The Summer Of Love: My Annual Garden Review For 2022
In a world where everyone has thousands of anxieties, I have only one big one: that I'm wasting time. That I'm inefficient. That I should get more done with the time available. It's why I'm so dang efficient, so bent on so many projects, why my brain can easily break down the number of mouse clicks an action will take and swiftly think of a way to cut at least two.
And this is what makes gardening such an infinite challenge for me: you get one shot each year... and that's it. And no matter how you use that time, you'll still win some and you'll still lose some. It's delightfully maddening.
In the spirit of always improving, in making sure that next year is at least incrementally better, I'm taking a look back at the 2022 gardening season and all of my lessons learned.
Our wedding took most of our energy. I personally think we did a great job at keeping all aspects of our wedding sane. Still, you get married in September, and July and August are basically shot. You add to that the decision to make your own dress and you can add bold, underline, and italic exclamation points to that sentence. I loved every moment of our wedding, to be clear, but I am thankful that I won't be doing it again anytime soon. The lesson learned: don't plan major life events in Spring. or Summer. Or Fall. Winter only please.
We still have major sun issues. When we built our garden we did it in the beauty of spring, when the trees were not yet full and the apples hadn't flowered. Which meant that we were largely unaware that the garden would, in a month or so, be like 90% shade and covered in apple blossoms. This was just a really dumb oversight - no question about it - and it's why you should always do some sun mapping of a location before you get started! While I was aware of this issue at the top of the garden season, and tried to plant accordingly, its is still causing us issues. For one, everything is grappling for the smidgen of sunlight, with corn stalks knocking over everything and squashes climbing on everything, just to get there. For two (is this how we say this?), with the increase in shade, the crops that require some heat just aren't getting enough to produce great yields - tomatoes, watermelons, green peppers, luffa. The lesson: we need to move the garden or take down trees. We've decided to do the latter this fall. I know that killing trees can be sad for some but actually, the forest is quite overgrown and hasn't been maintained, so we're hoping to serve two purposes, mindfully, on this one.
We used old seeds. Knowing that we had a lot going on this year, and trying to be frugal, we decided to use what we had. The seeds we had were packed for the 2021 season, and it was our understanding that they could generally be used but would have lower germination rates. Holy sh** was that an understatement. Right out of the gate, we had germination issues and ended up relying heavily on those items we could direct sow, like peas, beans, corn, and potatoes. We also bought a few plants - which is the opposite of frugal. They're like $4 each! I think from here on out we'll just be planning to buy new seeds or learn seed saving techniques so that we have new seeds to rely on. We're also starting to learn about the varieties we love and can manage, so I'm starting to feel like only a few seed packets a year can keep us quite happy.
I still didn't label things very well. We did a lot better this year - good enough to understand, at a high-level, which type of vegetable should pop up in an area. However, we like to try many varieties and it was immediately clear that our labeling system (popsicle sticks) wouldn't hold up to the level of detail we needed to add here if we really cared about varieties. It ultimately didn't matter a ton until it came to the corn. Here's what happened: I didn't label the corn varieties (obviously) and when our relatively crummy corn yield did pop up, we picked it, not really knowing that we were picking a popcorn corn that should have been dried on the stalk - boo. We ended up trying to dry this in the house (success is TBD) so all may be well if it all ends well. On the positive side, I also forgot that we had planted this really pretty pink and blue corn--so that, at least, gave us a positive surprise.
Other positives:
We tried soybeans for the first time and were relatively successful!
We did get further along in learning how to grow certain crops. We actually got lettuce this year, though it was very bitter. And our watermelon plants popped watermelons! They just, unfortunately, didn't grow enough, likely due to shade/heat issues. The fact that we got something about the size of my hands though - huge win.
Plans for this winter/next year:
We're going to get some trees knocked down ASAP. We have to for the garden and for the health of the property.
We're going to buy seeds earlier and smarter so that our starts are more successful. We're also going to amend how we start our seeds - more on this this winter/spring!
We're using green manure this fall and spring to augment our soil. I'm really excited to take this step and learn more!
Don't let me forget any of these!