Mmmmm..tomatoes. I lOVE, love, love fresh tomatoes. Even the plants smell yummy! Mine are getting huge! I have to go buy some heavier stakes today, I had no idea they were going to get so big! They are up past my windowsills! Another easy plant that a lot of people forget about is petunia's. They are not my favorite but I'm really poverty stricken this year. They are quite cheap (I got mine for 99cents a piece at Home Depot over 4th of july weekend, on sale) and they spread out a bit. They will bloom straight through until Fall. you do have to remember to water themm too. A note on sunflowers, easy to grow but I did not realize until last year that you often have to stake them or string them to the wall or something...they fall over because they have such huge blooms. Maybe that was just the kind I planted? Was a pain! I'm having great luck with my black eyed susans. They are very drought tolerant, nice big flowers & get huge.

DawnLiz: I Loooooooooove Tomatoes ! I'm lucky enuf to live in NJ, where we are known for our Jersey Beefsteaks ... I'm envious of your plants LOL!
Your garden sounds so lovely! . But I planted Portulacas (Rose Moss) a few years back, and took the seeds each time the bloom died and scattered the pods. This year the portulaca took off.. They require ABSOLUTELY no maintenance, have such dainty brillant color roses on them. My soil here is crap. No matter how far down I dig it's just that dense red clay, even when I replace it with good soil and peat moss..next year MORE BLOODY CLAY! So I do well with succulents like rose moss. My Veronica's are hugical this year.. and the lavender smelled so lovely in May.... Petunias are great and easy to grow too.

Schatzi, I've grown portaluca when I lived in Florida. It does take off...I found I had to pot it up & stick it on the porch during our rainy season to save them from drowning. It's popular here too. I'd like to use some sort of ground cover to replace my lawn but this is a rental so I'm not going to waste the cash. Ground covers are so much easier to care for & better for the environment than a pretty, lush lawn. Our problem here is not clay, but sand. I live two blocks off the beach so I have to buy bags & bags of soil when I plant. My petunia's died off because we had a few days with heat indexes of 110 when I forgot to water. (bad dawn!) so I replaced them with some sort of fuzzy purple flower that did not have a name tag but was cheap. The rest of the garden is doing just great though, filling in nicely. And my tomatoes are just loaded. I've already harvested all the jalapeno peppers & a few cherry tomatoes are ready to eat every day.