What the heck? Is this normal?

Birds like picking their seeds that they throw into it back out, and I think the neighbors cats gotten into it a couple times. Working on some critter guards, but I’ve been spending my time modifying under the deck for a larger dog run for when I get a new dog. The sheds new, still in progress, need probably 8 more yards of rock underneath as well.

Slowly but surely, this week is a rest week though.

We planted a variety of plants, at different stages of growth. After a bit of experimentation, cosmos grow extremely well. These were cuttings we put in just a couple weeks ago, and they're already bigger than most of the other plants that have been in there for over a month.

The very young plants did not survive, but the larger ones did. If they're too small, they just get swallowed down into the cups by the bobbing of the water.

Seems like the plants need to be large enough to reach all the way to the bottom of the pots, and still stick out enough.

Going to be interesting to see what it looks like at the end of the season.

They topped all my sunflowers, about 30 bean seedlings, mowed down one of my full-grown bush beans, and over-pruned one of my watermelon vines in a single night. I saw some spots where they nibbled at my potatoes as well. These suburban deer are a menace. With as many dogs as we have running around here, you'd think they'd stay away, but no, they don't care

I'm gonna have to build a fence next season

I rent in an urban area and was given a backyard full of 6 foot tall weeds. Over the winter I managed to somewhat reduce their numbers and have been fighting them down since but also I didn't really have any money for gardening so I just went with direct inground with a bag of miracle grow for fertilizer and some cheap mulch for bedding.

Pretty much a scraps garden. I have green onions and regular onions, garlic cloves that sprouted, bell pepper and jalapenos, a potato plant, 2 basil and 3 Thai basil, a daikon scrap I'm letting flower I hopes of seeds I can plant next year, and all my beans and peas on the fence over there.

I also planted a blueberry bush that I realized I really should have kept in a pot cause I realized how long that thing is gonna grow for.

I also threw potatoes under the bush in the far back that is doing pretty good and a strawberry I won't ever be able to eat the fruit from because the critters get up earlier in the morning than me.

I don’t want this much ornamental grass, what do I do? Let nature take over a patch of it? Hire a landscape designer for a minimum of 10k? Please send help.

More info: I’ve stopped using -icides and I have a robot mower at 3.5”.

I have let a patch grow wild and added a couple apple trees and wildflowers. The city code enforcers want to mow it and fine me, but I don’t plan on letting them.

I’m kinda against fences because they feel pretty anti-social and I’m already only allowed to see people if I use a car. Then again, fences seem like the only way to combat these crazy deer.

I don’t want to design it myself because I want to believe that professional landscape designers do more than just plop stuff around on a whim.

Store bought starters, but they’ve been transplanted and these are new blooms since getting established!

Dell Ive been here for a while. The gardens I see here doesn't look like thoese in my home region (middle Europe) I'm guessing most are from US, or where are you from?

When I planned these beds I spaced them far enough apart to get my lawn tractor in-between them, but getting between them and the fence involved my weed whacker. As anyone with a fence has found out, maintaining the grass at the base of a fence is a pain.

I'm 3/4 of the way done with the edging. It's 10" tall with something like 6" or 7" of it buried. It does a good job of keeping grass out of our other beds, so I'm sure it will do a good job here. The downside is the most effective way of installing it is to trench first, put the edging in, and then refill the trench. If you try to use one of those big pizza peel looking things to make a narrow slide the will usually get wavy due to variation in trench depth.

I mowed to basically ground height between the beds, weed whacked around the beds, and put in a layer of that thick paper builders will use to protect flooring below the mulch. Some areas for cardboard instead, but we just didn't have enough cardboard to cover it all. Hopefully it will be enough to kill the grass and hopefully that results in less grass appearing in my raised beds.

Shown are some pink and (what I think of as) orange sherbet colored lilies that it seems like all the scales in 3 bulbs for each color came up, and some new (last year they didn't bloom) daylilies "Night Beacon" which had a lot more red on the petals and much less of the yellow throat on the packaging than in my picture...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is what it looked like a couple of days ago. It's been in the 90's and rainy - so pretty miserable, but at least the rain keeps the plants happy!

In the lower left there are a couple of lilies that are slightly different - deep orange with a maroon or deep red throat:

I promise you, most of the red/pink/raspberry lilies - the most prominent color in the picture - were actually like the two-tone orange and red ones when we planted them last year! What is up with that? lol

Cherry and beefsteak tomatoes. Noticed on the beefsteak first. It started at the top of the plant and worked its way down. Today I went out to do my usual watering and checking on everything and noticed that my cherry tomatoes were showing the same type of wilting. Tomatoes are growing relatively well and the leaves are not discolored, just wilted. Raised bed, Zone 8a. What’s going on with my tomatoes?

Update: Based on everyone’s comments (thank you so much!). I’ve trimmed the plants considerably to open them up and improve airflow, I’ll be getting straw for the soil and installing a shade cloth and hopefully that does the trick.

Getting ready to change out the greens and garlic for cabbages and beets.

Topped by deer and it looks like Lily beetles are a thing here now :(

The plant is still small, but it's putting off a few here and there and man are they tasty. Looking forward to getting enough to actually do something next season

I don't know anything about gardening but I have a small patch of gravel out front where I like to keep some potted plants. My acer's leaves came back healthy after winter but as you can see it isn't doing too good now. I thought the crispy leaves might be because I let it dry out (I was ill for a couple weeks when we had some dry, sunny weather), but looking at the base I noticed this white stuff: https://i.imgur.com/2qc87P3.jpeg, not sure if it's scale or something else? Any ideas what I can do? I see a fair number of tiny bugs and ants in the soil but I'm not sure what's normal. I'm located in the UK, if that matters.

[Image description: a curly-leaf kale plant in a raised bed, with voluminous radiating leaves that kinda look like the afro of said Simpson's character.]