Based on our lessons learned from last year, we decided to change it up a bit this year. I decided to remove Cucumbers and Zuccini - not because I don't love those veggies, but because they just take up too much space. The squash family of veggies like to spread so you need quite a large space for them to move.
Instead, I chose to plant one butternut squash plant which yielded (is that the proper past tense for yield?) six squash - pretty good when you consider the price I paid for that one little plant (about 1.50). They are much cheaper when you get them in seeds but since we planted a little late this year (because of our wedding in Jamaica) I used a home depot card to get all of the flats pre-grown about 3 inches). I guess you could consider this cheating but in my opinion, keeping them from dying is a whole challenge on its own.
We kept tomatoes because they are pretty easy to grow but my cherry tomatoes came out way better than the field tomatoes - I don't think we tied them up properly and should have spaced them out a bit better. Actually, we should have spaced out pretty much everything -when you plant them as little plants or seeds they don't seem that big, but when you consider how big they will get, you have to plan accordingly. My herbs all did well and you really can't screw those up - water is really all they need.
Peppers: greeen, scotch bonnets, sweet chili's - all turned out great! I had a plan to make home made hot sauce but I just didn't get around to it and I'm blaming Mike Corey haha (Adam doesn't eat hot stuff so I really had no motivation to make this and a partner in crime was needed but he was too busy traveling the world in 80 days. (I highly recomend you check out his videos).
Red Swiss Chard: these things grow like weeds and I ended up giving most of it away
Brussle Sprouts: FAILOur first mistake is that we bought way too much and I felt compelled to plant them all (mistake number 1). This meant I put them way too close together and little did I realize how big they would get.
To be honest, I'm not sure I'd grow them again, even if I did it properly. For the amount we'd actually eat, it's much easier to just buy them from the local farmers market.
Peas: FAIL
I planted these from seeds that we had left over from last year. I don't know what happened but only 5 of the 30 plus that I planted actually sprouted. I planted then along the perimeter and adam put up some chicken wire so they had somthing to climb (and to keep out the bunnies).
What's in store for next year? Well for starters, we're going to expand so that I can separate my herbs and give them their own space. I'd also like to try some broccoli or cauliflower. I'm hesitant to try lettuce because they attract way too many animals.
I'm going to decrease the amount of tomato plants - by September I didn't even want to look at them and its only now in November that I'm open to eating them again.
Next summer, I plan to post on each veggie throughout the season rather than just waiting until the end because there is just way too much to type and I just got lazy throughout the summer.
Do you have any success stories or lessons learned?
