Throughout the year I have been monitoring my plants. This is the most difficult job I have had to carry out this year, because it has taken the most time and energy.

I haven't had to water, because nature has taken care of that, and I haven't had to turn over the soil to help the young plants grow because I put in enough soil when I first made the beds. Monitoring plants tells you a lot.

First looking at the plants keeps you informed of their health such as water supply, growth, and space, but the main thing most people want to see when they're monitoring their plants is the growth.

My plants have grown at different rates, since I have bought them at different times.

My 'baby' patch has grown about one inch since I planted the seedlings before half term break.

My 'adult' patch has grown about six inches, so the plants are growing at a good speed.

I can't be very accurate about estimating my plants' growth, but I can be accurate when I am telling how many plants I've added or taken out.

This year I have only taken out about seven dead pumpkin vines. The ends were healthy but the bases were dying out. It was a little upsetting, but I bought some spinach to replace them.

I also took out one watermelon. By the end of November I should have planted forty veggies, and three milkweed plants.

This year most of my problems have been with cut worms, which have mostly eaten the vegetables' leaves. The other problems have been weeds, which I pick out each day by hand, and, crazy as it may seem, termites, which have been eating wood from my square foot garden frame.

There hasn't been much problem with green caterpillars or cats (they sometimes eat my pepper leaves and lay their faeces all over my plants).

The way to deal with problems such as lack of water or too much wind is to find out what these problems do to the plants.

Once you know the effects of the problems, you start to understand how to reverse the problem and make a change for the better. For me lack of water could be reversed by manually giving the plants the water they need.

For too much wind, I would tie each plant to a sturdy stick to hold it up right.

The main way to deal with pests like caterpillars, snails, and aphids, is to make an environmentally-friendly pesticide such as dish washing liquid, cracked eggshells, or any thing that is foul to pests but is harmless to plants.

My garden will always stay organic and never turn into a toxic chemical waste site.

In my next article, I will be talking about my new garden bed.