Growing own vegetable garden

Thanks for the reminder. I, too, need to weed the planting areas. I've grown tomatoes the past several years. My fav thus far is called Moschovich-about the size of ping pong balls, but full of flavor and the plants produced a TON of fruit. Be sure you get the variety you want-some tomatoes are great for tomato sauce/paste, but they taste very bland and grainy if eaten in a salad--so buy varieties based on how you like to eat them.
I tried peppers, but it was too mild of a summer here-they like it HOT.
I plan to try squash and cukes this summer since I'll have more room allocated.

Best advice I have-keep a journal of what seed you use, where it is planted, when you planted it, how well each plant produces. Then you'll know "Oh-this plant got shaded too much, so it was really small--next year, don't plant in that spot"

I moved into a house with a garden nearly a year ago, and immediately got a bit carried away with growing fruits and vegetables. Okay, maybe more than a bit.... I now own four fruit trees, and it's not a big garden.

Things I found especially worthwhile were tomatoes and strawberries Homegrown tomatoes and strawberries are easy to grow and taste amazing - I don't even like tomatoes normally, but was happily picking them off the bush all Summer.
I also got a fantastic crop of chilli peppers, and have big plans for growing more interesting varieties next year. (My household gets through bucketloads of chillis - they get added to just about everything - so growing them works out very cost-effective!)

Garlic is also crazy stupid easy to grow if you have the space. You pretty much just plonk them in the ground and leave them for months.

Things I wish I had known include:

* Dotting plants of the same species around the garden, not having them all in one clump, so if disease strikes they don't all get it. We lost half the tomatoes in less than 24 hours to blight, and it was sheer good luck that the other half were on the other side of the garden because they didn't all fit in one place.

* Making an effort to identify problems early, rather than going 'hmm, the plant looks a bit peaky... hopefully it will perk up'. Could have probably spared myself a mildew epidemic if I'd acted quicker!

* Feeding container-grown plants is important! I'm pretty sure in hindsight that several plants were suffering from lack of nitrogen throughout the growing season, which probably cost me a lot of fruit and veg in the end.


And overall, I think the main points to keep in mind are:

* What do you eat a lot of, and can it be grown efficiently?
(This year has taught me that I cannot possibly ever have enough strawberries, but I can definitely have too many runner beans, and most brassicas take up a disproportionate amount of space for the number of meals you get out of them...)

* What can you get out of your garden that you will never, ever find in the shops?
(The big one for me is courgette flowers! They're very delicate and short-lived, but absolutely delicious - same taste as courgettes/zucchinis but more subtle. And of course there are billions of different varieties of everything to experiment with.)