January! It's garden dreaming time. A few pictures showing the progression of our garden over 2022:
March
June
July
Happily, I took panorama shots of the yard and gardens a few times last year. I wish I had remembered to do it every month. I did get many different wide shots of different spots, it's fun to see how everything progressed and changed. The shots below get lower because once the tree above starts to fill in, it can block some of the view.
March
May
July
August
September
October
Wins and successes this year include:
- the seed starting was a big success!
- a decent batch of radishes
- lots of good herbs, my favorite being lemon thyme
- some tomatoes, especially liked the Black Strawberry cherry toms
- a small crop of potatoes, our first, encouraging toward doing more next season
- a few nice zucchinis
- lots of good lettuce
- pink (edible) pea flowers
- the cupcake cosmos
- pink thunbergia vine, grew well but not in the best place to enjoy
- dried some lavender, dried some lemon thyme
- many beautiful flowers, including a couple of mixed packets for pollinators, etc.
Some fails:
- dismal pumpkins, both plants died before any fruit
- not nearly as many zucchinis, tomatoes or peas as previous year
- not nearly the basil crop we have had the last few years; I was hoping to make weekly pesto!
- some lovely cucumber vines but never enough fruit to pickle
- bean plants - a few starts but not enough fruit for a meal
- our late summer beet crop was apparently too late and we had nothing but greens
Black Strawberry tomatoes
double columbines
pink dahlias
white cupcake cosmos from Johnny's Seeds
For Mother's Day, my boys dug a big potato patch in some pretty hard ground, at least half a day's work! We turned it over, added some of our own compost, some we bought, and turned it over a few more times; dug trenches with big rows between for We bought two different kinds of potatoes, russet and Norland Red, and my youngest pulled a sprouting potato out of the pantry. We cut them and put them in a south facing window to cure and sprout. The only one that really had a decent set of eyes was the one from the pantry! but they all did have a bit before we planted them. The one from the pantry did very well, the Norlands did really well and had light purple flowers The russets had a few spuds but the big difference seemed to be which half of the patch got more sun.
So for next year, we will be 1. starting earlier with the potatoes. I am considering buying some in late February from the grocer's again, maybe just one or two. 2. Because it's better not to plant potatoes in the same bed in consecutive years, we are moving them to the regular garden area this year. 3. The potato patch from last year is going to be a big pumpkin patch, hopefully! The best pumpkin crop we ever had was back there, and shortly after that, we reseeded it with grass. Because we're already moving some things, we're going to move a few other things, like the compost.
I think I should pull back on the number of tomato plants because our use has changed and they take up a lot of space, but they are so fun to start and plant, so we'll see. I watched a Joe Gardener video (very late in the process) about starting carrots, so hoping for a better beet and carrot crop this spring.
I'm thinking about moving some old timers that perhaps would do better in a different spot.
Looking forward to good things growing soon. What are you planting this year?
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