Garden journal

As the 2012 garden season winds down, I have been thinking of all the things I've learned about gardening. One thing that I think has really had a huge impact on my thinking this year is the fact that fewer and fewer people are gardening as a way of sustaining themselves through the winter.  Gardens seem to be getting smaller and fewer people are preserving what they harvest. I told my son just the other day as I prepared the beans for the canner, that he was going to have to learn how to can the produce from the garden because chances are, his wife will not know how. 
So, what I have learned so far; Each person needs 100 square feet of garden to produce enough to eat through the winter; planting a few seeds of corn at a time instead of the whole packet at once is a lot easier to manage at harvest time. (I had to replant my corn 3 times this summer because only a few seeds sprouted each time. Now, at harvest time, I have picked a few ears of corn at a time. Just enough to eat and process without becoming overwhelmed.) 70 seeds of beans produces just about enough beans for me for the winter. My colander full of prepared beans is enough for the 9 jars in the canner. Don't plant the winter squash next to the beans unless you have a really sturdy support for your beans. Next year I will plant the 3 sisters (winter squash, corn, and beans) in just that order to help reduce the squash bugs and bean beetles and keep the squash from growing up the bean supports.
And lastly, 32 pepper plants are a lot of plants! Nathan is experimenting with pepper seeds this year. He wants to see if the packet is right when it says the peppers will be ready in so many days. He is really enjoying the plants. He recorded the days of germination for each one. He waters them faithfully, and checks on them 2-3 times a day; Just to see what the flowers look like, how big the peppers are and compare the size of the plants. (there are supposed to be 5 kinds of peppers in the packet.) He says they are "more fun that a pet" and calls them his "babies. " He says it will be hard to pull up the plants this fall.