What I learned in the 2023 gardening season

Walk in, portable greenhouse

Saturday, November 18, 2023

Late fall is a good time to reflect back on the 2023 edible gardening season and capture what you learned and any changes you want to make in your garden for the upcoming season.  If you wait until spring, you may forget key things you want to try in 2024.    This is my 14th year doing edible gardening.  I learn new things every single gardening season.  

Here are my learnings for this growing season, so far.  

1.  Marigolds are supposed to deter cabbage moths.  My husband likes marigolds and they also deter deer if you get the really fragrant ones.  I will try to interplant my sprouting broccoli with marigolds next year in addition to planting them around the perimeter of my garden beds.

2.  Pole beans need to be fertilized monthly.  I had read that legumes fix nitrogen on their own roots so there wasn't a need to fertilize.  My pole beans were not doing the best this year so I used an organic fertilizer on each of the pots.  All varieties started producing many beans.  Next year, I will fertilize all my pole beans monthly.

3.  You can grow indeterminate tomatoes upside down in 5 gallon buckets.  We read that determinate were the ones to grow using this approach but tried my husband's favorite indeterminate.  We had to do some tweaking on the approach over the summer, but they did very well!  We will do it again next year.  We will use fresh soil, half bagged garden soil with some of our clay soil at the bottom.  Continue to use a drip watering system that waters for a short period of time twice per day.  Keep the plants trimmed to 5' in length; any longer and the center of the vine dies out.

4.  Read that once a tomato starts turning color that the fruit no longer takes nutrients from the vine so you can go ahead and pick to ripen on the counter without effecting the flavor.  I was picking them at this time any way to keep the critters from eating them, but happy to know that the nutrition and taste aren't effected!

5.  Our soil is alkaline to begin with.  I grow most of my edibles in my flower beds which are mulched.  Mulch is also alkaline so my edible garden bed just keeps on getting more alkaline.  Most veggies like a pH between 6.5-7.5.  Since ours was bumping up against a pH of 8.0, we added sulfur this spring at a rate of 4 pounds per 1,000 square feet of garden to try and lower it by about 0.5.  Our pH did not seem to change at all.  In reading, clay soils require more sulfur to make a change.  Also recommend that you add amendments in the fall as it takes some time to move the pH depending on the type of sulfur.  Will add 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet to the beds this fall and re-test in the spring.  Will also go ahead and add phosphate, too.  Will add nitrogen right before we mulch to keep it in the soil.

6.  Cock's comb, Love Lies Bleeding, Heavenly morning glory, Hummingbird Vine and Red Malabar spinach are self-seeding well.  Can just replant volunteers when they come up; no need to start or buy these.

7.  Warsaw spaghetti squash died from disease early in the season; only got 2 fruits from the vine; was supposed to be disease resistant.  Mashed Potato squash died before it produced any fruits.  Galilee spinach bolted very early and was supposed to be very heat tolerant.  May try the spaghetti and Mashed Potato squash once more.

8.  2 rounds of planting tomatoes works well.  I started one round in early May and a second in June.  When the May plants started dying down in August, the June plants started producing.  Will likely continue to do this for at least a couple of varieties that I want to keep in fresh eating.

9.  Morning glory and Moonflower vines should not be in a pot with anything else.  The support trellis for a potted morning glory vine should be put into the ground as the vine just gets too heavy for the trellis to remain upright in a pot.

10.  Removing tomato leaves with spots did seem to help the vines keep producing.  Need to prune as well to keep the vines from falling over the tomato cages.  When the vines get really long, they die out in the middle so you don't gain anything by letting them grow too long.  Also makes it easier to harvest, keeps the greenery off the ground to reduce chance of disease and makes it harder for varmints to snatch the fruits for themselves.

11.  Tried fertilizer stakes this year.  I am sure they are more expensive than bagged fertilizer but are easier to get under cover than the granules.  To get the granules under cover, I have to pull back the mulch, sprinkle on the fertilizer and then move the mulch back over the fertilizer.  Will have both next year so when I think I am too busy to use the granular fertilizer, I can convince myself to just poke the stakes in.

12.  We got way too many tomatoes this season!  Will need to cut back significantly next year.  I filled the freezer and still have 40 more quarts of frozen tomatoes that I made into 47 pints of sauce; enough for the next 4 years!  We used about 11 per year over the last couple of years.

13.  I need to start documenting what I am putting in the freezer, drying and canning so I do a better job of not over planting.  I just went through the freezers and pantry and wrote what was in there for next year's edible garden planting adjustments.

14.  My peppers, eggplants and tomato seedlings got a really slow start this summer.  We had a wonderful warm up and then a really chilly period.  I think this chilly weather put the brakes on growth and flowering.  I bought a walk in portable greenhouse this fall that I put my potted peppers and eggplants in to see how long I can extend the season as I do need more sweet peppers for salsa and more Anaheim peppers to dry for chili powder.  I'll use it again in the spring to see if I can jump start all three varieties next summer.  I learned in researching which one to get that clear plastic lets more sunlight in.  I went with a clear plastic since I am using it for the chillier months.

I'm sure there were more learnings that I am forgetting about.  I think I will designate a page at the back of my garden notebook to jot down what I am learning so next year I have a more complete list.  Guess that is 15 things I learned this gardening season!