Lessons Learned - Tomatoes

     Here it is, the beginning of September, July a blur of hot and humid days, droplets of moisture on my glasses, making it a struggle to see what I am doing in the garden.  August was dry, busy, and went far too quickly.  


     The lessons I learned this year, I need to have close at hand so that I do not repeat them.   I did know some of these, but was a lazy gardener this year.
1.  do not plant tomato rows so close together - this makes it hard to get in there and pick them, so  
     space the rows 3 feet apart
2.  5 plants per my row, -  reason - see above - I was crawling on my hands and knees and  
     contorting to reach the little red orbs
3.  put the tomato cages on directly after planting - much easier than trying to manipulate those
     branches without breaking them
4. put the pop bottles in right after the cages - why did I stop doing this?  Lazy.  What about the pop
     bottles?  When we first moved here and put in the veggie garden, I had asked my sister -in-law
     to save me all her 2 litre pop bottles.  I then cut the bottoms off, removed the caps, inverted them
     and stuck them into the ground next to my newly planted veggies.  I would fill them with water 
     and then refill them whenever they were next to empty.  This system gave all the veggies a 
     continuous supply of water, but never too much and was a quick way of watering without the 
     overhead system of watering.  Why is this better?  Well, I'm not watering any weed seeds, the
     water warms to air temperature and, as I was reminded this year, as the tomatoes ripened, cold 
     well water on the shoulders of tomatoes makes hard, yellow shoulders.

   Another lesson is not to grow broccoli , cauliflower or brussel sprouts - too 
many flea beetles and earwigs, not to mention little green worms.  I tried row covers, but the earwigs get in there anyway, so I will just concentrate on de-worming the Kale.