Well, most of you know that we really enjoy gardening. Previously we had great success in our gardens, harvesting hundreds of pounds of produce each year. Certainly it was plenty to keep us in vegetables for a whole year. This year has been a bust, but a lot of learning has occurred.
We had a lot of adverse conditions this year at our new property. First, the rains made the property so muddy that we could not begin preparing the ground until about mid-May. Then there still was so much dead ragweed that clearing a spot for our garden was extremely difficult.
Once we began planting, we put up fences late. The deer fence we had was chewed through by rabbits. Not a deer has been seen yet all summer. Those cute little furry monsters ate some peas, most of the broccoli and brussel sprouts before we realized what had happened. We had to put up a second layer of galvanized steel fence to keep them out. That was successful.
Then came more bad weather. Instead of cool and rainy as it is normal for spring, it got HOT and DRY way too soon! So hot that our new seedlings wilted. We watered them but it seemed to be too much heat too soon.
I also had thought with the huge corn that was on the property previously and the giant ragweed, the soil was very fertile. Wrong. Our plants didn’t get enough fertilizer either.
So, with all these problems, our early plants did not grow much and next to nothing was harvested. Once we began fixing our mistakes, we began getting better results. We did get a few green beans, garlic, onions and beets. Our tomatoes are just now coming in. We have had several green peppers and our carrots are very good. (Those were planted in raised beds. Hmmm.) We have sweet corn that should be ready to be harvested soon. I hope. Anyway, here is a picture of the garden as it stands today. The corn is in the far left, tomatoes in the center. The brown in the back is where I mowed down the weeds from where our peas, garlic, onions and such were. In case you are wondering, it is a 75×75 ft square directly across from our garage.
