This was a good year for our garden.  Other than the dogs eating a row of peas things worked out well.  This weekend I made the last harvest: a shopping bag of green beans, 3 nearly ripe tomatoes and a dozen cherry tomatoes.  A few lesson’s learned are worth noting:

• We got 9 volunteer pumpkins and I feel lucky they came up.  Eric enjoyed watching them grow and they are great October decorations.  Note to self – make sure to plant pumpkins next year.
• We had 3 volunteer cherry tomato plants.  Our one purchased plant that grew in a pot on the deck didn’t do so well, but the volunteers, although late came on like gangbusters.  Note to self – try to plan for cherry tomatoes next year.
• The spinach grew fast, hung on long but was rarely eaten and is probably not worth repeating next year.
• Avoid the climbing peas.  Despite the panel field they overgrew everything, matured quick and we missed the 2nd planting as they matured too quickly.
• Eric’s carrots grew quickly and we need to harvest them earlier next year as a lot of carrots were thrown away being too big and splitting.
• Multiple plantings of beans worked well.  Almost too well, according to Kathryn.  We froze a couple dozen packages of green beans and had green beans available to eat from July – October.
• A new system of tomato cages is needed.  These were too light and put into place too late.

Next year I want to try planting a small area of Indian Corn with pumpkins and gourds interspersed.