I had really been hoping to share a lot of stories from the garden this year. Ah, the dreams of gardens in winter.
What really happened was INTENSE rain just a few days after we transplanted our starts that killed all but two of our tomato plants. We replanted them and had drought. I can handle that since we water the garden. Then came 7+ inches of rain in a weeks time. The tomatoes did not handle that well. All of the blooms turned brown and fell off. Ugh, rip my heart out.
Everything in the garden was green. What we had direct-sowed sprouted and then it was like time stood still. No growth happened for weeks. Nothing was dying, but everything was staying the same. Things have started to pick up this week. We have 7 tomatoes growing from our 8 tomato plants. I know, look out world. Our celery is continuing to grow. The carrots and radishes are growing. Our green beans have a lot of beans and flowers on the plants. The dragon tongue bush beans have the same. We made this teepee trellis and planted more green bean seeds.
We decided to try succession planting this year so that we aren’t overwhelmed with all of the beans, carrots, radishes, etc. at once. It is hard to see empty spaces in the garden, especially at first when everything was so small. But, it has been worth it. I don’t have a pressure canner (YET) and can’t safely can vegetables, so succession planting just makes sense for us. I do have a deep freezer that I can utilize, but hope to one day be able to can more.
Our potatoes have been doing really well and so have our onions. I think I may have started and planted our onions a little late in the year, so we will see what happens. We did a storage variety of yellow onion and flat of italy onions because I am curious what they will taste like. I am anxious to see how it all looks in the fall when it’s time to harvest. So far, so good. If we can just stop getting the downpours of rain, we will be set!
We have harvested over 90 heads of garlic this year. (We planted 3 pounds of seed.) I am so thrilled!! It is currently hanging to dry in the garage. I keep saying that if everything else fails this year, I at least have garlic! If you are wanting to plant garlic this fall– Filaree Farm is where we ordered from. Every head of garlic is perfect! They are currently taking orders to ship in the fall so HURRY! Garlic sells out quickly. I plan to do a post all about this from start to finish. I still can’t believe we grew all of that!
If you want to start a garden, I encourage you to just start! I started with a three tomato plants and a jalapeño plant in a pot several years ago. Every year, our garden has grown as I have learned more and become more confident. I heard someone say that every thumb can be green if you stick it in the soil long enough. We are blessed that we can do a quick internet search to help us troubleshoot if something is going wrong. There are books galore on the subject of gardening! I certainly am not a pro-gardener, but you can learn and make mistakes alongside me!