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.
