Thanks for the tips Susan...imagining how far to space out my plants has been an ongoing challenge - when you've got a 2-inch-tall sprout you're transplanting, I find the picture in my head of how big it will get and how much space it will need doesn't match up with how big it eventually gets. A couple of my tomato plants are crossing limbs, and I think that's adding to the problems of a fairly high rainfall this year and blight.

I knew that that mesclun would provide a mix - and that was the surprise -that what matured was almost exclusively arugala. When I put it in, there were 5 or 6 different-looking seeds...but the results didn't reflect that.

I'll be sure to mulch the tomatoes early with hay mulch next year, and prune the lower branches off...another thing I read is that bee balm is a good companion to plant with them, so I took some out of my flower beds and put 2-3 small ones in each row of tomatoes...of course, they were small ones and while most of my bee balm was done blooming in June, I've just now seen the first one breaking out into bloom in the vegetable garden...so perhaps next year the timing will work out better.

Another thing that I've been working with and modifying is using the anti-weed roll-out fabric. Last year I used some around my plants - patches of it, and I cut a hole into the fabric for each individual plant.

This year I much more carefully rolled out rows of the fabric and made a pair of slits almost the length of the row (using 3-foot-wide fabric)then made a cross-cut that overlapped the long row cut by about 2 inches in either direction (like a very long, skinny capital I). Then I tuck the flaps back under the fabric, and have a narrow row of exposed dirt for planting either my started seeds or seeds directly into the row - very little exposure of bare dirt, makes it very easy to weed.

However - weeds still grow in the "footpaths" I had between the fabric rows. Sometimes I'm really on top of it and the garden's gorgeous and looks manicured and well-planned, sometimes the weeds get ahead of me and it's pretty ugly...then I do another session of heavy-duty weeding to get back to bare dirt.

I've decided that for next year, I'm stocking up big-time on the weed fabric. I'm going to remove the fabric rows I have now to put down compost and rototill, then I'm going to put down a solid floor of the anti-weed fabric, and just have my row slits to plant - and then I'll have very little weeding to do at all (I don't kid myself that the fabric means "no weeds" - but it will hinder them to the point that it will make a very small work load). Plus, a solid layer of that fabric will keep moisture in the ground, and should help control the dirt splash-up during a rain that helps spread blight. This is another one of those "sounds good in theory to me" plans that we'll see how it works when I actually try it. Like I said, so far every year with a garden has been a "rebuilding year."