5 Garden Planning Lessons From Last Season

This weekend I'm going to plant my garden.

I think it's finally warm enough, considering the fact that the potato bits in my compost have started sprouting leaves and growing new potatoes! At the moment I have seeds on my counter, plastic take-out knives to use as row markers, and a tray of tall tomato plants just itching for more soil to spread their roots through. I also have some bell pepper seedlings that I've started, which should be interesting (never done those before). All I need now is an hour or so to get it done.

My lessons from last year include:

1) Take it easy on the bean plants. ONE SEED last year produced a MASSIVE stalk that produced more beans than we could eat.

2) Ditto for the snap peas. They're yummy and easy to grow, but you can only eat so many.

3) Have more radish and carrot seeds on hand and plant fewer at a time. I ran out last year, and regretted planting them so densely that I had to thin out (i.e. discard) a bunch. They're both fast growing crops that you can get many of in each season, so you don't want to run out or squander your seeds too early.

4) Don't buy "mixed greens" seeds... I don't know enough about greens, and when they grew I couldn't tell which were weeds and which were edible, so I didn't eat any (that's OK, I'm laughing at myself too ;-)

5) Plant more potatoes. They're easy to grow and a versatile food - last year I was forever wrist deep in soil rooting around, wishing I'd grown more.