Vegetable Garden Update: Tomatoes and Peppers

The vegetable garden is going great these days. We've got tons of tomatoes and peppers growing in the garden and squash and melons growing on mounds outside of our fenced garden in some mounds we made.

The peppers and tomatoes had a tough beginning, but are doing great now. Here's a summary of what we learned our first year.

1. Starting them in pots in the house worked well. We bought a warming mat and some lights to get them going.

2. When we first put them in the garden, they were getting devoured by the earwigs. We learned NOT to put mulch in the garden when the earwig population is at it's height, which seems to be winter and spring. Of course we had an unusually warm winter this year, with days in the 90s in January and February. The earwig traps worked well at that time too.

3. We didn't stake the tomatoes or peppers and some of them broke with the heavy rains we finally got in May and with the wind. Next year, we will want to be sure to stake them.

4 .Once the nights start getting warm, the plants will go crazy! Another reason to stake them, the tomato plants are so big that they are spreading into the walkways and I am not sure how we will reach all of them.