Skip to main content

So Year 2 Happened, I Swear



It's been almost a year since my last post and oh what a year it was.  Pregnancy kicked my butt, I remember planting my lettuce seeds sometime last May, looking at the fluffy dirt and just laying down. I know if I were living thousands of years ago, I would be dead.  Easily.  So while we planted the garden, the garden did not receive the love and attention of Year 1. 

Here's a little recap of the season:

We planted very similarly to the previous year (tomatoes, zucchini, onions, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, lettuce). We tried to plant squashes on the hill, but right after they sprouted, they were mysteriously gone.  Either rabbit or dogs, not sure which.  Next year will require a more thorough defense plan.

Tomatoes:  They did better than last year, and I was excited about harvest time (kinda, chopping up tomatoes in a lot of work), but a tragic hail storm hit.  And well, this happened:





Zucchini:  They did fine.  We ended up with too many large zucchini because I was not watching the garden close enough.  By the time harvesting came around, I wasn't really cooking either.  Lots of zucchini went to work.  Finally, the zucchini caught mildew again. 

Cucumbers:  We were waiting to harvest - hail took them all.  Not a one didn't have a whole in it.  It was so sad.

Onions:  In the drip system redo, the onions were clearly not getting enough water and did not do as well.  This will have to be fixed for next year.

Carrots:  Half Danvers did well again.  Harvested and in the freezer.

Potatoes:  I was completely not on the ball for this one.  I missed the proper seed potatoes at the nursery and tried to use store potatoes.  They grew, but we had no readily available dirt for hilling.  Also, moving bigs piles of dirt while pregnant was not my idea of a good time.  I've formulated a new plan for next year (more later).

Lettuce:  Buttercrunch did well again. 

I'm excited about Year 3.  I'm hoping for a little more planning, little more tracking what we do, and a little more harvest.  All of which will unfold right here, to my non-audience.  :-)

Comments

  1. Jessica McMullenFebruary 16, 2015 at 7:20 AM

    YAY! Gardening fun! Will you start seedling anytime soon?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Adrienne JonesFebruary 17, 2015 at 7:26 AM

    Look at you being so sweet and commenting on my blog. I <3 u. Sadly my seedling set up got taken over by Cary's stamp collection (don't ask). So I think I don't be doing seedlings. Plus the plants I would start as seedings (lettuce) seem to do well with a direct sow. What do you start as seedlings? Maybe I'm missing something.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garden Noob's July Recap

Dear Time, Please stop moving.  Thanks, Me Hello August, or what I like to call the gateway month into Christmas.  The garden has been moving along.  I did a major cleaning this weekend of overgrowing leaves and vines, tomato suckers, and ripped out all our broccoli and cauliflower.  They had issues, let's just leave it at that. Sadly I didn't take a lot of pictures of the work I did because quite frankly, I was frantically trying to get it done before a very busy weekend.  I'm glad I did as this week has been nothing but rain, so all my freshly groomed plants can soak it all in. Our first tomatoes are starting to turn red, mostly the Romas and heirloom cherry tomatoes.  I find that I like these heirloom versions much better than the standard grocery store ones.  Go figure.  :-) Hubby also has a baby watermelon.  Watermelon are notoriously hard to grow out here, so we'll see how he does, but so far, so good. Zucchini is ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Plant Problem #2: Peppers

My peppers are looking funkified.  I know it's a horrible picture, but I'm sure you can see those blackish spots. I'm not sure if they have picked up the previous plant herp, aka fungus, that the broccoli and cauliflower had.  Or maybe some other kind of blight?  I'm treating it with the fungicide and rolling with it.  I've come to accept the fact, long before we even started this whole gardening thing, that not every plant was going to be a winner.  If they don't make it, they don't make it.  C'est la vie.  For a dose of good news, we had our first zucchini harvest this week. I made lovely zucchini ribbons with a meat sauce for a couple lunches this week. In the background, you'll notice a zucchini accident (young one I broke while trying to trim off dead) and a pepper.  Apparently, you are supposed to remove the first peppers to encourage growth.  So I lopped him off and here's to hoping between that and the fungicide, the p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oh the Humanity or Things that Make Me Cry

Ok, I didn't cry, but I wanted to. We decided to start hardening our seedlings this weekend.  Basically this means putting them outside for periods of time to get them used to wind, climate, sun, whatever - the outside.  I put them on our deck's railing, since we were using our table to transplant the carrots and parsnip into pots. Side-note :  We do not expect the carrots and parsnip to make it.  Apparently, carrots and parsnips do not transplant well, but we started growing them before we knew that.  They are very spindly with fragile roots, so this doesn't surprise me one bit.  Live and learn.  But I still felt bad and wanted to give them a shot at life.  So they are in pots. Everyone was happy and healthy until about 5pm, when a storm tried to blow in.  And when I say blow, I mean blow.  Cuz this happened to my BEAUTIFUL lettuce, kale, and spinach seedlings - flop.  Dead. They were my strongest, healthiest looking seedli...
Post a Comment
Read more