A Garden Year ~July~

 If you ever get heartsick and feel low after looking at other folks' gardens - real and unreal, Pinterest and drive by garden envy, mine is going to make you feel great. You are going to feel so good about your garden that you might even feel sorry and come over to help me clean up mine.

SAD sad sad

That's OK, life happens, and of course since I resolved to record my garden year this would have to be the most trying one! We had a family meeting and made a heart rendering decision to let a few things go. The garden was one of them. I felt betrayed by my family and made sure I pouted about it for a while too. But, other things have taken priority; more important things, I guess, judging by the vote.
At this point I am not going to have a winter garden. This will be a good time to plan to build up the soil, maybe plant a cover crop and rethink the hoophouse/winter garden design. Those are very important as I do have poor soil in a few places.

In spite of the serious and premeditated neglect it is actually going to produce a few wonderful things that only hard work and sweat can!

Cabbage butterfly worm free kale - Amazing!

Just the beginning of tomato loveliness!

My midsummer notes ~

Dont:

• plant the beets and chard in the front without building the soil. Or just stick with flowers - looks great anyhow.
• plant anything on the south edge until soil is built up.

• plant so many peas unless we plan to sell them.

• bother with bush beans anymore! Pole beans are easier to pick, cleaner - no mud, taste better (Kentucky Wonders are hands down my favorite!), and manage well with overgrown weeds, etc.
• bother planting anything in the SE corner- way too shady
• expect squash to grow under 3' of weeds

• plant the tomatoes so close together - they need to breath and it harbors disease etc.

Softneck for braiding as well as some good size hardneck

Do: 

• Keep the growing of garlic!

(I will keep adding to this list as I think of things)

This was just not the year for squash. Even my replantings did not want to bother coming up. So, there is a downside to a lovely cool summer! Unhappy squash, peppers, and I probably wont expect alot from my sweet potatoes.

Scarlett Runner Lima Beans and picked Provider bush beans

Easy picking pole beans and kids

A Garden Year ~January~

     

This is one of my favorite times of the year to "garden". Curled up in front of the wood stove with a pile of seed catalogs; there are no weeds, bugs, or four footed beasts to worry me, I can plan upon plans. I thought I might try and challenge myself to keep it together and follow through with those plans upon plans and journal our garden month by month. If you are a long time gardener you know that it can be a year around activity. Especially if the #1 plan is to eventually garden all the four seasons. I feel like we might have a few of the right tools to get going with this ~ now I'm ready to journal about it!

  January: I went through all my seeds saved from last year and I am extremely pleased with the amount I did managed to save and I had two friends share seeds with me. I am new at this, my methods a bit naive, but I'm learning. One of my book purchases this year will be a seed saving hand book of sorts, I want to be more confident in the quality of my seeds. Anyhow, I still will need to make a seed order: carrots, beets, lettuces, we ate all of our green beans, a few annual herbs, and a few perennials that I am ready to start in a permanent bed. I'm very set with pepper seeds, tomatoes, kale, okra, squash (winter, summer, cucumbers and melons) etc. that I can get excited about.

    Something my aunt told me of when her 6 little ones where young: in those days all our life revolved around food. I feel like that now. Our lives revolve around meal time, how and where I can buy a bigger bag to save and make it last longer, next year I'll grow more of this and that, how can we have fresh greens year around, lets build a root cellar to hold it all...

  My goal is to try and have the around the year fresh food. Utilize what we learned and get the hoop house up again. Properly grow it and stuff it all into the root cellar. Using winter gardening to supplement the fermenting, canning, drying, cold storage equaling lowering our dependency on the grocery store, a better balanced diet, health for my family, and saving money. That's the plan anyway, now lets see how far we get this year.

  As far as green things go: this month around the 31st I plan to start onions and leeks in flats - a new thing for me. I was astounded how much I ended up paying for onion plants last year, I think I'll take my chances, growing the varieties I want for a fraction of the cost.
  I also have one and a half of a sweet potato salvaged from our harvest that I'm growing in the window. I have done this before: by letting it grow wild I keep snapping off  8'' pieces and letting them take root in another jar. By spring I hope to have a large collection of rooted sprigs - in the back of my I'm wondering though if I'm loosing diversity by only having starts from two different potatoes. I'll find out. I love having something green to look at this time of year.

  I'm so thankful that our basement-finish project this summer didn't ace me out of my planting wall. That worked out so well last year. But trying to remember where I stuffed all the hardware will be a different story.