2013 Garden of Weeden

Last year we were so excited to have the chance to garden in our new house. We had a lot more room with a lot more soil and we had big plans. We always forget to take a before picture. Here’s one that we took after about a month of work.

That’s about how I was feeling after a month of work as well. Unfortunately for John, I get burned out too quickly. And we hadn’t even started digging the garden beds. We had this entire space to work with thanks to our landlord. That also meant we had to clear out the entire space of garbage and years of tree and grass clippings. We did everything by hand and I have to say, we pulled it off pretty well. Here in a late spring picture right as the beans and corn are coming up.

In the back you can see the tops of the Swiss chard. All in all we grew, peas, cabbage, Swiss chard, dragon carrots, beets, lettuce, kale, onions, strawberries, basil, cucumber, tomato, watermelon, corn, cow peas, and squash. It would have been nice it we had taken a picture of the end result. The corn was as high as an elephant’s eye! Some got even higher! But as you can see, this year’s hardest thing was the weeds. Oh my, the weeds. We’re hoping to get our hands on a large tiller this year to just turn the whole thing over and get rid of the crab grass!

We also have a small herb garden right next to the house. It doesn’t get much sun but we were able to grow oregano, thyme, dill, and cilantro.

Things we learned from last year’s garden. Space the corn more otherwise it gets tall and too skinny to support itself. Watermelon is quite the challenge for us and we got a few melons but the all cracked or rotted. We hope to remedy this with a variety that is more water resistant. Cucumbers are really bitter when you leave them on the vine too long, but it’s bound to happen because they are so good at hiding from you. We didn’t care too much about this because we got so many cukes anyway. The smell of basil now causes me to gag. Swiss chard is a super plant that grows with hardly any care at all. Beets, carrots, and lettuce are equally easy. We loved our winter squash, but stupidly left them on the front porch too long and they froze and then rotted. Pests love cabbage, but luckily we’re not deterred by a few slug holes. The kale got destroyed by some weird bug, but thankfully it only ate the kale. Most of the lettuce and cabbage go to waste because it’s too much at once. We’re going to try to plant these things a little at a time throughout the growing season so this doesn’t happen again.

We’ve already got our seeds for this year and we’ve already laid out our growing plans. Some new things this year include: ground cherry, lots of flowers (hollyhock, marigold, nasturtium, cosmos, and sunflowers), white carrots, jalapenos, more onion varieties, green beans, celery, and brussels sprouts.

Let the gardening begin!

Edit: Thank Julia Nuttall for taking some picture of the garden in late summer. Here they are!