI at the far end tho (we keep making tempura and saute with it)

...but it's the CILANTRO that's losing ground with the Radishes growing SO large!

planted the end of May, here in June:
and now, mid-July:

The bed next to that is an array of japanese salad greens, along with arugula/rocket lettuce (as the australians call it)

I must admit, maybe I've gone a bit crazy having planted perhaps 4 different areas of arugula! Tho true, now there are also four other beds of different kinds of lettuce. We're eating salads with nearly all of the greens from our garden almost every night, or every other night anyway.

I've been able to get lots of free seeds , poppy seeds, blue Nigella, calendula, feverfew...

so I must keep finding semi-sunny places to plant everything, it's a little of a challenge. But, freecycle has allowed me to help pass on/exchange plants too. It's so cool~~

Taka put together a fantastic arbor for two jasmine plants we moved over here from our condo.

Taka put together the shed for our storage (to the right)...then we tried to hide it with the lattice and with the dream of the jasmine growing all over it and around the kitchen windows. There are some sunflowers around too, but they aren't growing so well without more sun.

Taka's been working slowly but surely on a fence, because the deer have been coming around since the dog ran away a few weeks ago.

(can you see the kitty coming through the fence? He runs randomly through the young growing lettuces...doing more damage than deer~for now!)

We got 6 tomato plants from one of Taka's co-workers...then ten more from a freecycler~

I've been given conflicting advice as to how much water to give. Too much makes soggy tomatoes so I should "stress" them, and not give much...but too little water doesn't help the plants grow much...what's right?!

Guess I'll find out...cause I'm inclined to give medium amounts of water but...don't know!

You know?

Next to the tomatoes are Okra which grows very slowly. I planted more red radishes between the okra, but now I'm worried whether the okra will grow quickly enough so the radishes don't overtake, and shadow them!

Japanese cucumbers, also, take a looonnnng time to grow, too. Or- it's the sun-less-ness I guess. I did move them to a sunnier bed and started some more seedlings~(true, I need to mulch!)


From our kitchen window....

I still grow alfalfa sprouts...and then I'm into giving a second chance at life for those green onion end roots!

In a "nutshell"~ hardly! But this has been some of what I've been up to since May and moving into our Porter Gulch digs. Ha~ yep, two and a half months of digging into our new "digs"! : )