Hi - I'm new

We all make dumb mistakes every year. Mine this year besides the potatoes were to find that squash and zucchini plants REALLY do get that big! Planted them side by side and did not give them breathing room.  So they did not do as well as they could have and had a terrible case of powdery mildew because there was not enough air circulation. I also had a problem with pollination.  The flowers to draw the bees to my garden are doing well now, nothing else is, lol.

So we live and learn and laugh about things and share our knowledge and our errors. Hopefully someone else will learn from our mistakes as well.

Kelejan -- me too! We've all gotta start from somewhere, and life has a way of keeping us humble, so we might as well just roll with it and laugh about it, right?

svanahgirl -- Re your squash being too close, sometimes I get in a jam like that by purposely planting too close -- it's often recommended that squash and cucumbers be planted a few seeds at a time in a hill -- and then not thinning them enough. I planted a lot of squash and cukes this year, very close together, but none are thriving so much yet that I feel like I should just pick a winner and pluck/snip the other ones out.

Probably by the time I make that decision, it will be one I should have made a long time ago.

Isn't that the truth?  Had NO idea that they got that big............course the seed package said allow 3 feet but what do they know, right?  

One thing I did not realize is how many bugs dragonflies eat. I had a swarming bunch of bugs this morning out on the back lawn and this big dragonfly swooped right thru them and had breakfast! Wish I had had a camera, acted just like bats. Guess they have the maneuverability to swoop and chomp!

Gardening really makes you realize how everything works together. I have some cardinals that come and sit in my huge tomato plant and looks for bugs, so it is so important to not use pesticides so that every creature can do what it is supposed to do. Did not realize that having a birdbath and a bird feeder so close to the garden would help so much. Still got bugs of course, but my mosquito population is about nil these days.

That's very nice. We get turkeys in the garden sometimes, but as far as I can tell, the only thing they do is step on and destroy stuff.

My sister lives in NC and has chickens. She says they are good most of the time but would not stay out of the corn. At least with chickens you get eggs With turkeys you could have dinner, I guess if you are allowed to shoot them.