What a summer! What a
growing season this year provided.
As you probably experienced there was a bit of a drought or lack of
normal rainfall this year. It provided
new challenges, of course there was the watering of the garden issue, but this
was easily solved by almost daily watering with drip lines. Drip lines resemble hoses, but they have
holes in them in order to water along the entire length of the hose. An unforeseen challenge was the moles.
Sometimes one doesn’t realize what is living in their dirt
until the resident starts leaving obvious signs of destruction. Moles like water, so when there isn’t the
usual rainfall, and you are watering in concentrated areas with your ever so convenient
drip lines, the aforementioned critter takes up residence in your garden
beds. So one morning you wake up, head
outside to water, and you notice that one of the strawberry plants is looking a
little sad and brown around the edges, so you touch it and it comes up in your
hand and it has no roots, none. You’re probably
having an additional thoughts right now with the mention of strawberries, “They
grow strawberries, I didn’t get any.”
Late spring we planted strawberries.
The moles ate a few plants, but for the most part they look awesome, and
will be ready next season 2013. The fact
that they did so well, without much water and with moles chopping at their
feet, I’d count it as a success and look forward to partaking of them.
The moles didn’t completely destroy the strawberry patch,
however they did annihilate the melons, cucumbers, and squashes. These are all planted in mounds, and due to
the bugs that enjoy eating them, we plant them outside of our garden, thus they
were watered directly in their mound, providing an exact spot of water under
their roots for the moles to enjoy. Much
effort was put in this garden and to the aid of their survival, to no
avail. On a happy note, we did catch
some of the moles and served them justice for their deeds.
I didn’t start this letter in mind with telling you all of
our hardships, I did however want to thank you for supporting us, and I wanted
to share what I’d consider this years successes, like developing a small
strawberry patch. As one new to big
scale gardening, I call it gardening because we do this by hand and shovel, no
large equipment is used, I love ordering seeds.
As an artist I am a huge sucker for seed catalogs with beautiful
pictures. So instead of just red large
tomatoes, I ordered seeds and grew orange, yellow, pink, and red tomatoes. Some were striped, others were multicolored,
there were small ones, medium ones, and large ones. The only ones I was disappointed in, and was
a complete sucker for their beautiful picture, was a tomato called orange with
purple smudge. These tomatoes look so
beautiful, their bright orange flesh, kissed on top with a purple smudge. Here in my garden they were a small/medium
tomato with brown smudge, or spotty brown.
They looked horrible. They tasted
fine, but not how my imagination had played them out upon placing my eyes on
them. I’m forever learning, both about what I fall
for and growing.
Other successes, well, I like to try to grow things only
three times and then I move on. This
year I had my third try with Echinacea, parsnips, lemon grass, and salad mixes,
all successfully grown. My previous
salad mixes were hard to tell from weeds, so with the success of Jed and Amy’s
mixes, I borrowed their blend. Sweet
potatoes, we grew for the first time last year, they did well, it was hard to
share. This year was the same story, but
triple the amount.
Garlic, it’s a bit pricy to get going. The average pack of seeds cost between
$1.50-$3.00, whereas garlic is $9 for five bulbs. Break up each bulb, plant all 45 cloves, get
40 new bulbs, need to save half to plant next season, and you’ve got 20 bulbs
to go around. However, garlic is easy to
grow and repels most pests, I only lost one to a mole. Then I learned about garlic scapes, which I
used like asparagus, but enjoyed the intense garlic flavor, yum! Due to their success I’ve brought six new
varieties and have planted 903 bulbs for next year.
Other successes, hatching our own chicks. When we attempted to play mother hen, it
didn’t go to well. We had two mama’s sit
on eggs and together they hatched 14 new chickens/roosters. They’ve all matured to the point where they
lay eggs, now due to the strange fall we are having, freezing then 80 degrees,
they’ve slowed down a ton. We’ve gone
from 18 eggs a day to 0. So if you have
been waiting for eggs we apologize, there just aren’t any.
Fruit, there was so much fruit this year, thanks to my Dad
for having the hindsight to plant over 60 fruit trees over the years for us all
to enjoy. He intentionally planted the
peaches so that we could all enjoy them for two straight months. We’d clear one variety and the next week we
had another variety ready for the pickin’.
I do love peaches!
More success was had in the herb garden. Getting herbs going can be tricky, so many of
them have the tiniest seeds, but as you all have witnessed and partaken of,
once they are growing they really grow.
Five types of basil, dill, thyme, sage, pineapple sage, tarragon,
marjoram, Italian parsley, oregano, and mints, my favorite being chocolate
mint. I hope that some of you had the
hindsight to preserve some of them. I
dried tons of herbs and gave them as Christmas presents, and made and froze
pesto to enjoy in soups. This gives me a
little taste of summer in the winter that I love! A flavorful treasure from the garden during
the off season.
Thanks for your support and your desire to enjoy locally
grown produce! Your belief in what we
are doing keeps us growing, keeps us weeding, keeps us watering, keeps us
harvesting, so a deep thank you! We look
forward to growing for you next year. If
you have any requests for something you looked forward to and didn’t receive,
please let us know and we will let you know if it is possible. As always we appreciate referrals, so if you
know of anyone that would also enjoy home grown produce please send them our
way.
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