How Does Your Garden Grow?

[NDH]

I thought long and hard about whether I should put this in general discussions or here, and ultimately decided that gardening is *so* good for both mental and physical well-being and eating home grown produce is as healthy as a diet can get, so I'd post it here.

I would love to hear from and chat with other gardeners so I have somewhere else besides my journal to talk about my garden lol.

Whether you're a seasoned gardener or you're trying your hand at growing some herbs on your windowsill or balcony for the first time, I would love to hear about your gardening endeavours

 

[NDH]

About me:
I've been gardening for a few years but never *super* successfully. I'm determined this is the year for a bountiful harvest.

I didn't get to garden at all last year and the year before was my first year growing in a Canadian climate. The soil I filled my beds with was crap and I didn't have much yield so this year I am making sure to use quality soil on my new beds and am adding lots of fish compost to my old beds.
I live with my MIL and she took her garden back last year but only ended up using half of it, so this year she has given me half of it back, and I have been given free reign to plant anywhere in the backyard that I want. There isn't a lot of areas in the backyard that get at least 4 hours of sun but I'm making the most of it.

 

[Jules8]

I love this! Lol I’m planning out my garden right now. What are you planting this year? Do you grow from seed or buy plants?

I have never not had some sort of garden. Growing up my dad always planted a huge garden and it always felt good going out to pick things for dinner or snacks. I can’t say I enjoyed taking care of it as a kid, but weeding and picking was a chore that I didn’t hate either. He has a green thumb so it always turned out great. My mom would can or freeze the veggies to have all year. When I moved out we lived in an apt,but I had to have something so I would do some herbs or a tomato plant on the deck. Then I got a job as a supervisor at a group home. My one guy loves watching everyone taking care of their yards and there was a raised garden bed so I put a few things in it to start. The next year I cleared out another area. It’s kind of grown over the past few years. This year I’m changing it up a little and researching how to grow things like iceberg, kale, and spinach. I’ll also do zucchini, squash, tomato, peppers(green and jalapeño), we have some onion, and a few herb planters. I’m only planting 1-2 of each so we can do more of a variety. My house is a little harder. It’s funny that it’s harder to grow here because we live on a farm. We don’t own the farm, we rent a house. Our landlords are chicken farmer so they use the land for corn, soybean, and wheat. Our house is in a bad spot because our yard gets flooded on one side and the ground has a lot of rocks from the rock driveway. We’re also not allowed to dig up ground. So I have a raised garden bed. I’m going to do tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, peppers(green), green beans, and eggplant. It’s more for the fun of taking care of a garden and having things to pick to eat in the summer than an abundance right now. I don’t have the space to can and freeze. We’re also fortunate enough to live in a farming community where everyone sells fresh produce, eggs, and whatnot at stands. My daughters school also has an outdoor classroom and they have events through the summer where we can go pick some produce.

 

[Jules8]

Oh, I’m also looking into buying some grow bags to do potatoes and carrots. They look fun!

 

[NDH]

That's so wonderful you've always managed to garden, even when you were in an apartment.

I remember growing up with a small garden, but not every year. My grandparents had a huge one though and we loved visiting them. Grandpa would say "where shall we go shopping today?" As he'd bring out the collection of grocery bags and we'd pick a store brand and head out to the garden to pick our dinner

I didn't attempt to garden at all from the time I moved out until my eldest was born when I was 27 - we lived in apartments without even a balcony. When my eldest was a baby I got the itch to garden, but wasn't allowed in the rental unit we lived in (three dwelling house with a tiny unfenced shared yard. Just before my second was born we moved to the upper floor of a similar unit and I had a lovely big patio to attempt to garden on, tried many times over the two years we lived there, but never had success getting anything to grow.

Had a container garden in free styrofoam boxes at our next place. And that did ok until we got chickens and ducks and discovered they go crazy over styrofoam . They were far more interested in eating the styrofoam than the crops themselves, but the result was the same when the boxes started falling apart.

The next place we lived at for 4 years, and it was a rented farm house on a 300acre cattle ranch. We had a 3/4 acre block I had great plans for, but I did things wrong and we were too poor to do things properly. We ended up with goats and a big flock of chickens and no proper fencing solution for my garden, so despite a valient beginning every spring, nothing ever made it to harvest between the chickens and goats lol. Our last year there we'd gotten rid of the goats and had a chicken proofed fence around the garden, which were metal raised beds. It was growing beautifully and finally a productive thriving garden - but we didn't get to enjoy a harvest from it as we ended up needing to make a sudden international move when FIL was diagnosed with cancer .

We ended up living with MIL (and still do, but in an RV in the back yard for the last year) and the first year we were here she let me take over her raised garden beds in the front yard. She has a greenhouse and was happy just growing in that.
I had 7 big beds that were half empty so I bought a truckload of raised bed soil that came highly recommended , but I was not impressed with, it was hydrophobic and totally lifeless (two years on its barely even growing weeds) but for whatever reason I didnt end up adding compost to help - or I did but it was cheap bagged stuff that wasn't of enough benefit. I made homemade fertilizer using coffee beans, banana peels, egg shells and magnesium flakes (the former three dehydrated in the oven) and then blended in the food processor.

I started everything from seed that year on a shelf inside with lights and it should have been an amazing garden with all the effort I put into it. But the soil was just so bad that nothing thrived and grew super well. All the plants were so stunted and while we did get a harvest from everything we planted it was just terribly meagre.

Last year I wasn't able to garden at all. MIL took her front garden back (and then only planted in two or three of the beds). I was in limbo all year because there are two big trees shading the whole backyard that MIL was planning to have taken down - January 2022. They would have opened up a nice big sunny area for me to have my own garden, but the tree guy never showed up, and a year later MIL finally gave up and had someone else come check them out,and he recommended only trimming them. Which still would have opened up a reasonable sized area to garden, but she didn't follow up on getting that done either... There is one sliver of backyard that gets 4-5 hours of sun before the tree blocks it so I had planned to at least build a 3x12 bed there and a plastic kiddie pool and grow some shade tolerant veggies.
And then MIL gave me three of the beds from the front garden that I built trellises for to use this year as well so I will be able to grow things that require full sun (yay!)
And she's given me permission to pull out all the shrubbery growing next to the fence and put in a flower garden to attract pollinators (just doing a wildflower mix, nothing fancy) and if I can source some more free materials I hope to get another couple beds built in the top garden if MIL agrees, as there is still plenty of space to add more.

The entire yard is sheer rock with a couple inches of topsoil so raised beds are a must here as well.

I've amended all the existing beds with fish compost ready for planting this week, and built and filled a 2x3 box made from free recycled shelves, with a 3x12 bed to finish building this week from reclaimed fence boards.and a kiddie pool. So those three beds will be for my lettuce, spinach, swiss chard and other greens, and a few cauliflower and broccoli.

I've started a few tomato, pepper and basil seeds inside, but living in an RV space is definitely at a premium and I can only get two small trays (a little bigger combined area than a traditional 10x20 tray) inside on my countertop under a light. But almost everything has come up so far .

I've picked up a few starts (cauliflower, swiss chard, lettuce and spinach) and may get a few more starts when the summer plants can go in (not til late may early June here, even though our last frost date is this week we have long cool springs) but hoping to grow from as much seed as I can.

I want to grow all the things but being realistic and sticking with greens, carrots (hoping for lots of carrots), beets, a few turnips, peppers (sweet), tomatoes, cucumbers and peas. A couple garbage cans for potato towers. And a zucchini.

Oh and we have a sunny section of fenceline by our driveway that I'm going to attempt a three sisters style garden along - it will have to be in a line rather than in traditional mounds, but I want to do corn and beans along the fence line and then let a few pumpkins vine down the 3 foot hill and help shade out the weeds.

 

[Jules8]

Sounds like a great start! I’m excited to hear how it all turns out. I ordered a 8ftx2ft raised garden bed(I added a picture) from Amazon. I have another square garden bed, but it isn’t as high. I think I’ll do the zucchini and squash in the square one and the deeper rooted plants like tomato and peppers in the higher one. At work I pulled everything out from last year to get ready. I’m going to do all the basics in the regular garden bed and I cleared another one for some new stuff I’ve never done. I’m going to attempt leafy greens like kale, lettuce, and spinach there. It says I should have planted them already so if I can find them at the greenhouse nursery. We have some Amish ones around that usually sell already started plants for cheap. Should be able to get everything in this week. I always say I’m going to start early then time seems to speed up this time of year. Lol I may or may not attempt cucumbers…they never work out. No issues with pollination here. We have so many bees and butterflies. I could do without the wasps though. My landlords love to come and spray “weeds” without letting us know or asking so anything outside of obvious gardens so I don’t bother doing anything else. I had an awesome strawberry patch. I worked so hard pinching flowers the first year and the second we got so many strawberries. Then I went out one day and they had sprayed them all. I was so sad. I understand they do certain things to protect their big crops and what the cows in the meadow eat, it’s just a bummer when you’re reminded it’s not your own. One day we will have our own little property! I would love to have some chickens and a few other animals,

 

[NDH]

My garden is looking great, I harvested my first salad last night and having another from the garden tonight . We've had an early heatwave that I hope doesn't wipe out all my cold weather crops, but since most of them are in a garden thst only gets 4-6 hours of sunlight and are in shade from 2/3pm onwards I'm hoping they will pull through.

About two more weeks til I put my summer crops in. I started some tomatoes and peppers inside but they really haven't done very well in my setup so I will have to buy some starts. I figured I'd have to since I don't have room to have a proper seed starting shelf with grow lights, but at least I gave it a shot.

The fish compost I topped all my beds with this year seems to be helping a lot. My MIL topped her beds with mushroom compost and even though everything I planted was a couple weeks behind what MIL planted, my garden has caught up to hers.

 

[dairymomma]

I am married to a dairy farmer so I have access to all the fertilizer I could ever want/need. However, I've never had fabulous luck with gardening since I have a pretty black thumb.

This year though, I am DETERMINED to get a decent yield from my garden. We till it with the field equipment so it's really nice and mostly weed-free at the moment but I have to water it so I know the weeds are coming as soon as I start the sprinklers. Because I hate weeding and I'm getting more pregnant by the day, I'm going to mulch the heck out of my garden with old straw bales and hopefully help keep the weeds tamed with less work on my part.

Since I have access to the equipment (and a hubby happy enough to run the tractor through the yard for me), my garden is fairly big. 15 feet wide by 60 feet long? Takes two (overlapping) passes with the disk or plow, that's all I know. I never have luck starting my own plants indoors and transplanting so I buy tomato and pepper starts and direct seed everything else as soon as the frost danger has passed. This year, I've got 5 varieties of tomato starts (Roma, Amish Paste, Early Girl, Brandywine, and Cherry) planted as well as 4 green bell pepper plants that I bought. I planted radishes, lettuce, 2 types of cucumbers (salad and pickling), acorn squash, butternut squash, buttercup squash, zucchini, yellow summer squash, pie pumpkins, carrots, green beans, watermelons, cantaloupe, and onions so far but I just got some beet seeds yesterday and I have 3 varieties of seed potatoes coming in the mail hopefully today so those still need planting. I couldn't find spaghetti squash seeds at all this year but we have some that are getting a bit squishy in the pantry so I'm going to try cracking those open and tossing them into the garden to see what happens. I figured if the seeds don't sprout, at least I've got the compost. Most of the seed potatoes will go a big multi-family garden bed we have on the edge of one of our crop fields but two of the varieties are ones I'm trying for the first time so I only bought a pound of each as a trial. I'll plant those in my home garden and we'll harvest those earlier. They are fingerling varieties so I think they'll be really yummy roasted or grilled. And if all else fails to grows, I do have sweet corn planted in one of our corn fields so I'll at least have that.

My dream is to have a few berry beds though. I'm not much of a veggie gardener and I am barely keeping my indoor flowering/green plants alive (honestly, I've kill two cacti so far and have no clue how/why), but I LOVE fruit gardening and wildcrafting. I have a field with wild hazelnuts and sugar plums growing along the edge so that's on my list to harvest at some point this fall. I got plums last year but we were too late on the hazelnuts and a little white worm burrowed holes into each one before I could pick them. I have three apple trees in my yard but only two are mature enough to flower/fruit and only one has flowered this year so far. It's a flowering crab so the apples aren't that nice for plain eating but my MIL has a massive apple tree that she can't harvest everything off of and I know of two semi-wild apple trees in one of our other fields so I'm hoping to get a few apples from those trees too. I bought four pots of strawberry starts in hopes of starting my own strawberry patch (they are my favorite fruit), next summer's fruit project is raspberries, and DH would love to put blueberries in one of the fields as well as establish a blackberry patch here as the wild blackberry patch he knows of doesn't usually yield that much. I would also love to get some rhubarb plants as that pairs well with strawberries and is one of THE easiest plants to grow.

I don't know why I'm so ambitious with all of this stuff when I am so terrible with gardening. But I keep trying because storebought simply cannot beat homegrown. And I'm the type to 'go big or go home'. I'm not one to buy 3-4 tomato plants so we get fresh tomatoes to eat in our salads all summer. I'm going to get 20 plants so I can make and preserve tomato sauce/spaghetti sauce. The other issue I don't know when to quit. I like to make canned peaches and my family loves eating them all winter long but in order to can enough to last us past December, I have to put up at least 40 quarts of peaches! It takes me days to get that all done. And I am limited on food storage (which is another reason why I probably shouldn't be so ambitious with my garden size) as I don't have a pressure canner and can't can things like green beans, carrots, or potatoes in my hot water canner. I do put up jams and jellies, pickles, peaches, and I'm going to try applesauce (if I get enough apples this year) as well as spaghetti sauce since my freezer space is limited. (We have a big chest deep freeze but it is usually full of meat as we butcher a beef cow every fall.) I plan to go pick strawberries at the local strawberry farm in a few weeks when they open for u-pick and there is a raspberry farm I'd love to go visit this fall too but my SIL has a MASSIVE raspberry patch I may be able to help keep picked too. I also dove into raising meat chickens and bought 80 chicks when the local farm and feed store had them on a special sale. I did buy extra because I know you typically lose a few-we already lost two for unknown causes-and they aren't all for us (we're splitting the survivors 3 ways with two other families-I bought the chicks & starter feed and am providing some labor. One family will do the rest of the labor while the third will be helping to provide the feed once they are grown up. We figure it's an even split of labor/costs in the end so we'll share equally.) so I'll probably end up with about 20 birds in the freezer. I'd love to try raising pigs too but DH said I've got too much going on as it is with having to hand weed almost 300 feet of vegetable garden in the fields as well as my own garden at home and the extra harvesting I plan to do as the wild stuff/berries come into season.

I think I'm taking on too much but at the same time, food prices are rising and farming isn't paying that great so whatever I can do to ease the grocery bill, I'm going to do it.

Did I mention I'm hoping to get some massive freezer meal cooking days worked into this summer too as I'll be in my 3rd trimester once Harvest season hits and I know I'll be too wiped out to cook much. Plus I want a good meal stash for when baby comes so I don't have to do too much cooking during the recuperation period. I'm a high risk pregnancy patient and it's entirely possible I'll be induced earlier than usual if I have my usual growth restriction issues and my baby is small. So I want to be extra prepared as I know I'll likely have a late November baby instead of an early December baby as it is and there's a chance I could end up with an early/mid-November baby in the end. I'm looking at my calendar and it's filling faster than I can blink. I don't know how I am going to get everything done but I am willing to push myself a bit to get it done.

But my potatoes arrived just now and I've got a few hours before my evening chore shift so I'm off to plant those things. Probably get even more sunburnt than I currently am but at least I'm getting some Vitamin D.

 

[NDH]

Aaah I am so jealous Its been my dream to be on land big enough to do all that for over a decade and as land prices just keep skyrocketing it feels like we're just getting farther and farther away from that goal.

Also I didn't realise you were pregnant again, congrats


I got tomatoes planted this week - I had to buy starts because the ones I started from seed inside didn't do that great. I ended up buying 8 and was given 3 from a friend, only two are cherry tomatoes, unfortunately. I usually like to plant at least half cherry tomatoes and even then none of them ever make it inside as they're snacked on in the garden We've had unusually hot weather for May so I probably should have planted them a few weeks ago, but in my area the first week of June is when tomatoes should go in. Out last frost date is mid April but our springs are usually very cool and wet.
I still need to get bell pepper starts - again I started some back in the first week of April but they didn't do great on my counter top so I'll need to buy some starts. But the greenhouse I bought the tomatoes from was all out of sweet peppers so I'm going to have to try somewhere else.

My greens and brassicas are going *amazingly* and we've eaten lots of salads so far. The slugs are feasting too and I didn't get any pak choi before it bolted and the rest got decimated by slugs, sadly. But I'm happy with how it's doing for the amount of effort I've put in to weeding and watering (practically none )

I really need to plant more carrots as the first round of carrots only about half of them came up. But I spaced them so no thinning was needed. I only had a few turnips seeds germinate too, but those aren't a big favourite anyway. My beets are allowing gorgeous and are starting to bulb up so it will only be a couple weeks til I can start harvesting them. I planted kestrel (a red beet) avalanche (white) and boldor (golden).

I never did get the fenceline where I wanted to grow corn and beans and pumpkins prepped , and I never planted any potatoes either. But I'm going to be content with the 5 beds I have this year - it's enough to feel worthwhile and not too much that I feel overwhelmed.

 

[dairymomma]

NDH-I feel you on the land prices. Ours are skyrocketing as well. We originally bought our farm 15ish years ago and in that time, our property value has doubled. I know we've made improvements (built a house, added outbuildings, etc.) and that accounts for some of that increase but the land alone as gone up in value by at least 50%. We're sure glad we bought when we did because the prices just keep climbing.

And yes, I am pregnant again. Thank you. It was a major surprise because I was told a few years ago that it wouldn't happen again and I have been in the early stages of menopause for at least that long. But I'm not the only shocking pregnancy in my friends/family. A friend of mine is having her second child and her oldest will be NINE. Another friend is having her fourth child and her youngest will be ELEVEN! Between my family, DH's family, and friends, I know of at least a dozen babies due between now and January. I swear someone found some industrial strength baby dust and added it to the water or sprinkled it in the air because this baby boom is crazy.

My garden is growing so-so. My starts are doing pretty good and we got a good helping of rain last week so I've only had to water everything once so far. We mulched between most of the rows pretty well with straw but after the rain, I can see some bare spots so we'll have to go re-mulch some spots. And I want to mulch the ends of the rows as well to really help keep the weeds down. I'm saving cardboard to put out there in the worst spots but I'm contemplating buying some of that biodegradable plastic that some big vegetable/fruit gardeners will use. It's plastic but it composts with time I believe. But everything else that we direct seeded is about 50% germination and some is even less. I planted pickling cucumbers and of the 9 hills, only 3 have sprouts. But they each have a good half dozen sprouts because we overplanted with the intention of thinning them. So I should have a good few pickling cucumber plants. But my salad cucumbers aren't doing so well. 1 hill out of 9 has sprouts and only 3 sprouts at that. I have really patchy rows of radishes, lettuce, and onions but no carrot tops have appeared yet and my squash and melons are about as good as the salad cucumbers. My potatoes haven't so much as cracked the soil crust yet and they've been out there for over two weeks now. I'm nervous because I bought $150 worth of seed potatoes and we have spent hours planting, hilling, re-hilling, and weeding the 300 feet of potatoes I have planted in the field already. I do NOT want to waste that money. But DH said potatoes can take 3-4 weeks to pop up enough to see and MIL said the carrots can be up to 3 weeks depending on variety so I'm not giving up all hope yet. I did buy beet seeds and want to get them planted but DH is certain I've missed my opportunity with those. However, he and FIL are busy replanting the 60 acres of sunflowers we have this year even though it's really late to be planting those because the first planting didn't germinate worth diddly. (We had 10% germination across all three fields. They were located in different areas with different amounts of moisture and different soil types so it's odd that all three failed to germinate but we're trying replanting to see if it's worth it. These are edible sunflowers and our only cash crop this year so everyone is hoping we can get a good yield out of these fields.)

We've also had unusually hot weather for May and early June but it's cooled down a bit again and we're in the mid-70s now. I much prefer this to 80s. I melt when it gets over 80 and being pregnant makes it worse. I'm hoping it stays like this for the rest of the month now but the forecast is showing sparse rains so even if the temps are staying reasonable, the rain is staying away.

So far, no bugs in the garden but the flies are out in force (a big downside to living on a working dairy farm) and the mosquitoes are absolutely loving the excessive snowmelt we had this spring. They are horrendous this year! Thankfully the dragonflies are taking care of some of the bloodsuckers so it's bearable outside with minimal bug spray on. The ticks are another story though. I can't wait for my chicks to be big enough to free-range my yard because they do the best job of tick control. But they are still too small to be let loose to roam. Another few weeks and I'll have my pest control program going though.

I will say that I love how big my garden is so I can plant everything that I want to in it, even if I don't get very much from it. But as I get older and my body is aging faster because of my joint issues, I dream more and more of raised beds. As convenient as it is for tillage, fertilizing, crop rotation, and watering, my large bed is just getting a bit too big for me. But it's in the only ideal place for a garden in my yard. My yard is actually divided in half by our driveway and my front yard and side yard on the south side of the house are both shaded by the massive oak trees on the neighbor's property. I love them because they shade my house through most of the day so it doesn't get as hot inside but it also shades the yard enough I can't plant anything on the east and south sides of my house. The west side is where we park our vehicles and plan to build a garage someday so that's out of the question as well. My only option is the north yard and that's on the other side of the driveway. I'm limited on garden space there too because of the well (regulations say we can't have anything within 50 feet of the well), the lanes the cows use for walking to and from the barn, and the driveway. We also have some playground equipment we're going to set up over there next to our existing sandbox and that will take up even more of my yard. My dream is to cut down a few trees to make the east yard a bit more sunny during the day (those trees need thinning out anyway because we have WAY too many oaks growing too close together and they shade the yard too much but don't shade the house at all.), put in raised beds for my veggies, and turn my big garden into a massive raspberry patch. Raspberries are my favorite fruit and they preserve so well. I usually freeze them, which does make them very tart, but I have also made jam with them and DH's aunt cans them in a light sugar syrup. She then uses the canned berries for syrup on pancakes, berry sauce for pound cake, or even in smoothies. I kind of want to try that method out but will probably stick to freezing my raspberries or making them into jam since my kitchen isn't really ideal for canning. I have a few strawberry plants that need to get in the ground too and I love strawberries almost as much as I love raspberries but they are more fiddly to grow in my region due to the harsh winters. They need a very HEAVY layer of straw mulch to keep them insulated enough over winter so they don't winterkill, they ripen VERY quickly when the conditions are right, and the critters love them so you have a very small window for picking before the birds and slugs get to them. But I am determined to get a small berry bed going because I do really like strawberry jam and I always add them to my smoothies. I won't get much from my plants this year as it's the first year they are going in but we have local strawberry farm that has u-pick hours a few days a week so once picking season is here, I'll go with the kids and pick a few flats of strawberries. They aren't organic and I prefer organic berries but they also don't spray very heavily so I just make sure to wash the berries thoroughly. There is also a blueberry farm that I hope to go picking at too as we are a big smoothie loving family here and I cannot keep enough frozen fruit on hand. My crabapple tree is loaded with apples so I'll for sure be juicing apples this fall and I'm hoping to pick enough from the older trees in the one field and at my MIL's house to can some applesauce. I can peaches when peach season is here but my biggest year, I canned 60 quarts of peaches and they were all gone by the middle of January. Having homemade applesauce on hand will hopefully help extend the peach stash for a bit longer.

I am sorry. This is a novel of a post but I am actually excited about my garden this year. The start of it is looking pretty pitiful but I have done more to tend it so far than I have pretty much any other year and I'm very hopeful that I'll get something out of it. Hopefully it's enough to convince me to keep gardening next year. I am still needing herb starts for my window herb garden (I managed to kill my parsely, basil, thyme, rosemary, and sage over the winter but I managed to keep my mint plant going despite it dying back at least 4 times. I know mint is about as hardy as it comes but this thing was a twig at one point and I still managed to revive it. If I can revive a nearly dead mint, I can attempt more herbs again.) and I really should repot almost every single indoor plant I have... I haven't repotted anything since I got it and since a few of them are looking a bit sad, I am guessing I need to repot into bigger pots. Whoops. I should also probably feed them as I haven't put plant food in any of them since christmas. It's honestly amazing I have any plants still alive in my house with how not-well I take care of them.

 

[Jules8]

Congratulations to you both! Sounds like your gardens are doing mostly well. I’ve had mine in the ground for a few weeks. They’re growing slow because we haven’t had much rain, but thankfully it rained a lot this week. I have a few different tomatoes and some different peppers in my raised bed, zucchini in another area, and we planted some sunflowers. At work I have a bigger harder with tomatoes, 4 different peppers, herbs, onions, pumpkin, zucchini, squash, and eggplant. My work garden seems to be doing a tad bit better than my one at home. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks. I’m ready for some fresh garden tomato sandwiches!

 

[dairymomma]

My gardens aren't doing as well as I'd like even if they are doing okay. My home garden is weedier than ever despite the heavy layer of mulch so I'm trying to do a heavy weeding with another layer of mulch to see if that helps. I had my son take our hand torch out there and burn the weeds once but it looks like that will need to be done again now that things have had a few days to rebound. But so far, things look good. My tomatoes are growing well and I have green cherry tomatoes already. My potatoes finally broke the surface so I'm hoping to have baby potatoes for roasting in about a month. My beans are doing fantastic, the peppers haven't been choked out by the weeds yet, and at least half of my vine-y plants (squash, melons, cucumbers, etc) germinated so I'm happy enough. We've harvested some green onions, lettuce, and radishes already and I have seed to replant those rows as they are short growing crops. Zucchini should be starting soon and I have yellow summer squash that shouldn't be too far behind. There is something so much more delicious about a salad you make from your own home grown produce.... The only thing that isn't growing much at all are my carrots. I haven't had great luck with them the last few years so I may just give up on them or try planting them in containers next year. I think my soil is just too heavy/clay based to grow them easily and if I get any at all, they are golf balls not carrots.

The sweet corn in the field seems to be growing well so I'll have plenty of that to harvest come fall and my field potato patch is doing much better than anticipated. Not every potato sprouted but at least 3/4 of what we planted has come up and the plants are all very good sized now. We've hilled and weeded them twice and this is probably the best my potatoes have ever looked at this point. However, the entire patch is absolutely infested with potato beetles. And since we're certified organic and this patch is in a crop field, we can't use traditional bug killers on them or I will lose our organic certification for that field and we can't feed the crop to our cows. So we're squishing eggs and larva and picking the beetles off the plants by hand. It's back breaking working for sure but it'll be worth it when we get to harvest.

I've been to the U-Pick strawberry patch once and hope to go again this weekend if the weather holds and they are still open. Their season is dying down alot sooner than usual so I'm not sure if it will be worth it but I'd love to get another 30lb of strawberries in the freezer. The U-pick blueberry patch is opening at the end of the month so that's on the calendar as well and I'm watching for canning peaches to show up in the grocery stores so I can start on that project. We just picked up a small chest freezer so I am excited to have all the space I need for storing my garden and berry harvests. Our wild plum and chokecherry trees are absolutely loaded with green fruit so we should have a bumper crop again this year and they make some really good jelly. My flowering crab apple tree is full of fruit as well and they are starting to turn red already so I'm looking forward to crabapple jelly and juice this fall. We'll see how ambitious I'll be come autumn when my belly is the size of a watermelon but I can still dream, right?

 

[Jules8]

Here are some of the things we got from the garden this week. I’ve had a ton of zucchini! I made bread, muffins, and of course sautéed. I thought the tomatoes were a bust, but they just ripened a little bit later. Peppers didn’t do as well as I hoped, but we did get a few. I want to do a fall harvest. Any suggestions for cooler temp veggies?

 

[Bevziibubble]

Here are some of the things we got from the garden this week. I’ve had a ton of zucchini! I made bread, muffins, and of course sautéed. I thought the tomatoes were a bust, but they just ripened a little bit later. Peppers didn’t do as well as I hoped, but we did get a few. I want to do a fall harvest. Any suggestions for cooler temp veggies?

View attachment 1116640

That's amazing!

 

[dairymomma]

Well, last garden update for the season...We got a bunch of tomatoes in the end but nowhere near as many as I'd hoped for because a flock of wild turkeys found my garden and ate the bottom half of every ripe tomato out there! We picked the green ones they hadn't touched and I've been ripening them in the house so at least we got a few of them before those darn birds did. But my cucumbers were a flop. The salad cukes didn't grow anything and my pickling cukes were itty bitty one day but monstrous the next. There was no getting the timing right on picking them. The carrots didn't germinate well and the few that did grow were golf balls. I suspect my garden soil is too compacted so next year, I'm going to till the carrot rows a bit deeper down before planting to see if that helps. None of my melons grew, we got some zucchini and yellow summer squash but the yellow summer squash are all mushy so not sure what I did wrong there, and I had to buy pumpkins so we can get homemade pumpkin puree in the freezer as none of mine grew. All the other squash flopped as well. The onions did great until the middle of August and then they slowed down. We ended up leaving half of what was left in the garden because they turned to mush. Not sure if I had issues with overwatering or underwatering or just too much heat this summer but my garden was not as prolific as I'd hoped. The sweet corn in the field did great though and we got enough potatoes to last us a few months over the winter so at least those two crops didn't fail as badly as my garden did. And I did get radishes and lettuce but the lettuce bolted faster than I could pick it and the radishes grew so fast, they split themselves in half.

But I got enough out of the garden to give it a try again next year. But I need to make sure I do a better job of mulching and weeding. We tried using a burner for weed management this year and it helped alot with some of the weeds but DS1 was in charge of the burning and he accidentally singed all of my green bean plants. So no beans for us this year. We also learned that you can't burn weeds after you've mulched with straw because the straw starts on fire. Whoops. Luckily it wasn't a big fire, more of a small smoulder, and DS was able to put it out by stepping on it. (He sprayed it down with the hose just to be safe though.) But we're going to try burning the weeds before we mulch next year to see if that works better. We're also going to do a much thicker layer of straw. We didn't do enough and the weeds got ahead of me per usual as a result.

I hope others had a more successful gardening experience than I did but I at least got enough to make it feel worthwhile to keep trying. One of these years I'll master growing *something* other than weeds and rocks in my garden...

 

[Jules8]

I think you did a great job! Each year is different and it’s a great learning experience no matter what. I did 2 gardens, one at work and one at home. I planted tons of hot peppers and basically only got a few jalapeño. My zucchini plant at home was great and the one at work died when it got hot, but the yellow squash did great. Neither of the eggplants made it, I got a small one that grew then rotted. Tomatoes did pretty good, especially the smaller ones. Green peppers didn’t grow, they shriveled. Last year I threw out Halloween pumpkin in the garden at work and we got 4 pumpkins which was fun. All in all we had enough to eat over the summer, but not much to freeze. Next year I want to get the root veggie bags to do a few things. I want to do garlic and onion as well. For the main garden I’m not going too fancy and grow what I know will do well so we can have more to can or freeze. We live in Amish and farm country so the things I don’t grow, like peppers and corn, can always buy in bulk. Right now the big stand has Brussel sprouts and cabbage so I’ll def be grabbing some of those.