Although this year’s garden is growing pretty well, next year’s could definitely be better. I planted too many tomato plants too close together, so it’s nearly impossible to weed and/or harvest. The grapes are covered in rust, the zucchini has powdery mildew and the tomatillos are taking over our yard. The lawn alternates dead patches with patches of dandelion, creeping charlie and crabgrass. In an effort to do better next year, I think I’m going to draw up a garden plan using this companion planting chart and look into some organic gardening products. We definitely need some sort of lawn fertilizer and/or herbicide.

I found this trellis that could be used to grow melons, cantaloupe, zucchine and cucumbers. This year my zucchini and cantaloupe are growing on the ground, where they’re getting eaten by chipmunks :/ This looks like a good solution for next year.

I picked the first batch of beams’ yellow pear tomatos from the garden today, and the second batch of roma cherry tomatos. The cherry tomatos are excellent, but the yellow pear tomatos are almost flavorless. I have quite a few regular roma tomatos that are turning pink. I also planted a fall crop of lettuce, salad greens and radishes.

This weekend I canned some peach lavender jam, made with lavender I harvested from my yard. The jam turned out pretty well and all of the lids sealed correctly. My lavender plants only produced 2 Tbsp of lavender flowers – hopefully next year I’ll get a bigger crop.

I’ve already ordered some bulbs for fall. From burpee.com, I ordered:

3 allium ‘gladiator’ bulbs
12 feather hyacinths
25 mixed muscari bulbs

I’ve also harvested a meager crop of peas, most of which were too dry to eat, and one bunch of leaf lettuce that managed to survive first being mowed down by rabbits and then being transplanted inside the rabbit-proof chickenwire fence. I think I’ve harvested enough lavender to make peach-lavender jam out of. In July I harvested more garlic than we will eat in a year, some of which I’m going to save for seed and plant in the fall. I have some really nice morning glories growing inside the rabbit-proof fence which are starting to become entwined in the tomato plants. The tomato plants are planted too close together, which makes it impossible to weed and will probably make it hard to harvest, also. This week the melons that I planted are starting to grow teenie melons, but I think they’ll all be eaten by the chipmunks. The tomatillos are thriving and will probably bear a lot of fruit. The raspberries are starting to wilt in the heat and won’t bear fruit this year. The strawberries are sending out runners like crazy and desperately need to be weeded.

Lessons I’ve learned:

1. Weed early and often
2. Put morning glories inside chicken wire to prevent them from being eaten
3. Chipmunks can squeeze through chicken wire
4. Water rhododendrons often
5. Do not plant tomato plants close together
6. Lettuce, peas and carrots need to go inside chicken wire
7. Plant more cilantro, stagger plantings
8. Get a heat mat for pepper seedlings to speed germination
9. Start violas and pansies earlier
10. Morning glory, calendula and nasturtium can be started from seed outside after last frost
11. Hostas and day lilies need to be divided