Next Year, Already

I've been thinking about what to do with the garden next year.  It is only August and the main harvest hasn't even really come in yet, but garden plans and new varieties are already dancing in my head.  It's not that I'm unhappy with the way the garden is growing this year, but there is always room for improvement.

Next year I would:

• grow more sunflowers.  The goldfinches love them!  Maybe put some closer to the house, so we can see the birds up close.
• give the tomatillos more space width-wise.  They are planted just about the perfect distance apart, but are spilling out into the yard on the west and pressed against the garden fence on the east.
• plant 2 spaghetti squash instead of 3 
• and give them more vertical space to grow (maybe design some nice, sturdy, portable trellises during the fall/winter), as well as more square feet on the ground.  They had 5' x 8' allotted to them, plus 8' of trellis and fence, but have grown pretty much the full 32' width of the garden and climbed 6' to 7' up the fence!
• give the cantaloupe and honeydew a little more space.  Maybe away from the domineering spaghetti squash, since it has taken over the melon's share of the trellis/fence.
• not plant 5 Brussels sprout plants. They're nice, but I think we are going to have more sprouts than we can eat; especially since I don't like them, the dog shouldn't have them even if she likes them and the other sprout-eater will be back at college in Arizona when harvest comes, so DH will get all of them! 
• plant the cool weather crops earlier.  This might involve better planning.  Turns out that the ground freezes pretty quick after the first frost and we harvest up until then (and still have unripe veggies that just freeze - boo), so the window for getting the garden ready for early spring planting is small.  But we should try.
• maybe plant pole beans instead of bush beans.  I hate to give up bush beans, but they are a pain in the back to pick and harbor a gazillion mosquitoes.  Pole beans may taste better, use that nice vertical space and don't require a lot of bending to pick.
• track the labels on the seedlings better so we don't have cherry peppers masquerading as marconis and end up hoarding marconis while pawning off cherries. It would help us have pepper balance and one need whatever kind of balance one can get.
• plant the tomatoes a little further from the fence, so you can access the fruit at the back.  They might need a little wider path in the front, too.
• make some sturdier tomato cages.  Maybe from re-bar and titanium.  The cages we have are reinforced by 2 5' stakes on opposite corners of each cage, which has mostly prevented them from uprooting in our sandy soil and falling over.  But the vines get so heavy that the metal cross pieces of the cages bend and sag.  Another winter design project. And just kidding about the titanium.

There will be more ideas for changes and improvements as the summer winds down.  One of the great things about a garden is that it will never be perfect.  If that ever happened, I guess you would just have to start over with a new one because all the fun would be gone.