Top Ten Things I Learned in 2007

1. Don't crowd the plants. I put way too many big-vine plants (cucumbers, zucchini, "sunburst" squash, and pumpkins) in too small a space, with not enough trellising, and I never pruned anything. I ended up with a jungle, got only a few fruits from each plant, and in August downy mildew swept through the whole lot; by the end of September I had to pull up every plant and most of it, I couldn't even mulch. I lost a couple of heads of lettuce and a pansy to damp rot. I couldn't bear to thin the basil, and I ended up with a lot of tiny basil plants that bolted to flower almost right away. In general, thinning results in bigger, healthier, and more productive plants.
   


2. WATCH more closely for disease! I didn't notice the black spot until it was far along; I lost two peppers entirely. I also didn't notice the downy mildew early enough. When I did, I should have sacrificed the affected plants early, and I might have saved more.
   


3. Prune your tomatoes, they like it. Tips I found out too late: As soon as a tomato plant puts out its first flowers, pick off all the leaves up to that point. (And add soil; tomatoes can put out roots from their stems!) Pick off a few leaves every now and then through the season, to let sun reach all the tomatoes (makes it easier to see them for harvest, too). At the very end of the season, while waiting for the last of the fruit to ripen, pick off almost all the leaves. Tip I had but didn't use: You don't have to keep every tomato that sets. I had a LOT of tomatoes per plant, but most were very small. Next year, I'll go for less numbers, bigger individual fruit.
   


4. Don't plant under the tomatoes unless some sun is going to get in there! I tried it with pot marigolds, then with carrots. Both times, I got sprouts; then they disappeared as the leaf layer above them got thicker.
   


5. I need better trellising! I put four-foot metal tomato cages around the tomatoes, and they outgrew them. By the end of the season two of the tomato plants were lying horizontal. The flimsy plastic trellises I used for the cucumbers started leaning over even before anything had begun to lean on them. Other trellising mistakes: Often I didn't notice new growth that needed to be tied to the trellis before it had gone its own way too long, and bending it back ran the risk of breaking it. That was partly due to plants too close together, partly just not checking often enough. The zucchini did not seem amenable to trellising at all; I think it could have been if I'd started when it was younger. And I thought it was real cute at first when one of the cucumbers started climbing a tomato; then the cucumber leaves shaded by the tomato started dying. Not an experiment to repeat.
   


6. Switch to different greens in hot weather. The salad greens we started with produced wonderfully all spring. When the weather got hot, they shot up long stocks and flowered, and the leaves turned bitter. Next year, pull the spring greens as soon as the weather heats up, before they bolt. Plant some hot-weather greens (just before hot weather). Switch back to cool-weather greens in the fall.
   


7. Cherry Belle radishes don't grow well in winter. They were great all spring and summer; three weeks from planting to eating, and you can eat the thinnings too. I tried planting some the end of September and they hadn't gotten over two inches high, three months later.
   


8. Don't plant mesclun mixes unless you know what each variety looks like. I was letting weeds grow all over the garden because I didn't know what was a weed and what was unknown-green-number-eight in the mesclun seed mix. And ALL of what I thought were "Sacred Basil" seedlings turned out to be weeds. I'll try starting Sacred Basil indoors next year, and find out what the seedlings are supposed to look like. Someday I will now what every seedling of every crop and every weed looks like. Maybe by the time I'm 93.


9. Don't spend money on garden worms until you build up the organic content of the soil. It was December before it dawned on me that the reason the worms I'd added to the garden had not multiplied was, there wasn't enough for them to eat. I did build the soil up a lot, and the worms I did add survived. But they won't multiply until the soil gets rich enough to support a larger population. Instead of adding more worms, add more worm feed.
   


10. Avoid overhead watering. Really. By next spring I'm going to have a water-the-roots-only system of seep hoses put in. With the sandy soil and the raised beds, it's really impossible to over-water this garden. But damp-rot and downy mildew have made me very cautious about over-watering the leaves.