LOL on labeling. I've made mistakes and like a teacher's suggestion to use painters' tape on pots. You can write on the tape and easily remove. One of the broccoli plants from a nursery 6-pack is actually kohlrabi.

Flowers in the garden: I have to have flowers in with my veggies but it varies. Right now I have some nasturtiums and lemon gem marigolds planted among paste tomatoes. More lemon gem between peppers. Calendula and borage as well as dill readily self seed in my garden so I have to pull a lot of them out. Right now there's a forest of calendula in my garlic bed.

The "craziest" I ever did was plant red cabbage and leeks with a border of white alyssum with violas and lemon gem marigold here and there. It was just about 3' worth of garden space (just 6 cabbages) and fun.

I cannot have tomatoes without paste tomatoes esp since I bought a dehydrator. I like a small paste tomato (Vilms which my grower didn't have this year) but Opalka is my mainstay. Also grow Principe Borghese which is supposed to be a good drying tomato. It's like a large cherry tomato so good for oven drying. Some tomatoes I dehydrate completely but most I like to keep fairly moist (think raisins) which are wonderful but need to be frozen. I've added crushed egg shells to planting holes but used some bone meal this year since I'm experimenting with recipes from a professional tomato grower. (see Rusty's tomatoes for planting mix recipe).

To add to your list:

Get free composted manure on Craigslist. Start looking as early as ground dries out after winter when people want to get rid of their accumulated piles. Lucky this year to find someone willing to load PU with their tractor. My husband get there just ahead of someone getting big truckloads.

Last year was my grand exotic pepper experiment. I now probably have a life time supply of dried peppers. I also made hot sauces. I am trying some new varieties of bell peppers this year. Find a source that specializes. (I like Tradewinds Fruit)

Save money - join a group order for Fedco seeds, etc. The prices are lower than other catalogs but with a group buy we got an extra 20%.

Visit some good farmers markets to taste test new varieties. I only bought melons from vendors who labeled the melons. First, if they could grow melons in VT, I should be able to in NH if I chose the right variety that tasted good. I found a second melon at a MA tomato farm that I'm trying this year. Last year's Hannah's Choice is growing in my garden again this year. We also switched from all zucchini to some patty pan squashes. After friends raved about taste, bought some at a farmers market and had to agree the flavor is excellent.

Make better use of Agribon row covers and the portable low tunnel my husband built for me. We get hit by an early frost around Sept 18 when late planted beans are just blossoming. If I give them some protection, they make it thru and we have several more weeks of nice weather.

This year I MUST try a green manure crop.

I think one of the most exciting things about gardening is attending a really good garden fair. For us, it's Maine's Organic Farmers Common Ground Fair at the end of September. Can't go every year but the workshops make it worth the trip.

A few things that made my list so far.

- Don't be in a rush to set out tomato and pepper plants outside for good, especially those that go in-ground. Second or third week of June isn't too late.

- Also don't be in a rush to start them inside. They can become quite large before they can be set out for good and too early fruiting can somewhat stunt them at transplant, more so for peppers IMO. Some varieties might need an early start regardless.

- Don't direct-sow radishes until mid-April. The cold soil only delays germination and I don't get to harvest them any earlier. Also don't direct-seed beets in April, way too slow to germinate.

- It's hard to amend a bed with too much compost. I may have under-done it and my peppers are looking sorry, but there may be other factors. It might have been why my tomatoes sucked last year as well.

- Don't overcrowd tomatoes. I have 8 plants in a 8'x4' bed and this is pushing it. I'll have to do a bit of pruning for better air circulation before long.

- A 5 gallon pail is too small for an indeterminate tomato. Sure, I'll get a handful of fruits, but the plants are nowhere near as lush and productive as in-ground. I have 2 this year in 5 gallon pails, but it wasn't so much planned as just a way not to throw away backup seedlings. Whatever they produce will essentially be "free" as I had the buckets and potting mix just sitting there unused.

- Build an extra tomato bed. :)

- Containers might very well outperform in-ground when it comes to peppers in my climate.

I'm nodding and saying "oh yep" to so many of these things. Here is my partial list.

- Fertilize tomato and pepper seedlings (indoors) with diluted MG for tomatoes, not the regular blue MG, which has too much N.

- Plant tomatoes in as much sun as possible. They aren't performing very well with just 6-7 hours.

- Do successive sowings of basil next year.

- Plant more broccoli plants if I have the room. Can put bush beans in after them.

- Plant more buckets of fingerling potatoes.

- Buy bulk seeds from Planter's, a local store. Much cheaper!

-Check Lowe's for discounted perennial flowers looking a bit tattered. Cut blooms off, give TLC and help them recover to save money!

-Grow lettuce in spring pots with pansies toward the front. Pretty and convenient!

good point about setting out tomatoes Isgen. Due to rain and cold, I followed Henry Honmeyer's advice to aim for June 10-12. I can't remember what celestial guidelines he uses (VT garden writer) but mine all look to be doing fine.

But I didn't start me peppers early enough.

If you like lasagna style of making a garden bed, any time is a good time to start making next year's bed. I collected materials thru the summer and built a bed about 24" high starting with wet newspapers on existing lawn. It settled by half over the winter and kept decreasing every year but what a great start. Lots of grass clippings, chopped leaves, manure, etc.

Stake my sweet pepper plants in addition to tomato plants. One broke today under the weight of the pepper bounty. :(

Get tomatoes planted sooner next year. Was unavoidable this year due to raised bed construction but next year should be able to do. Most of my tomatoes are still green,.... grrrr.

Don't schedule an extended vacation right in the middle of peak harvest time. Now faced with reliance on house sitter for harvesting in some cases - not ideal.

In response to op and paste tomatoes. I don't bother with paste tomatoes anymore . Other tomatoes have better flavor for sauce or ketchup or pizza sauce. So my notes for the year so far

pay attention what I'm planting. SO I have 2 ten foot rows of string beans. One row is tender greens and one is or well was supposed to be Carson yellow wax beans . The spring was so wet that most of the seeds rotted so I had to re plant seeds. Somewhere I went wrong in the re planting and now all but 3 plants are tender greens in what should've been a whole row of Carsons oops lol.

Defeat crab grass next year. I have a crab grass infestation right now. At this point I can't get rid of it without harming the veggie plats and only can maintain it at this point

dont bother with leaf lettuce here any more. So cheap at the local market and by the time it's big enough for a worthwhile harvest in my garden it's already getting ready to bolt and bitter.

After two years of failure, my garden just might be too cold and windy to grow peppers... :-(

You could try a mini green house for your peppers. Or if not I bet you can grow quite a pea crop there :) I managed to get some ok pepper results in Anchorage Ak in an 8 X 8 greenhouse in black pots and topsy turveys

I haven't tried peas, but I'm still growing nice lettuce and radishes if that says anything about my conditions!

CC do you know any local gardeners who are successful growing peppers? I'm in NH, the colder side of zone 5. This seems to be a tougher year for peppers and tomatoes because of the cold, wet spring. But other crops are affected, too. On facebook in 2013 I announced I had bought local corn on July 31. I don't think there is any ready yet this year. For peppers, I have had the best luck with Carmen which I like raw for salads or grilled for sandwiches, etc. It does not have a thick wall like bell peppers but it doesn't matter for most recipes. I also get my plants from a local grower who tends to have varieties for the north. I agree with fbx22 that a mini green house or some kind of protection will help. Friends put their tomatoes in pots on a wheeled cart (it might even have been a mechanics creeper). They wheeled them into the garage at night and on cold days, but outside on asphalt driveway on good days. The plants got an extra early start before being planted in the ground. A lot of people grow peppers in pots - take a look at the hot pepper thread for advice. I have a greenhouse plastic covered high tunnel my husband built. It's wood frame with a peak because of snowy winters. Both peppers and tomatoes grow better. With the sides rolled up in summer, it's still easily 100 degrees on sunny days. But a low fabric tunnel on wire hoops would also help. BTW a great gardener on the New England thread lives not far from me and said her peppers never turn red. I might not get red peppers this year but I usually do.

I agree that a garden isn't the same without flowers. I like to have flowers at the entrance because as I walk into the garden to do some work, the beauty of the flowers motivate me! Funny how that works.

- So far, my biggest lesson has been to put corn in the ground where I can hill it up!

- Put wind barriers up for plants as soon as they're ready, not after a storm knocks them flat on the ground!!

- Pre-spray tomatoes for blight and leaf spot. Don't over fertilize or water

- Scatter tomatoes and peppers throughout the gardens so that if one gets hit by blight, the others won't be right next to it!!

- Don't plant winter squash where it will cover the entire garden area and yard

- Take care of ants

- Give brassicas full sun. Mine seriously hated the full shade I gave them..

Here's for next year!

Adding a few more here that I have thought of:

-Get shade cloth for the pepper bed, lost some to sun scald

-Need to improve staking method around peppers and eggplants. Some bent or snapped due to weight, need to surround with stakes and string

-Need to reduce the amount of flowers on eggplant when growing so it can support weight of eggplant when growing

-Don't need to start sugar snap peas in advance, they grow so fast just direct seed

-Grow less beefsteak tomatoes and more paste tomatoes

-Need to do more proactive netting to prevent raccoons and rodents from eating fruits. Trying some rodent traps this weekend.

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I'll add a few in:

- Spray early and often for powdery mildew. Well before I think I need to. The cucumbers were hit hard, and there's not much to be done if I wait until the infection is obvious.

- More mulch. Lots more mulch. I used a thin layer of leaves from the podocarpus hedges. Too thin a layer doesn't do much in So Cal heat.

- For the indeterminate tomatoes, pruned to one vertical main stem is too little and unpruned is too much. Try two or three main stems vertically next year.

- Be patient. Take and review photos to see how much real progress is being made. I felt like my atemoya hadn't grown at all, but looking at progress pictures showed how far it had really come.

- Bag the fruit early. It really works on the tomatoes. Don't bother bagging strawberries.

Don't start fall lettuce until mid August and don't plant it out until Labor day or so. This year I transplanted my lettuce on August 19 and once again we had a hot spell around low 90s in the second half of September that caused about 1/2 of it to bolt. I planted a few more right at the end of August and none of it bolted. If the plants are starting to head up during a hot spell they will usually bolt.

Don't add anymore wood ashes to soil!

Concentrate on crops that are expensive/hard to find/what tastes better the moment it's picked, etc. That means Japanese vegetables (daikon, kabocha, mizuna, shungiku, negi) and lettuce.

Separate herbs (dry/no fertilizer) from vegetable garden.

Separate the cucurbits that end up covering the whole garden -- but where?? Could i grow them on the compost pile??

Deal with the vole and rabbit problem when I can access the perimeter and sink a new barrier.

Grow more determinate tomatoes and fewer indeterminate. Be ruthless about culling volunteers or you'll get a million cherry tomatoes again.

Forget peas -- all that work for a handful of peas! What a bargain frozen peas are!

Take out the bark slabs for paths. Too hard to walk on and take up too much room. Stepping stones or mulch is all that's needed.

Hey Oscarmatic - what do you mean by "bagging" tomatoes??

and what is BER??

BER = blossom end rot on tomatoes. Usually paste tomatoes.

Bagging tomatoes: I bought mesh drawstring bags to put over my beefsteak tomatoes as they ripen. It worked a treat to keep the rats from eating them just as they ripen. I can't post photos now (grrrr, Houzz), but I had posted them earlier in this thread: http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/4765814/bagging-fruit-on-trees

Do you only bag the tomatoes near the ground?

Question on bagging tomatoes - I have recently had what I think is a rat problem. I have wrapped the plants in black bird netting. Will that work as well?

kitasei, I bag everything I want to eat. All of them. We have roof rats, so they are great climbers. We cede them most of the oranges out of reach on the orange tree, because we have so many we don't mind losing lots. But if I don't bag every tomato, I feel like I won't get any!

babushka, in my experience, any little gap can be enough for the rats to sneak through. Without seeing your setup, I'd just guess that the tighter you can cinch the net around the fruit the better it is likely to work. I also had success with Ziploc plastic bags.

@oscarmatic - I am at close to 200 pds of tomatoes this year, there is no way i can bag tomatoes individually. I have ordered rat traps on line - plan to neutralize the problem at it's source....

More to add:

Put out rat traps at first sign of interlopers

Harvest peppers at first sign of color, to avoid being eaten by said interlopers...

Get everything planted a bit earlier next year. I was delayed due to raised bed construction but next year should be a non-issue.

This thread is awesome and has reminded me of some things I need to do. I definitely mislabeled tomatoes, didn’t spread out enough organic matter, slacked on buying Powderly mildew killer and so many more of these. It’s my first year at this house so it’s a transition from a dog poop and weed infested backyard toward an organic garden. Given that I am planning next year out it’s good to read over this thread!

Make sure to factor in the time needed to process and preserve all of the garden bounty you grow. I just threw away some sweet peppers I grew because I fell behind on food preserving and did not realize they had gone bad in the fridge. :( Terrible! It has been very time consuming canning, cooking etc but also a joy. Not good when food I grew accidentally goes to waste!

This yr most tomatoes were lost to the rats. Didn't realize it was rats and not the squirrels. Will try rat traps as well as bags next yr.

Now is a good time to think about next year's plans because it's early November here in NH and while I have some Asian greens, I haven't been cooking with them like I thought I would so that's wasted space. I should have fresh carrots but had a germination problem this year, possibly because I didn't keep things watered. I need to check the date I planted bulls blood beets because I don't think there has been much beet development. Leeks were planted late so they aren't very big. Lettuce is still good shows some frost damage. Kale self seeded and is overwhelming the space in the high tunnel. I don't have parsnips or Gilfeather turnips this year. Why not! Doing bed cleanup to plant hardneck garlic, I discovered two overlooked zucchinis and they were covered with squash bugs. Yikes! Broccoli in the high tunnel is slowly developing but I'm not sure the heads will get any bigger. I need to check the planting date on these, too. A couple of weeks can make a big difference.

Although my Great Aleppo Pepper Adventure was mostly a flop (lots of pepper but not the flavor I wanted), I ended up discovering a whole new world of peppers. Buran bell peppers were big winners, very productive plus great flavor. Urfa biber are slightly hot which is just hot enough for us. Zolotisty yellow bells have a fabulous flavor. No more Ace peppers for me. I also got peppers mixed up during harvest so I'm not sure if it was Carmen that turned a beautiful dark red with a wonderful sweet flavor but I've been growing it for several years and will continue to have one or two plants.

Yesterday I weeded the two new asparagus beds. The beds themselves are good but I have Creeping Jenny in our weedy lawn that was creeping into the bed.

The days to harvest listed for seeds is a joke! At least next year I have more reliable days to maturity to plan my succession plantings. Depending on the weather of course!