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One of the things that I hated leaving behind when we moved in 2023 was my vegetable garden. I had taken a roughly 400 square foot area of suburban back yard and made it into a productive place. It was hard work, but being able to provide some vegetables and flowers to the family was wonderful!
Our new yard doesn’t have the space and sun-view to grow a decent vegetable garden, so I connected with the local community garden which is a 15 min walk/< 5 min drive for me up the hill. I ended up with two lots totaling nearly 500 square feet!
So in early May, I got to preparing the garden. I got a late start, thanks to my first ever experiences of spring turkey hunting. Using a broadfork to break up the ground, then hand-shoveling to turn the soil over, mixing in compost and fertilizer. I was late planting some things, but I did get the garden rolling: an experiment with the Three Sisters (corn/beans/squash), beans, potatoes, cabbage, sugar snap peas, chard, tomatoes and (later on) pumpkins!
June was wet here! I didn’t do much watering, just weeding and making sure things grew. Some of the tomatoes were doing well, others… not so well. The potatoes went off like gang-busters and so did the beans and corn! The peas, cabbage and chard… not so much. 🙁
July was more tending, weeding and gardening. Towards the end of July, I started getting a load of wax beans from the bushes I’d started. A LOT of beans!
August began the stretch of drought, and I had to finally start using the hose to provide water to the vegetables. The bean harvest continued and I had to learn a new skill – canning! I ended up canning 37 pints of wax beans. That’s… alot of beans!
My cabbage and sugar peas never took off, nor did my chard, so I ended up planting more pumpkins and some late fall spinach. I also decided to try an experiment, based on an online class I took from our local extension office (extension offices are usually run by state colleges, and they provide agriculture support to local farmers and gardeners. A wealth of info and services – definitely recommend!)
The experiment was to do fall cover crop. Growing field peas and oats which would grow fast, die in a hard frost (or after being tilled) and provide weed control, biomass as natural compost and the roots would break up the ground, plus (with the peas) provide nitrogen from the air that they store in their roots. So I broke up the ground and hand-cast 5 lbs of cover crop around everything, except the spinach.
The drought continued through September! We had two months of no significant rain-fall and it was tough! I kept watering the garden.
I also experienced a catastrophe with my Three Sisters! I had lovely sweet corn -just about- ready to harvest, and over a single night, racoons DESTROYED my entire corn crop. Something like 15 to 20 stalks were trashed and all the corn eaten. I was heartbroken! And, come to find out, this is pretty much why folks weren’t growing corn in their gardens. Live and learn…
The potato crop was great, and I canned ten and a half quarts for later us. The cover crop took hold, I got some nice squash and I saw a whole bunch of pumpkins ripening! My cherry tomatoes grew like gang-busters, but the romas never really produced, so we had a lot of salads with our tomatoes.
At the end of September, the pumpkins started rolling in!
We normally get some decent frost towards the middle/end of October, but climate change continues to change the seasons and that frost didn’t come till around Halloween. My fall spinach produced some nice greens for the table and we got a few more pumpkins, but things were slowing down in a big way. The cover crop grew fantastic! The drought finally broke a bit with some much needed rain.
Archery deer hunting started in October, so the latter half of the month was going to be taken. With no significant frosts coming, I tilled the cover crop down by using a weed wacker and cutting it down to the ground. It made a nice cover and we’ll see how it helped in the spring of next year. The garden had one last surprise, though, a final pumpkin hidden among the vines!
And that takes us to now… mid December. I haven’t been by the garden to see how it looks. I should, just to take pictures. I’m already planning for next year, though… Guess my Dungeons & Dragons mapping skills are being put to good use!
This year was a year of learning – what works and didn’t work in this soil, what NOT to plant (grrr @ the furry bandits), and especially canning. The 18 pumpkins are downstairs in the basement, on shelves and I’m about to get to canning some pumpkin so we can use it throughout the winter. I also have three winter squashes that I will cook up.
It was a good gardening year.
This is all awesome, especially seeing everything at the once ~
(punkins yesssssss <3)
Thanks! It was a crazy, busy summer, but eating the beans and taters makes it worth it. I’ll try to take pics of the pumpkin canning next week!