How Does a Gardener Grow?

Here's a fun quote for you:

When gardeners garden, it is not just plants that grow, but the gardeners themselves.
--Ken Druse

So true, right?  There are lots of ways that being out in nature and digging in the dirt grows me.  But, in a very practical sense, gardening teaches me to be a better gardener.

As the garden progressed last year, I made a few notes that I hoped would help me out in the future.  Here are some examples:

1.  My broccoli plants got huge but never developed heads.  They took up way too much space and yielded us nothing.  Nix them in the future.
2.  Radishes -- I grew them.  They were bitter, as radishes apparently are. No one ate them.  End of story.  Why did I even plant these?
3.  Continue planting flowers amidst veggies to encourage beneficial insects.  However, don't grow flowers from seed; get small plants instead.  By the time the flowers were in bloom, I'd missed the window of time when I really needed to be attracting the beneficials.
4.  While we're speaking of flowers, nix the Candytuft.  It didn't grow at all.
5.  Grow more of the following (we ate them up too fast):  beets, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, carrots
6.  And, based on #5, I'd better add another root bed.
7.  Add Pattypan squash -- a squash I discovered at the farmer's market --so cute and super yummy!
8.  Speaking of squash -- 3 zucchini plants was too much for our family.  Even the chickens eventually tired of it.  Cut back to 2 plants.
9. Forget about growing corn -- too little return for the space requirement in a square foot garden.  Can be purchased cheaply in season at the farmer's market for canning/freezing purposes.
10.  Don't put two trellisses back-to-back only a foot apart.  What was I thinking?  As anyone with half a brain would be able to anticipate, I couldn't pick anything that grew between the two. 

Maybe you, too, can glean a thing or two from my 2012 gardening notes.

What about you?  How did you grow as a gardener last year?