The garden

This year has been an experimental one for our new garden. It's the first year I've done a garden here. I got a couple of Frame-it-all raised beds (I had another on order, but they went into bankrupcy!!! BAH) From seed I planted Sheboygan paste tomatoes, swiss chard, spinach (FAIL), Edamame, pie pumpkins, butternut squash, dragons tongue beans, haricot tarbais beans, black aztec (sweet) corn, silver king (field) corn, poblano peppers (fail), paprika (fail), and tomatillos (fail). I got some strawberry plants, a cherry tomato, and some larger poblanos as plants. I've learned some important things for later years:

1. Spinach sucks to grow around here. Don't do it. 
2. Starting peppers is hard. Darn peppers.
3. Make sure not to lose the markers for whats pie pumpkins and what's butternut squash, because they look exactly the same.
4. Start the tomatoes in March. Figure out something to make sure they get light.
5. Starting black aztec corn inside works very well, but it works outside too.
6. Always start haricot tarbais beans inside. They germinate and grow much better.
7. Always start dragon's tongue beans outside. They germinate and grow much better.
8. Peppers get horrible aphids inside. At least, mine did.
9. Plant more edamame. It grows like crazy and is delicious.
10. Swiss chard grows as well as spinach doesn't. 
11. Bunnies like pepper plant leaves. WHAT. (Yeah, the peppers have been an uphill struggle)
12. Bunnies like containers much more than raised beds.
13. Lemons are awesome. 
14. Soaker hose is the best. Hope by next year i'll have automated watering too, which would be the BEST BEST. 

I'll update again nearer the end of the year with how well things did. I can report that the swiss chard is wonderful already, and the edamame and dragon's tongue beans have started to produce like crazy. Yay!