Gardening Mistakes

Have you ever heard of "The Three Sisters"? It is what the native Americans called Beans, Corn and Pumpkins growing together. They planted them all together as companion plants. The beans grew up the corn, and also helped fix the soil with nitrogen as beans have that nifty feature, and the pumpkins grew down and around the beans and corn. It seemed like a nice idea to try in my own garden, and I still might try it again sometime, but this year it was a disaster. I think what went wrong was that I planted too many beans. They all started growing nicely, but before the corn could get very tall, the beans seemed to take over. One day it was tall and very full, the next it was flattened. The weight of the bean plants pulled the corn stalks right over. We left it that way for a while and we had to lift it up to harvest the beans. The pumpkin plant that was stuck in the middle never set any pumpkins on it most likely because bees and other pollinating insects could not find their way in there. We were able to harvest the corn and a lot of beans, so it wasn't a total loss. However it certainly did not turn out the way I had imagined it would.
Lesson learned: plant less beans than corn. That is just one of the joys of gardening, not everything we try turns out, but there is always next year. Another thing I have learned is to keep notes about your garden, like what type of seeds or plants so that if you really like them or if you do not like them you will remember for the next year. I like using the Online Garden Planner to do that- then I do not have to loose papers or have my kids rip them or draw all over them.
So what worked well in your garden this year? And what did not work so good? Please feel free to share, but most certainly take note of those things!

Happy Harvest!

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