Adventures of a Wandering Homebody
The Garden
When we moved in to our house there was already a small fenced off vegetable garden. Since we moved in at the end of May I hastily planted heirloom tomato seedlings, a cucumber and squash as well as planted green beans from seed. I learned quickly how important soil quality and protection from animals is to crop production. The soil was dry and I was only able to get a few beans from the plants before something was able to sneak through the double layer of fencing and eat every single plant.
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| April 2012 |
This year my fabulous hubby built us a raised garden bed and what a difference it has made! The soil is light and nutritious and getting even better as we add our compost. We’ve planted onions, tomatoes, lettuce, Swiss chard, carrots, green beans, peas, squash, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants and flowers. The plants are the healthiest I have ever had and we are hoping for a good harvest. The kids are actually looking forward to vegetables!
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| July 2012 |
As productive as the garden has been, there is so much to learn (biggest lesson yet: gardening is WAY more involved than just sticking seeds in the dirt and watering!). What I thought was a good garden plan in the spring isn’t quite what I thought it would be now that the plants have exploded in the summer sun. There is shade where I didn’t know there would be and plant support challenges, as well as preparing to defend against mother nature’s creatures (picture me, tangled with bamboo poles and bird netting while picking aphids off tomato stalks). Already I have new plans in mind for next year as well as new vegetables I would like to plant, now I need to find a way to put it all together and plan for crop rotation as well (but more on that later). How about you? How do you plan your garden? What are your favorite crops?
My poor eggplants are getting buried by the giant tomato plants in our raised beds. We need to restrategize next year too.
We put in six 4×8 raised beds last year, and ran into the same pit falls of overcrowding (we started WAY too many seedlings indoors for the space we had outdoors.) We are doing better this year. Our eggplant flowers seem to fall off really easily though, have you seen the same thing?
It definitely is going to take a few seasons to get the spacing right! As for the falling flowers, I'm not sure about eggplant, but I know with squash the flowers will fall off with lack of pollination. I've had the same problem with tomatoes before, they are in the same plant family as eggplant, and it was due to my poor watering practices 🙂
Good luck!