How My Garden Grows

... or "vegetable gardening lessons I have learned this year"

• That all of those little bitty plants will grow up to be VERY LARGE in most cases.
• They tell you to thin carrots for a reason. They are all so crowded for space that they are growing all catty-wampus.
• I really have no desire to eat lettuce out of my garden. Yuck. The earwigs don't help either.
• Putting a sprinkler system in doesn't mean you get to totally forget about the garden. You still need to go out and check on it every other day or so. Or else you will end up with baseball bat-sized zucchini.
• And on that note, ONE zucchini plant is plenty, thank you.
• That one little pumpkin plant? Will take over your yard. Do some strategic space planning.
• Also along the lines of squash... why exactly did I think I "knew better" than the people who write the directions on the seed packages? When they say to plant something at least 2' apart DO IT.
• I always thought tomatoes were the easiest thing in the world to grow but sadly mine are small, split and hole-y. Ick. I don't really want to eat them.
• Also, two grape tomato plants is one too many. I don't like the yellow ones as much as I thought I did.
• Tomato cages are usually sold out at the garden center for a reason.
• Cauliflower from the garden? Not so much.
• Broccoli? Academically interesting, particularly when I let it go too long and it went to seed. I've never seen broccoli seedheads before.
• Labradors have a taste for squash. Invest in some cute fencing.

All in all, it has been interesting but I can't say I've eaten all that much from it yet. I have harvested some jalepenos, peppers, carrots, radishes... and haven't eaten any of them. I threw out the monster cauliflower because it had earwigs (!!) all over it. The sunflowers are beautiful but kind of dumb looking in a raised bed. Next year those will go along the fence line. As I mentioned the freaking zucchini is going nuts and if I don't go out there every day it will grow something like 3" an hour and I end up with a huge monster that I don't want to eat (April's garden tip! Little zucchini has better flavor!). The pumpkin patch is hilarious, and I clearly need to plant that in another location next year. Next year I'd like to plant onions, parsnips and garlic. I think I will definitely be using all of the squash from my garden though. I need to figure out what happened with the tomato plants because I am definitely most disappointed in those.

Oh well, I knew this year was going to be a bit of a learning year. I think I'll do better next year.