Gardening Mistakes I Hope Not to Make Next Year

I don't think I want to plant sunflowers near my vegetable garden. Two years in a row they are covered in powdery mildew and spread it on to the other plants. I love the sunflowers, don't get me wrong. I do not like my cucumbers covered in the powdery mildew. I'll see if the city will let me plant them around the telephone pole in the tree lawn. I think they'd be happy there and my veggies will be safe.

Peppers....I'll plant them much earlier next year and start them inside much earlier than I did last year. I think we got started in March. I'll try early February next year so that they're much larger.

Maters....I won't crowd them so much. Though they did fine, it's a real pain to pick them and I think they'll mature more quickly with a bit more space.

Beans....I'm planting more of them, a different variety & I'll have a finch feeder nearby. Those bean beetles really pissed me off.

Nematodes. I'm buying some as early as I can. The kind that eat all the bad nasties hiding in the soil waiting to eat our plants...like those bean beetles. Grrrr.

Better soil in the square foot boxes. I'm not entirely sold on Mel's Mix though I might have to try it in one box just for comparison. I don't like the idea of using Peat Moss so heavily. Despite what the Canadian government says about our Peat Moss supplies being perfectly fine...it's still a limited resource and what kind of damage are we doing to the environments from which we strip it?

I'll use more of my front flower beds for vegetables. I have plans, oh I have plans. I had tomatoes out there this year and they tasted amazing being next to a garden oregano plant. Just wonderful. Now I'll plant a few more things out there.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of for now.

Sorry for the long absence. Gardening has been kind of sucky recently, plus my camera was broken so....no pictures.