Here is a pile of the last of the vegetables harvested from our yard. These beautiful veggies became a celebrated and much appreciated (at least by me and Matt) curry on rice.
I thought this would be a good time to reflect and document a bit about this year's gardening adventure.
Overall...two thumbs way up. I jumped in deep and kept myself afloat. There were a few disappointments which is to be expected I suppose, but I learned a lot and am already looking forward to next year.
I think that my best decision was to plant a lot of flowers in among the vegetables. It really helped keep weeds down and as plants finished their cycles (or got blight), the flowers were still there looking beautiful. Zinnias are still blooming out there.
Here are a few other notes for me to remember next year:
* Don't bother trying to plant melons. Our yard is too small and melons need a lot of hot sun and rich soil.
* More snap peas and bush beans. The girls love them and watching them eat something green makes me smile.
* Try to establish more herbs. The lavender and rosemary were too crowded by the big leafy parsley and I didn't get anything from them. We also need to add oregano, thyme, and sage.
* Love the Fairytale Eggplant, plant them again. I am not a big eggplant fan but these were great.
* More onions.
* Twelve basil plants was a good number.
* Pumpkins spread a lot. Don't put them so close to the raspberries.
* Squirrels are good for one thing and one thing only...planting sunflowers. We had beautiful sunflowers popping up all over the place because those pests couldn't keep away from our birdfeeders in the early spring.
* Speaking of squirrels (and cats), I want to try this netting technique that Green Frieda has on her raised beds. Our bucket of rocks to throw from the back porch and loud hooting and hollering just didn't cut the mustard this year.
There are many more ideas floating around in my gardening brain about how things will go next year but I guess we'll have to find out next spring which stick around and get executed. For now I am satisfied with the 12 cups of pumpkin puree, many servings of pesto, grated zucchini, and berries that fill our freezer.
How did you do?