The School of Live & Learn
The Zen of Gardening is to sit at the foot of nature and feel grateful for the single blossom. There is a triumph in the hmm of bees, taste of a sun warmed tomato or the mere texture of dirt combed beneath your fingers. It is nurture and repetition of task, pulling weeds, watering, weeding and watering again. The mysteries of a garden are thick and variable, but quietly riveting, if gardening is a book, I am lost in the first chapter. As my summer garden winds down I must make some notes to-self for next year.
stuff that has worked well:
* the old carpets/ covered with playground mulch walkways. (high marks!)
* bamboo tomato “cages”- stake verticals and tie several height lengths of bamboo to frame both sides of the row of tomato plants-(fencing the row between). Weave heavy string back and forth to hold up the plants as they grow. (In heavy winds or with big high producing plants those scrawny metal tomato cages will fall over.) There are also square (box-kite) shaped wooden tomato cages you can fashion.
* Bamboo is wonderful stuff! BUT not in YOUR garden. You can help keep the bamboo in check in your nice friend’s garden by sawing it into useful garden stakes. It also weathers beautifully when fashioned into fences, a trellis or grape arbor.
While we are on the subject of tomatoes-in early July some evil and ravenous horn-worms rudely gobbled to the stem several of my prize tomato plants. 
The worms sport an amazingly effective pattern that allows them to munch away virtually under your nose until some perception shifts and you utter choice words while plucking them (gloves on) off your precious plants. I wasn’t keen to crush them, so I threw them into the bay for a croaker fish to enjoy. Of course they do turn into lovely moths, if you are more zen than me. When I do have a garden dilemma- going online is very informative- for instance next year I will plant carrots, parsley and allow the Queen anne’s lace to grow amongst the tomatos. These plants offend horn-worms! (Brava!)
From the Gardensalive.com website:
“Plant‘companion plants’ to attract miniature parasitic wasps—so small we can barely see them—that lay their eggs in or on the hungry, hungry caterpillars. After the eggs hatch, the developing wasp larvae spin cocoons on the back of their prey for protection as they slowly consume the pest to fuel their growth to adulthood.
(That’s why you should never squish a hornworm that has what looks like grains of rice stuck to its back. Pick the pest off the plant, put it in a jar with some tomato leaves for food and cover the jar with large-holed screening. That will allow the baby wasps that emerge from those little cocoons to escape and go lay eggs in more hornworms.) 
Back to the Plants of Attraction: These highly beneficial little waspies like a little nectar and pollen to cleanse their palates in between caterpillar meals, especially from tiny flowers that grow in umbrella-like clusters, like dill, fennel, Queen Anne’s lace and biennials like carrots and parsley left in the garden for a second year. They also like compound, daisy-like flowers, tansy, spearmint, clover, sweet alyssum and many others. The wasps are native almost everywhere—so “if you plant it, they will come”.
The Horn worm does develope into a pretty moth- My friend Randy Stadler loves the hornworms and their winged evolution equally, but then he mainly purchases his tomatoes.
Not all plants get along with each other!
For instance BASIL: great with tomatoes, improves growth and flavor. Pals around with peppers, oregano, asparagus and petunias. Not at all fond of rue or sage.
DILL: Nurtures cabbage. Annoys carrots, caraway, lavendar or tomatoes. Best Buddy for lettuce!
FENNEL: Fennel is not a team player, actually inhibiting growth and may actually kill neighbor plants.
OoPS!
that explains a few unhappy areas!
Fennel is worthwhile in the garden, tasty and attracts helpful ladybugs, syrphid flies, tachnid flies, beneficial parasitoid wasps and hoverflies. (just plant it with like plants)
BORAGE: brings on the bees! It also enhances the taste of strawberries.
FOUR-O’CLOCKS: Attracts Japanese beetles for dinner and poisons them as a bonus.
NASTURTIUM: is a valuable asset in the garden especially if you have fruit trees. GARLIC-creates a naturally occurring sulfer fungicide offering disease prevention
for apple trees, pear trees, cucumbers, peas, lettuce and celery. Plant under peach trees to help repel borers. There is much more on line and good books on the subject as well…I’ll remind you of this around January as we dream of next summer:)
