Reflections on the Summer Garden

With summer coming to an end and the last of the summer produce coming out of the garden I thought it might be time for some reflection. This year was a learning experience. In terms of the garden itself, it still needs work. The weeds were nearly impossible to control. The nice hot summer meant not only good production in terms of fruits and veggies but the weeds just went nuts. I think we are going to mulch the hell out of it over the winter and just not give the weeds a chance to really take hold and hopefully next summer they won't be so bad.
The sand was a fabulous idea. Just about everything we planted loved the sand (especially the radishes and carrots). The side garden didn't get any sand and it did horribly so before anything else goes in there it's going to need some sand.
Like I said we had a very productive year for fruits and veggies. Almost everything I planted took. But after some reflection I think we are not going to plant corn again or amaranth. The corn just didn't do well at my location and the amaranth wasn't very useful since I don't have a grain mill. The anticipation of bad growth made me plant more seeds that it said to in case thing didn't take. That was a big mistake, everything was so crowded.
We will plant less english peas, zucchini, green beans, radishes and pumpkins. We will plant more raspberries, carrots, cauliflower, onions and soy beans. Some things that didn't take but I would like to try again are rhubarb, butternut squash and watermelon. And finally some things that I will plant again but maybe try a different variety of are broccoli and beets.
Overall the best producers were the pole beans, zucchini, english peas, lettuce, radishes, pears and tomatoes. Considering I went into this expecting the soil to be bad and the summer to be too hot, I'm really happy with how the garden turned out. My goals for next years garden are to space better, mulch more, practice better organic weed and pest control, sprout more thing inside then transplant and stagger planting for continual harvest.