End of June straw bale progress

I promised I'd post a photo of my straw bale efforts after I posted the photos from the reader in Delta. I have to admit, I tend to neglect my straw bale garden. It has a very crude drip system that I can leave on indefinitely without making a muddy mess, so I leave it and go check on it every few days to make sure the water is still dripping.
I've got potatoes in the middle of the nine-bale rectangle, which are doing quite well. Everything else, with the exception of one pepper plant, is just looking OK. I think the holes in the hose can get clogged, so I'm not sure the plants are getting enough water. 

My bales at home are less than OK. Everything is still pretty small, although I do have a couple peppers forming on a plant in the straw bale and no peppers yet on plants in the ground. I've also had a problem with insects eating plants before they can get established on my home straw bales, which wasn't supposed to happen when you plant in straw. I also have tons of weeds surrounding my bales at home, since I plonked the bales down in the middle of my weedy wildflower area.  

Here are the bales of some of the other community garden growers. These gardeners made a cool irrigation pump that runs on a battery, so  they water with a tiny sprinkler every other day. They also don't have a garden at home, so are tickled to have a place to grow tomatoes and squash and put more effort into their growing efforts than I do. They have quite a few green tomatoes on their plants and their basil plant is producing like crazy.

Last, but not least, here are the Kids of the Kingdom preschool's bales. They get watered twice daily (or at least Monday through Friday) by the children when they're outside playing. Everything they're growing looks quite healthy and happy. I hope the pumpkins produce enough pumpkins so that each child can take one home in the fall.