June update: Mel's mix paying off

The sunflowers are growing like mad!  They are almost five feet tall now (fence is 4ft).  I think they have been growing ~4in a day lately.  Their stems are almost as thick as the trunk of our cherry tree.  Can't wait for the buds to open.  Also, the violas and sage have grown bushier than I have ever seen violas or sage grow (see close up below).

The Health Kick tomatoes from my parent's neighbor are also doing well and I finally started staking them with bamboo.  I always have trouble staking tomatoes--I never know if it should be more like a lean-to kind of support, or if the tomato vines should be tied directly to them, so I've just sort of rigged up a tippee-like system.

(If someone can tell me how to flip photos on Picasa, it would be much appreciated.)

Even Maddie's fairy garden is bursting our of it's pot--check out the columnar basil and lemon thyme spilling out.

Also, we have currently been able to harvest a few a strawberries before the rabbits have gotten to them, which has been nice (see horizontal pic above).  We have 12 strawberry plants, which seems like that would be enough, but we only are able to get 3-4 berries per day.  Any tips on recommended # strawberry plants per person?

I think the secret to the Mel Mix soil is that it's not like as soon as you plant things they just sprout up like crazy, rather that it works slowly over time to develop better roots so that eventually the above ground plant grows into something amazing (assuming the birds or rabbits don't get to first...).

We've actually put up a bird feeder to help distract birds and bunnies (who eat the cracked corn that falls to the ground) away from the garden.  They ate all the feed in 1 day.

Since some of the wild flower seeds didn't germinate, we planted a few milkweed plants and joe pie weed for the butterflies  (see sunflower pic above).