Last year's garden- lessons learned

What worked great from last year:

We installed down a couple lengths of soaker hose (the drip kind), and just kept it hooked up for easy watering.

I spread hay over the garden soil, as mulch, and onto the grass so that the veggies weren't resting on the soil.

The watermelon, which was the most neglected plant, grew some gorgeous yellow fruit.

All heirloom tomatoes- they all worked out well, and produced well.  I was underwhelmed with the white ones, though, they just weren't as appealing.

A big 2lb yellow/gold tomato plant with deep pink insides was the showiest and most delicious- but I mixed up the tags and have never known- I suspect its a Hillbilly or a German Stripe.

The heavy duty square tomato cages, tied to each other and to the chain link fence-Big tomato plants get heavy, and ours were over 6 feet tall.

Tomatillos! just a couple plants was yielded enough for dozens of pints of roasted tomatillo salsa.

Salsa makins

tomatoes, ground cherries, Cajun belle and gypsy peppers

tomatillos, tomatoes, serranos, yellow carrots, eggplant

Didn't work great last year-
Bok Choi and lettuces all bolted right away.  But, I had them out in mid/late May in the heat, in full sun.

Radicchio rotted- I'm not sure what it was supposed to look like, but it ended up getting shaded/grown over too much by the tomatoes.

radicchio

1 zucchini plant got white mildew and rotted. Which worked out for the best, because we were squashed out anyways.

rotten zucchini plant

vegan zucchini cranberry almond whole wheat loaves, dozens frozen

Potato Coffee Sack- we got some burlap coffee sacks from Dunn Brothers, and filled them with compost, hay, and mulch, and lined them with wire mesh to make planting cylinders.  Then, seed potatoes were planted.  This was intended to be the technique where a little bit of soil is added to the top each time a leaf grows up, It it didn't work that way, and didn't get watered enough, and eventually yielded a few dry shriveled up small potatoes.