Three Things We Won't Do In The Garden Next Year

Beets. Soon to be prepared as 'roasted beets.'

This is my first garden (Mr. UpCountry's had a couple before this season). So there's a huge learning curve going on here for me. It's something I enjoy: our banter back and forth about what we're going to change next year.

Don't get me wrong - the garden's doing well. This past week we've been harvesting beets, carrots, bush beans, peas, kohlrabi, and a couple tomatoes. The broccoli's coming up nicely and the jalapenos are finally  making an appearance.

But there are a few things that we're going to change next year. Namely, three.

1. Spearmint and chocolate mint will no longer be planted with the vegetables in the raised beds. Why? Because these plants are such aggressive runners they might as well just be competing in the Olympics this week. We've found little spearmint runners poking up all over the place, leaps and bounds beyond the original planting. It's quite impressive, actually, if it wasn't such a joykill (or growth-kill) to the surrounding plants. We've had some cabbages and beets that didn't get up to size because they had to compete for soil with those minty overachievers.

We originally planted spearmint and chocolate mint as a natural deterrent against pests. Next year, we will likely plant the mints into containers or straight into the ground around the raised bed perimeter.

2. We will space out the broccoli. They are not kidding around when they say to give these guys some space. Our broccoli is so tall!  It's enjoying itself right now, but it's quite obvious that there's too much going on in that one space. With their height, their canopy is high above the spearmint planted in its center. You would think that would weaken those mint runners. Dead wrong.

3. Lastly, we will plant all the tomatoes together on one side of the bed, rather than planting them spaced apart with peppers and basil in the middle. 

This area of the garden is our "Tropics." We planted this way in an attempt to create as much humidity as possible, by squeezing in plants that like humidity (peppers) in between taller plants that 'eek' out a lot of moisture.

This didn't happen. Instead it seems like the tomatoes are overshadowing the peppers. We have seen limited growth in our banana and jalapeno pepper plants and some serious weakness in the basil as well. Mr. UpCountry has been fertilizing and composting regularly in this bed and it seems to have improved (sorry about that previously-low nitrogen content, Tropics). The need for nitrogen is probably the greatest factor in the peppers' "laziness," but since the "Tropics" layout we designed this year didn't really work out to our standard, we're chucking it for next year and coming up with something else.

Have you identified any changes that your going to make in your garden next year? If so, share your acquired knowledge - we'd love to hear about your own gardens!

{I'm link up to Frugally Sustainable's Blog Hop today to share my new knowledge with other folks interested in gardening!}