Last Year’s Garden and Catch-up
Below are images from last year’s garden (2023). Wow. It has been almost 8 months! Ah well… I had been so busy and I no longer seem to notice the time flying past!
The garden shown below is changed. Again. Yes, we moved the cement blocks and rearranged the garden. As well as the garden performed, the plants did not like the narrow beds. What I ended up doing was doubling the width, yet cut down the number of beds. Surprisingly, I have more square footage than last year. I also moved the arches for vining vegetables to the east-side of the beds. The vegetables need a little more sun. The uncovered ends will be shaded by time the hottest part of the day hits and when they need relief. I will take photos this spring after uncovering the beds in March, preparing them for April planting for the vegetables that prefer cooler weather, like cabbage, onions and peas.
I will not be doing my starts until March this year. The end of February was way too early for our growing area. I will also be careful about how many tomato plants I do. The burlap sacks worked, but the tomatoes were not half as prolific as normal. The varieties I tried out I did not care for either. The burlap sack bottoms? Completely rotted out at the end of the season. I thought they might, but I wanted to try them.
The peas loved their new area. Other angles show they were taller than the arches and did not follow the arch, they stood straight up. laughing… The tomato sacks are to the left at the “back” of the image.
You can see how tall the peas grew here. The arch is about 6 feet at its highest point and the peas were a good foot to foot and a half taller. The lettuces were amazing, though we had to deal with ground squirrels shortly after we took this photo. One managed to eat half of a lettuce before we ran it off. sigh…
Here you can see happy peas. The celery did the best ever this year. I bought an old variety instead of the usual Tall Utah that did much better for me. I also grew Celery Leaf, dried it and it is ready to use for seasoning. It grew well enough I will not have to plant more for a few years. The scallions (green onions) also did well.
The cabbages ended up doing okay. Eventually. Thankfully is was a cool summer. The squash grew, but I had to hand-pollinate these plants and… well… nothing from them. There were no female flowers. The squash out by the potatoes did give us squashes. This year, it will be the strawberries in one wide bed, onions in the other the the open area now has our raspberry and black raspberry bushes. They loved the move last fall.
In 2022, I planted poppies. It was a weird year and none came up. In 2023, a few popped up. I will be replanting them again this early spring. They need at least a week of cold to freezing temps to germinate. The nasturtiums were very thick in 2023 too. I did not get any photos. They lasted through 2 snows before they finally crumpled up.
Lastly, the electro-culture wands. How did they help? Most of my vegetables took off, except for the squashes, but those were a pollination problem. The strawberries finally took off too. We had such a problem with strawberries the years before. I found many others did too. Even if the wands did nothing, I loved having the copper and crystals all over, sparkling in the light. Me and my shinies, yes?
That is it for now. I do have recipes and happy-hands-at-home photos to go with them. I will post some in the future. Last year was still good, even with the squash thing. I feel this year will be even better. You all have a great rest of the winter. For the first time in my life, I am way past winter and cannot wait for spring. Take care!
My Garden and Life
Long Time, No Post
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