For year’s I thought I was a halfway decent gardener, but then we moved out of town onto two acres and suddenly the only thing I could grow was spaghetti squash (and that was only because our pool sprang a leak and it got tons of water). The first year here I couldn’t grow a single tomato or zucchini. Not even a zucchini for goodness sake!
It turns out all those years I successfully had a garden were mostly pure luck. This year, I took time to learn something and then put all my anxious coronavirus energy into the growing the best garden yet. It is far from perfect and I’ve learned a lot, but its the most successful garden I've ever had.
Some good decisions I made:
Having my husband and kids build me 5 extra raised beds for Mother’s Day (they used scrap lumber from the house construction). The extra room was great because I hadn't planned for it in the beginning of the season and I felt like it was ok to experiment with that space. I ended up adding a bed of flowers (I used the pollinator friendly mix from Territorial Seed) and I love having flowers in my vegetable garden.
Planting spinach between my tomatoes. They were so happy in those shady little crevices! I started some from seed in a few different areas, but between the tomato plants was the only place it did well.
Spending money on adding some better soil and a good organic fertilizer.
Some things I will do differently next year:
I did not trellis my beans instead choosing to plant them with corn and let them grow up the corn. My beans grew super fast and my corn didn’t so it ended up overwhelmed.
Cabbage moths. I'm still learning what, if anything, I could have done to prevent them, but I let them go too long and I don’t think my Brussel sprouts will survive
The summer squash didn't grow at all. It was a perfect, but tiny plant and it produced perfect, tiny squashes.
I planted my cucumbers and three types of squash in grow bags instead of a raised bed and it didn't work well. I lost three cucumbers and none of my plants are thriving. I'll get a few spaghetti squash and cucumbers, but I don't think my acorn or delicata squash will produce much of anything.
We have a big plan to move our garden next year to an area where we can easily level the raised beds and put down weed cloth under it all. I know there are arguments against weed cloth, but the grass and weeds we have out here are aggressive and it's become a constant struggle to keep them out of my vegetable garden. I suspect it's part of why my summer squash didn't do well - there is so much competition from the grass and weed. Even when I pull them up, the roots often remain.
The joy of harvesting (and eating!) what we grow is so worth all the hard work. I find my kids will try almost anything while standing out in the garden amongst the plants.
If you've made it this far, I thank you! As a bonus, here are a few of the flowers I've been enjoying this week. The hostas greet us at our front door, the matilija poppy is just gorgeous, and the crocosmia is a favorite of hummingbirds. We're finishing some fencing to contain the dog and the children, but as soon as that's done I plan to add about 20 more plants for the ever-important pollinators!