We are definitely learning, and cataloging our gardening experience here should help us plan better for next year.
The biggest issue we've seen lately is that entire marigolds are just disappearing. I did some web searching and it seems that they're popular targets for mice, rabbits and other rodents. Maybe I need to put a scout camera on the garden.
The missing marigold's opened up 4 new squares on garden bed #1 and I convinced my youngest to go with more veggies instead of flowers. Similarly, the older kid replaced two of her vacant squares with beets. Angela's garden has already yielded some radishes and some spinach. We snipped off a bunch of spinach leaves over the weekend and each had a salad and I think that the spinach has already grown back even larger now and is due for another cull. We replanted the radishes that we pulled, as well as filling in a few other random holes.
The peas have grown enough so that they need support to keep them from becoming a tangled mess. This is one of the things I will probably handle differently next year. I'm trying a couple of different styles of supports this year (see the photos), but next year I will probably put in one of the more durable climbing walls that the SFG book recommends and make sure all of our climbers are arranged in a more sensible fashion.
At this point, I'd be surprised if our cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts have time to mature. I really should have started them indoors. The other early season change that I really need to make next year would be covering the beds in plastic during the early weeks to accelerate early growth.
Overall, though, we're pretty happy with the way things are growing. I am planning to add at least two more beds next year.
On the other side of the driveway... our cucumber, white pumpkin and ornamental gourds are growing really quickly.
Here's the revised layout based on yesterday's replanting:
Here are photos of the beds from this afternoon:
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