Weed it and Reap.

We recently read a biography picture book about Clara Barton titled Clara and Davie by Patricia Polacco.  It was a beautiful book that depicted Clara Barton's childhood.  In the book it talked about how she had a gift for both healing and making things grow.  Even as a child, neighbors would bring her their livestock to mend, and she was famous locally for her flower gardens.

(side note:  if you don't know Patricia Polacco's books, you should.  She is one of my favorite author/illustrators of children's picture books. FInd one of her books at the library, there's lots of them.)

 

 I admire that.  I would love to watch things flourish under my care.  I would love for people to admire my garden and ask my advice, I would love to be noted as one with a special gift and care for growing things.  I do know people like this.

I am not like this.  Matt and I enjoy gardening, and every year we have a harvest.  But, every year we make mistakes learn something new.  That is the point of this post.  I'm hoping to have a place for myself to look back next year so we can remember what went wrong and maybe what went well.  Year by year we'll keep working at it, and hopefully some day we'll get there!

 

Last Spring we removed all the river rock from behind our house.  We wanted to have a space for a garden, and figured this was as good as any.  It is shaded for part of the morning because of the house, but is in full sun from noon until the sun goes down.  It's obviously a pretty convenient location also.  Every year we continue to fertilize.  Next year we may also want to add more compost and vermiculite.
We planted: tomatoes, basil, sweet peppers, rosemary, popcorn, carrots, green beans, sugar snap peas, red onions, broccoli, cucumbers, watermelon,and cantaloupe.

These photos were all taken somewhat recently, about mid-September. 

As we were planning our garden, Nathan and Ella wanted watermelon and popcorn.  I said "yes"!
You can see our popcorn along the back of the garden.  It did okay.  I think each stalk (six total) got one year of corn.  I'm not sure what we were suppose to expect!  It's currently drying on our counter for three months.  It should make a fun Christmas treat! 
 



 

Our tomatoes did pretty well this year.  We still have a lot of green tomatoes out there that we may have to pick before it freezes.  Next year though I would like to have more supports for them so they aren't all over the place.  Perhaps Matt can make something like this.  We also could add more plants. This year we had 5, including one cherry tomato plant.

 

 

The kids though this one was pretty neat.  It's three tomatoes that grew into one big tomato.  You can imagine the eight year-old boy humor that followed.

 



 

Next to the tomatoes we had both a basil and rosemary plant.  The basil plant did great and was very bush-like.

 

The rosemary actually did well too, but was completely covered by the tomatoes and basil.  I'm not sure what to do with it over the winter. I may dig it out and keep it inside...or it may be okay outside.  All I know is it's an evergreen.  Next year I may plant more rosemary because I love it so much.  I also want to plant cilantro next year since we use it all. the. time. 

 

 

We also planted two sweet bell pepper plants: one red one purple.  For reasons I can't explain these also did well.  We had  4 red peppers and 5 purple peppers, just from those two plants.  We're not crazy pepper people, so this was the perfect amount!

 

 

 

 

Along the front of our garden we have carrots and zinnias.  The carrots look good, though we honestly have only picked a few.  The zinnias look good now, but they were pretty puny most of the year.  Next year I would like something with a little more "pow".

 

 

We also had green beans in this mix.  They seem to be a nice staple for us.  They did get eaten by bunnies also, but we were able to get a decent harvest.

 

 

Since this is about sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly, let's move down the garden.  Our yard is sloped and Matt did terrace the garden this year, but as you move downward things get not so good.

Our biggest issue was rabbits.  We left for almost a week over 4th of July with no fence around our garden.  The result was a 24 hour bunny buffet.

 

This is what the broccoli looked like in September.  Needless to say, we didn't get any broccoli to eat this year.  It got eaten down so many times it hasn't really had a chance.

 

The cucumbers too were eaten down, but climbed back for the last couple of months.  The plant was small though and I think we only got about six cucumbers to eat off of two plants.

 



You can see from these photos that we put up some chicken wire fence (though not until mid-July.  It definitely helped, but the little stinkers can run under our deck to get to the garden.  There is trellis there, but we'll have to cover that with chicken wire, or something better, next year also.

 



Here, I give you the peas.  Poor little things, the rabbits love them.  I think a handful of peas total off of all the plants.  We've never had success with peas.  Perhaps we'll save the space next year and just buy these at the farmer's market!

 

The onions too were a bust.  I didn't take any photos, but I think some of the onions I picked were actually smaller than the bulbs I planted...is that possible?!

 

Last, (and perhaps least), is the end of the garden.  Maybe next year there will be additional space, but we'll see.  As you can see, there are more carrots planted here.  Our mantra seemed to be if nothing else works, throw in some carrots.  We originally planted watermelon here.  But, forgot that the rain runs off the downspout from the house and hits like a freight train right in this spot.  So, watermelon got washed out.  Nathan really wanted to watch watermelon grow from seed, but instead we went out and bought a plant.  However, the greenhouse was out of watermelon, so we bought a cantaloupe.   We planted this before we left for Wisconsin in July.  When we came home it was gone.  There was no sign that there had even been anything planted.  So, apparently rabbits like melon too.

 



The carrots are doing fine though.  I think next year we'll try potatoes here.  Matt has always wanted to plant potatoes and I've been reluctant since potatoes are so cheap.  But, I saw they were on the dirty dozen list, so why not try it out.

So, that is garden in review 2014.  It really is one of our favorite family pastimes, even if it isn't always super productive.  It's such an easy way to show our children the majesty of God as they watch a tiny seed grow into a fruit-bearing plant.  We get to participate in this wonder and care for His creation, but ultimately just sit back and watch His splendor as things grow and blossom (or don't)...and we can watch visitors like these:

 



 

Love it!