To my sweetie, Thanks for all the support(s)?

Last year was the first year I actually had a garden. I have this problem when it comes to trying things. I didn't want it to just be your average run of the mill garden. I wanted it to be beautiful and functional and I wanted to place things based on what I'd learned about companion planting. I spent hours researching and planning. I had random notes all over the place. My husband was convinced that he would wake up one morning to find me standing in the living room still awake from the night before obsessively writing things like "carrots are good for tomatoes, but tomatoes can stunt carrot's growth", "peppers like onions" and "borage is wonderful!" all over the walls! I was that obsessed.

Eventually I figured out where I wanted to plant everything. I was so excited! I had placed the veggies and included a few flowers that were good companions. It was going to be beautiful! 

July 2010

At first, things were looking pretty good. The tomatoes and peppers I had started inside from seed when it was still snowing outside were thriving in their new homes. The seeds I had planted were starting to grow and so was my head. I was feeling pretty awesome. I'd grown a tomato plant or a couple pepper plants here or there but I had never planned out an entire garden bed. I was feeling like I was a pretty awesome gardener! What I didn't realize was, with all of that planning and researching I had forgotten a very basic, very important thing.

Determinate

Indeterminate

While my determinate tomatoes would remain bushy and only end up growing a certain size before they stopped, the indeterminate tomatoes were vine like and would just keep growing. Tomato cages, while fine for determinate types of tomatoes, just weren't going to work for the indeterminate type and I had caged them all. Eventually they grew up and over the cages, falling over the sides and tipping some of them over. My husband ended up having to attach wire to the cages and to the sides of the garden bed to keep the cages upright. By August my beautiful perfectly planned garden looked like this:

They took over everything! I ended up with tons of tomatoes and lots of basil but not much more than that. Most of the pepper plants were crushed by the tomato plants and the ones that weren't didn't receive nearly enough sun. The alyssum I thought was so pretty along the front of the bed just got in the way of the onions and was eventually ripped out. 

So this year I am trying something different. This year, we're going up!

Thanks to my super awesome husband for building these!

One would think that I would steer clear of indeterminate types after last year's disaster but oh no, that's not how I operate. This year I'm only using indeterminate types of tomatoes! The supports on the beds to the left in the picture above are all for tomatoes. The ones on the right side are for cucumbers and peas. If all goes well, they will be full of plants and it will look almost like an enclosed garden and less like a garden with soccer nets around it! We'll see how things go this year. I can't wait!