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| Saturday, October 28, 2023 |
October is the ideal time to think back over the spring and summer gardening season and capture what went well, what didn't and what you want to do for your garden next year while the garden season is fresh in my mind. I like to capture what varieties did well, what I planted too much or too little of, including the specific names before I forget. I am forever trying to make the garden more productive and enjoyable. I also like to make notes of what I want to learn more about over the winter.
Here are my reflections on this year's garden............
Overall
In general, the garden did well in the spring, was very slow to start producing summer veggies, and my fall seed starting was not stellar. We actually had a real spring for the third year in a row. Usually, the season changes from winter to summer like a flick of a switch. This year, we had a crazy warm up at the end of winter, then back to chilly temperatures and a slow increase back to normal temperatures in June. The cool temperatures are great for lettuces and snow peas.
This year, I was again gardening exclusively in the back ornamental beds because we are still working on the addition to our house. I expanded from just the garden that is mostly shaded by a hickory tree to also gardening in the bed by the new basement retaining wall. I found out last year that hickory trees are like walnut trees and likely the reason that the summer crops didn't do well in the garden bed next to it.
I put the sun loving tomatoes and basil in the basement bed since it gets more sun, the beans, cucumber, peppers, and eggplant in pots around the bed by the hickory tree, as far into the sun as possible. One Trombetta squash went in the hickory tree bed and my other three squash vines went in the potato boxes.
There were high points and not so great turn outs for the season. Just your typical edible garden season!
The good
The lettuce, cultivated dandelions, bay laurel, sorrel, Egyptian walking onions, basil, celery, Trombetta squash, garlic chives, beans, chard and container tomatoes did well. Greens were the standouts in the spring and Red Malabar spinach, Trombetta squash, and tomatoes planted upside down in 5 gallon buckets in the summer garden.
I have been growing Red Malabar, Chinese Multicolor Spinach amaranth, Giant Leaf sweet mustard, Cock's Comb, Heavenly Blue morning glory and African Nunum basil the past few years. They grow well in my garden and self-seed. I just look for volunteers coming up and transplant them to their summer spot. Next year, I need to do more thinning of all these volunteers, except the Chinese Multicolor Spinach, as I had many more than I needed this year.
I had one Trombetta summer squash planted in the garden bed and that was plenty for fresh eating plus having many winter squash in the cellar. Its vines went both directions 20 feet. It requires a lot of space. The vines were disease free again this season. I'll continue to grow them for their versatility, productivity and disease resistance.
My raspberry plant did well. It's an ever bearer and it gave berries through summer and fall.
I had lots of self-seeded Cock's Comb plants, Hummingbird vine and Heavenly Blue morning glory vines to transplant around the garden. There were several zinnias that also sprouted here and there. I expect I will have many Cactus zinnia volunteers next year from this year's plantings that I started from seed. The Cactus zinnias were all different colors and very large flowers. Zinnias are native to the Southwest US and do well in Midwest gardens.
The okay
I grew pole beans and a bush cucumber again in pots this year. The beans were slow to produce and were not giving alot of bean pods until I fertilized the pots. I had always read that beans didn't need to be fertilized because the roots fix the nitrogen the vines need. Since I was growing in pots, they needed the additional help from fertilizer to get the plants the nutrition to grow and produce pods.
I went with Blauhilde purple pole snap beans that are resistant to fungal disease and 1500 Year Old pole beans that can be eaten fresh or kept as dried beans. I also grew an early Japanese winged bean that has beautiful blue flowers. It takes until August for winged beans to start producing pods. I didn't see any disease during the season on any of the pole beans. I had enough fresh pods to put up a few quarts of frozen beans.
I also grew Christmas Speckles lima beans because the beans are such a pretty white and red. I got 2 flushes of dried beans from Christmas Speckles. The second flush is just beginning to dry on the vine. As the pods turn brown, I pick and shell them. I leave them to dry on the counter for a few weeks before putting away in sealed quart jars. For dried beans, you have to plant many vines to get a decent harvest!
I had a heck of a time getting the cucumber seeds to sprout and grow. It took 3 times to get a vine going. I did not get many fruits even though I fertilized monthly and kept it well watered. I did get enough for the pickles I needed to take us to next summer. There are 2 cucumbers right now that are harvestable that can make another jar of pickles. I'll pick them before our forecasted hard freeze Monday night.
I will grow my beans, cucumbers and okra next year in the ground as they do better in the garden bed than in pots.
I grew Anaheim peppers, sweet peppers, and eggplant in pots as well. The peppers were slow to get going but filled with fruits later in summer. I got 2 full flushes of peppers on each plant. The eggplants were not productive this year. I let the self-seeded morning glory vines grow in the same pot as the eggplants. The morning glories are just too hungry for the eggplant to thrive. Next year, I will pull all the morning glory volunteers from the pots and just keep petunias as the eggplant's pretty companion plant. Both peppers and eggplants usually do very well in pots. Right now, both the eggplant and pepper plants are loaded with fruits. I will cover them on Monday to try to protect them from the hard freeze they are calling for to give them time to ripen. May be a safer bet to just bring in the garage.
I interplanted snow peas, Oregon Sugar Pod II, Little Purple Snowpea, Avalanche, in the pots with the eggplant and peppers in late spring. They all did okay. I think they had the same issue as the pole beans; I need to fertilize the pots when I plant the seeds and then again about a month after they sprout.
The tomatoes that were planted in the basement flower bed did okay. I was given 10 of the 14 plants. 4 died out in August. I still have 5 producing. Only 2 are full of tomatoes. The others have just a few. The tomato plants grown upside down in 5 gallon buckets did pretty well. We planted Brandywine, Black Prince and salad tomatoes in the 5 gallon buckets. They were all indeterminate. What we learned is to keep the vines trimmed back to about 5 feet in length and fertilize often. If left to continue to grow, the center of the vines die out. My husband set up a timer for watering a short period of time, twice a day and that worked well
I was able to put many quarts in the freezer from the combination of those planted in the garden bed and the upside down tomato set up. We will do both again next year.
The bad
I tried a new spinach, Galilee, that was supposed to be heat tolerant. Unfortunately, Galilee spinach bolted quickly and had few harvestable leaves. I will not try it again as it was a relatively cool spring so spinach should have done well.
Trombetta, Mashed Potato, and Warsaw spaghetti squash in the potato boxes did not do well. Likely was disease spread by the squash bugs. I got only 2 fruits off the spaghetti squash and the Trombetta. Did not get a single fruit off the Mashed Potato squash vine. I will give them another try next season. Typically, I'll try something twice and if they don't do well twice, I move to another variety.
I didn't do a good job of keeping the garden deer and rabbit deterrents refreshed in my iris bed over the spring and early fall so they kept getting ate by critters. When they get eaten to the ground, it seems I do not have nearly as many flowering the next year. I went ahead and fertilized this fall and will fertilize in the spring to help compensate for being ate to the ground, I hope!
My fig tree and my rosemary made it through the winter but was killed after a late winter warm up followed by a spring frigid spell. My garden chives did not come back up even though my garlic chives thrived. My 4 year old Cayenne pepper plant died in late summer; not sure why.
The sprouting broccoli volunteers came back again this year. It grows robustly and the greens taste great in salads through all 4 seasons. The only drawback to it is the worms that come starting in July. I should cut them off at the first of July and start them again in the fall to miss the worms, but I don't the heart to so the leaves gets many holes in them in late summer. Radish plants are supposed to repel cabbage moths so I'll try those next year with the volunteer sprouting broccoli.
I didn't have the best luck in starting lettuce and spinach in pots this summer. I have several small lettuce plants sprouted from fall planting. They are about 4" tall right now. Hopefully, they will get up close to full size this month so we will have lettuce to harvest through the winter.
Winter learning
I have bought a 6' x 8' walk in, portable greenhouse. We assembled it today. I am going to move my potted peppers and eggplants into it tomorrow as they are calling for a hard freeze Monday night. I hope that extends the harvest by a couple of months. Both got a late start this summer and I need more sweet peppers to freeze and chili peppers to make chili powder for the winter.
I may also try a cold frame this winter. I'd sow lettuce and spinach seeds in it in January to get a jump on spring harvests.
Next year's garden
We are working on getting our garden beds in. We are putting our mixed edible and ornamental garden bed back on the south and west sides of the house which gets much better sun and is well away from any hickory trees! We saved the garden topsoil so we could put the organic rich soil back so we are not starting from zero. I have alot of compost that I have made to to spread on the beds before mulching this fall. Fingers crossed!
Here is my garden plan for next year:
Blauhilde pole snap beans, 1500 Year Old bean vine and Christmas speckles lima beans around one trellis
Urizun Japanese winged bean (either in a pot or the garden bed)
Red Burgundy okra (in the garden bed)
6 tomato plants-large paste (Italian Red Pear), slicers(Cherokee Purple and an orange/yellow), a small fruit (Chocolate Pear), a storage tomato (Yellow Keeper or other) and an early variety like Rubee Dawn
2 eggplant-Casper or Rotanda Bianca, Rosa, Shiromaru, or Amadeo (in pot)
1 bush cucumber (in garden bed)
1 summer squash-Trombetta since it is resistant to vine borer, disease and squash bugs
2 winter squash-Warsaw Spaghetti and Mashed Potato
Perennial onions-potato onion type and sweet Egyptian Walking onion variety
Potatoes in the potato boxes
Snow peas in pots with peppers and eggplants
Dragon Tail radish in pot by sprouting broccoli
Hilton Chinese cabbage (2 plants)
New Zealand and Malabar spinach in pot (1 each)
Lettuce (Royal Oakleaf, Grand Rapids, Butter King, Bronze Beauty, Celtic, Forellenschluss, Giant Blue Feather, Yedikule, Red Sails) and spinach in pots
Greens that stay sweet in summer-Orach, Amaranth, Chard-Perpetual Spinach and Fordhook, Chinese Multicolor Spinach, Purple Stardust Iceplant, Komatsuna, Giant Leaf mustard
Herbs-Dill, Basil (Nunum, Genovese, Cardinal), Cilantro, Lion's Ear, Rosemary, Parsley, Sage, Chervil, Pink Celery
Sweet and hot peppers-variety to make chili powder, jalapeño, and 2 sweet pepper plants
No watermelon, beets, heading cabbage or broccoli
Cantaloupe-Tigger melon
Flowers-zinnias, alyssum, marigolds, Cock's Comb, peach hollyhocks, Pride of Madeira, blue morning glory, Love Lies Bleeding, Moonflower
I will also need to thin my celery, Red Malabar spinach and Giant mustard plants out as they come up next year.
I have to be stern with myself about what I will not plant. In the past 3 years, I planted much less than usual and had plenty for fresh eating and preserving. My eyes are always bigger than my space or need!
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