A few more things I have learned or decided this year. (I welcome your opinions, thank you!)
FYI I will have strawberries and succulents for sale or barter early next year, Stay tuned! 😀
#1 I will no longer plant things that take a long time to ripen or mature. The longer it stays on the vine, the more chances there are for something to go wrong. IE. I have small Bing tomatos next to larger heirloom tomatos. I have been harvesting large amounts of the bings, but the larger ones have suffered from Blossom End Rot. (I could probably fix the end rot, but they don’t taste as good as the Bings so why bother when the Bings don’t have that issue.)
#2 I won’t plant things again that don’t taste awesome. Again my example is tomatos. I have Bings growing that i think taste AWESOME, next to Tiny Tim tomatos that taste, well, halfass. Now people say “Use the Tiny Tims to make things where taste isn’t so important. My reply is “I can grow more Bings and use them for that.”
#3 I need to find a good variety of smaller cucumbers that are best eaten without peeling them. I like raw cucumbers with salt. Peeling them seems to be an extra step I can avoid.
#4 I will let large vining plants like cucumbers to just overgrow my lawn next year. Probably with some heavy plastic underneath. I can’t eat grass, right?
#5 I will plant a lot more Okra. I love raw young tender okra, and the six plants I put in this year have not kept up with my appetite.
#6 I will plant way more carrots. They grew really well this year.
#7 I need to figure out why my snow peas died in July. They were watered well, but they just turned brown and croaked. I had some in a heavily shaded area and some in full sun and both died similarly. They did decently in 2018 tho.
#7 I will plant more Spinach. It could be harvested early by thinning and tasted great.
#8 I will tear out my strawberries. They take up too much space for a very low return.
#9 I will plant more herbs. My basil, oregano, peppermint, and sage did extremely well.
#10 I planted a good amount of pollinators. Every raised bed had several small plants in it to help pollination. Salvia, Cosmos, Bee Balm, etc. And I am not seeing any plant not being pollinated.
#11 No corn next year. It grew well this year (It’s 8′ tall, and i’ll probably get 4 dozen ears off a 10×10′ plot) But it falls under “Takes too long”. I can plant Okra there instead and have an ongoing harvest.
#12 I will keep ignoring weeds. While the plants were small I tried to kill any weed I saw. But once things got established I just pulled the larger ones that might compete and ignored the smaller ones. Doesn’t seem to have impacted the harvest much.
#13 I will get some irrigation lines installed in the beds. They don’t have to be permanent or pretty but watering 15 different raised beds with a garden hose sucks.
#14 I will be ready for the fall planting season. (Had not planned for this in 2019)
