Tale of a second year gardener

This year was my second year of growing a vegetable garden. We had a much better summer than last year and that helped a lot. Here are the results of last year's garden.



This year I grew (or tried to grow):

• strawberries--got more of these this year and they sure were tasty (M quickly learned where the strawberries were)


• spinach--I tore these up and tossed them, wasn't impressed at all


• various types of lettuce--did great again, next year I want to stagger when I plant the seeds a bit better especially for the end of the season


• carrots--I haven't pulled most of these up yet but the ones I have sure are tasty and did well


• broccoli--tasty and did ok, the heads were more like broccolini and weren't tight and needed to be harvested at a pretty immature stage of development


• cauliflower--eh not so great


• snow and sugar snap peas--did well and were really tasty, the snow peas did really well and those I started from seed in the ground, the sugar snaps I bought as babies at a nursery and got to harvest them earlier, I used string and sticks to support them


• beans--really good but didn't produce too much, they matured kind of late


• zucchini--got a few but not nearly as many as I should have gotten, I don't know why either


• yellow squash--got several but all were teeny tiny and would rot before maturing

I was talking with my neighbor recently and she gave me a few ideas to try next year plus she knows someone who quite successfully starts tomato plants. So I'll have to snag some of those up next year (and hope that we have a warm enough summer). Plus my neighbor also is going to give me some raspberry and rubarb "babies".... yeah! I just need to find some blueberries and we'll be all set.

My husband is going to expand my garden area for me so I'll have more room to grow different veggies.

I want to have my husband build me some A frames so I can make sort of green houses over my garden (neighbor idea). I want to grow tomatoes and maybe peppers in containers. Stagger the lettuce a bit better. Plant way more beans and peas and perhaps grow the peas against the garden's fence for a better support. No support for beans. I want to try growing potatoes too and perhaps some turnips. I thought about growing some garlic and still may try throwing some out there one day soon and see if anything comes up in the spring. And I plan on using more compost and maybe promix again. I want to transplant my strawberries and have my berries and rubbarb separate from my veggies. I want to grow lettuce (more red leaf), carrots, broccoli, zucchini, yellow squash, peas, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, turnips.......... I'm not sure what else.

Any tips are always welcome. :)