Wow, we have learned so much in the garden this year! Its really amazing how you can think you have thought of everything, only to find you really don't know what you are doing at all! This is only our second year gardening, so we are going easy on ourselves. Every mistake we make is a lesson learned for next year. With that in mind, here are some things I know we will be changing next year!
1) No more beds. I think we waste a lot of room making the raised beds. I hadn't thought there was really any other way to do it, until I saw the most beautiful garden one day - everything was in straight rows and it looked so neat and organized. Something that my OCD brain really loved! I did some research and decided that we will do our garden mostly in rows next year, with the exception of things like corn and watermelon.
2) No more pickling cucumbers!! I had really wanted to can some pickles this year, but quickly realized that while the pickling cucumber plants are heavy producers, they don't all come ripe at the same time! 2 plants is nowhere near enough to get the 7 pounds of cuc's I would need for one batch of pickles. If we aren't using them for pickles they are useless to grow, so next year we will only do a couple lemon cucumber plants, and one regular cucumber plant. My plan is then to go to a upick to get enough cucumbers to make pickles, and we will save ourselves so much space for other veggies!
3) Plant earlier! This is something that we couldn't help this year. With my surgery in Feb, and the long recovery as well as the huge amount of work that needed to go into the garden, we just couldn't get started before May. I hope that next year we will be able to get the non frost sensitive plants in much earlier.
4) Plant more! We also realized this year just how much you really need to plant if you want to try to preserve it to feed to your family! Our 6 broccoli plants gave us some to eat fresh, but only about 4 pounds frozen. That wont last longer than a month or so! So we will be planting more of things like broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, and corn - all things that can be harvested and frozen easily.
5) Yes to watermelons, no to honeydews! This has been a huge disappointment for us. We grew cantaloupe last year and it was great - small vine area and yummy melons. This year we planted sugar baby watermelons and a honeydew at the same time. The watermelon has at least 8 melons on it, with more flowers showing, and as of last night the honeydew was taking up 3 times the space of the watermelon...without a single melon on it! We ended up pulling it out, which seems like such a waste of time and space for that area for the last few months. With fall looming, even if it started a melon now, there wouldn't be time to ripen by fall. So, next year, yes to watermelons, but a big fat no to any other melons!
6) Better spacing. We did great on our brassica plant family spacing, and our corn was maybe even over spaced. But the tomatoes need much more room, as well as the cucumbers. The cherry tomatoes need their own zipcode next time! I think next year, when we plant in rows, we will space the tomatoes better, and place our netting at the end of the garden so that we can easily reach both sides to harvest cucumbers. Right now the back of the netting is about 2 feet from a fence...making it difficult to get back there to pick the cucumbers that inevitably grow on that side.
7) Drip drip drip! I never realized how awesome soaker hoses could be! After problems with our tomatoes and upon the advice of our local garden nursery, we started using soaker hoses to water our tomatoes, peas, cucumbers and watermelon. The plants have really taken off since then! We water them once a week, for about 8 hours. Some things are easier to water by hand, or would take way to much hose to drip water - like corn, carrots or potatoes. But for most other things, this is going to be the way we water next year!
8) Plant more of what we love. We were too late this year to get the kind of potatoes in that I would have liked to and didn't end up planting any at all. We didn't plant enough tomatoes for fresh eating and for canning all we wanted too, and I would like to have tried more beans and peas. So next year, we will start hunkering down over seed catalogs early, and make sure that we have a better plan and layout to accommodate more things. I think it will probably take a couple years before we get everything figured out and set up the way we want it to be - but that's the fun of gardening!
9) Get out and weed...more! If we only had things like dandelions in the garden, I probably wouldn't worry too much about weeding. But right now we have morning glory choking our tomatoes, a very invasive ground cover smothering our carrots, and a really annoying and hard to pull up clover popping up everywhere! I think if we made a commitment to spend 1 hour each week weeding we could get a better handle on it next year.
10) Plant enough to share! One of my favorite things about gardening is being able to share things with our neighbors and friends. We have been able to do a lot of that this year, but if we can squeeze in even a few more plants next year, I know we will be able to give away more. Maybe that seems strange, to spend the time and money investing in something only to give it away. But if people did more of that, more helping out their neighbors and friends, what an amazing difference that would make in our society. Plus its a good example for the kids, to share something they love with their friends. Killian really likes taking other kids on a "tour" through his garden, and it makes me happy that he is so proud of it. Now, if only I could get him to help with the weeding, we would be all set!!
11) Forgot to add this one yesterday, but better staking for our tomatoes is a MUST! We used bamboo sticks, which looked great, but as our plants have gotten bigger and heavier, they have almost all fallen over. So next year we will start with the heavy metal T posts and tie the plants up on those as they get bigger. I cant imagine them getting big enough to topple one of those!
I am sure there are many more things that will be added to this list as time goes on. I am preparing the garden for fall plantings and cover crops for the winter, and surely there are some lessons to be learned with that. But I am really proud of how well we are doing and how far we have come on this journey! I am looking forward to many more abundant and delicious seasons in the garden!
1) No more beds. I think we waste a lot of room making the raised beds. I hadn't thought there was really any other way to do it, until I saw the most beautiful garden one day - everything was in straight rows and it looked so neat and organized. Something that my OCD brain really loved! I did some research and decided that we will do our garden mostly in rows next year, with the exception of things like corn and watermelon.
2) No more pickling cucumbers!! I had really wanted to can some pickles this year, but quickly realized that while the pickling cucumber plants are heavy producers, they don't all come ripe at the same time! 2 plants is nowhere near enough to get the 7 pounds of cuc's I would need for one batch of pickles. If we aren't using them for pickles they are useless to grow, so next year we will only do a couple lemon cucumber plants, and one regular cucumber plant. My plan is then to go to a upick to get enough cucumbers to make pickles, and we will save ourselves so much space for other veggies!
3) Plant earlier! This is something that we couldn't help this year. With my surgery in Feb, and the long recovery as well as the huge amount of work that needed to go into the garden, we just couldn't get started before May. I hope that next year we will be able to get the non frost sensitive plants in much earlier.
4) Plant more! We also realized this year just how much you really need to plant if you want to try to preserve it to feed to your family! Our 6 broccoli plants gave us some to eat fresh, but only about 4 pounds frozen. That wont last longer than a month or so! So we will be planting more of things like broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, and corn - all things that can be harvested and frozen easily.
5) Yes to watermelons, no to honeydews! This has been a huge disappointment for us. We grew cantaloupe last year and it was great - small vine area and yummy melons. This year we planted sugar baby watermelons and a honeydew at the same time. The watermelon has at least 8 melons on it, with more flowers showing, and as of last night the honeydew was taking up 3 times the space of the watermelon...without a single melon on it! We ended up pulling it out, which seems like such a waste of time and space for that area for the last few months. With fall looming, even if it started a melon now, there wouldn't be time to ripen by fall. So, next year, yes to watermelons, but a big fat no to any other melons!
6) Better spacing. We did great on our brassica plant family spacing, and our corn was maybe even over spaced. But the tomatoes need much more room, as well as the cucumbers. The cherry tomatoes need their own zipcode next time! I think next year, when we plant in rows, we will space the tomatoes better, and place our netting at the end of the garden so that we can easily reach both sides to harvest cucumbers. Right now the back of the netting is about 2 feet from a fence...making it difficult to get back there to pick the cucumbers that inevitably grow on that side.
7) Drip drip drip! I never realized how awesome soaker hoses could be! After problems with our tomatoes and upon the advice of our local garden nursery, we started using soaker hoses to water our tomatoes, peas, cucumbers and watermelon. The plants have really taken off since then! We water them once a week, for about 8 hours. Some things are easier to water by hand, or would take way to much hose to drip water - like corn, carrots or potatoes. But for most other things, this is going to be the way we water next year!
8) Plant more of what we love. We were too late this year to get the kind of potatoes in that I would have liked to and didn't end up planting any at all. We didn't plant enough tomatoes for fresh eating and for canning all we wanted too, and I would like to have tried more beans and peas. So next year, we will start hunkering down over seed catalogs early, and make sure that we have a better plan and layout to accommodate more things. I think it will probably take a couple years before we get everything figured out and set up the way we want it to be - but that's the fun of gardening!
9) Get out and weed...more! If we only had things like dandelions in the garden, I probably wouldn't worry too much about weeding. But right now we have morning glory choking our tomatoes, a very invasive ground cover smothering our carrots, and a really annoying and hard to pull up clover popping up everywhere! I think if we made a commitment to spend 1 hour each week weeding we could get a better handle on it next year.
10) Plant enough to share! One of my favorite things about gardening is being able to share things with our neighbors and friends. We have been able to do a lot of that this year, but if we can squeeze in even a few more plants next year, I know we will be able to give away more. Maybe that seems strange, to spend the time and money investing in something only to give it away. But if people did more of that, more helping out their neighbors and friends, what an amazing difference that would make in our society. Plus its a good example for the kids, to share something they love with their friends. Killian really likes taking other kids on a "tour" through his garden, and it makes me happy that he is so proud of it. Now, if only I could get him to help with the weeding, we would be all set!!
11) Forgot to add this one yesterday, but better staking for our tomatoes is a MUST! We used bamboo sticks, which looked great, but as our plants have gotten bigger and heavier, they have almost all fallen over. So next year we will start with the heavy metal T posts and tie the plants up on those as they get bigger. I cant imagine them getting big enough to topple one of those!
I am sure there are many more things that will be added to this list as time goes on. I am preparing the garden for fall plantings and cover crops for the winter, and surely there are some lessons to be learned with that. But I am really proud of how well we are doing and how far we have come on this journey! I am looking forward to many more abundant and delicious seasons in the garden!