Mid-Summer Garden Roundup

  beets! 
  Originally uploaded by emira

This year's veggie garden has definitely not lived up to last year. While I've got a bumper crop of tomatoes on the way -- yeah for south facing gardens! -- I've fallen behind on my ongoing rotation of the square foot garden. Turns out renovating your kitchen in Spring and then trying to finish a book during the summer is not good for garden productivity. Who knew?

Tonight, while Martin and Miss P made dinner (!), I got a couple of hours of garden time in. Moving the rainbarrel back in place, setting up the compost bin in a new home, weeding, pruning and tying up the tomatoes etc. As I was out there, I had a chance to mentally catalog the successes of this year's garden and where I'd like to improve next year. For the most part this has to do with my square foot beds, and not the rest of the yard.

Successes:

• Adding to the beds I already had (two 4x4 foot beds) with one 6ft x 1ft long bed for trellising beans and peas was a great idea. I've got a fair number of fresh beans (and peas) for kitchen use and it looks like i'll have a decent harvest of dried beans as well. I planted a number of different varieties and they seem to be quite different in their success rates. I'll give more detail on that later as we're just entering bean season in my yard.


• For the first time (in two years) I got a lovely bounty of beets. Last year I did a few subsequent beet plantings and each time came up with nothing but some tiny beet greens and maybe 2 baby beets. I'm not sure what I did differently this year, aside from generally neglecting them -- perhaps the secret to success? I'm only hoping that my replanting wasn't too late to get another crop. I'm drinking a lot of fresh beet/carrot/lemon juice these days so I'm appreciating the very local supply.


• My garlic, planted last Fall, was ready for harvest today and I had pretty much a 100% success rate in the back yard anyway. The ones planted in the side yard (facing east) seem a bit puny. I'll leave them another week and then dig them up. This means that I now have 42 bulbs of garlic hanging to dry in the garage. Want some? Unfortunately I  misjudged when these would be ready and bought 2 massive cloves from a farmer just yesterday. So roasted garlic, fresh garlic and perhaps some garlic pickles will be on the menu here over the next while.


• My chard and kale are winners again this year, I've got two strong healthy plants of each and am able to pick from them regularly for kitchen use, as they thrive. I've reseeded in hopes of having equally healthy plants for the Fall and am determined to have a cold frame this winter.


• Radishes are a sure fire winner back in my yard. And Miss P loves them. I simply can not keep on top of the demand.

Learning experiences/Things I'll change:

• I planted a few perennial crops in my squares and now they're taking over. Specifically: chives and sorrel. Both started from seed last year and now in need of constant pruning/thinning and general wrangling. I'm going to move them both out of the square foot structures because they could easily take over the entire space by next year I'm sure. It seems to me that ongoing crops -- hearty herbs like these -- are not well suited to the square foot approach, but let me know if you think differently.


• Why can't I grow dill? I just can't get it right. Out of all the seeds I plant this is always the least successful, and then just as it's succeeding it bolts on me. This annoys the heck out of me as I like having fresh dill but it's so delicate and doesn't last long once picked.


• The lettuce I bought this year hasn't been as successful as the varieties I had last year. I'm not sure if this is because of the weather this year (lots of rain, not as much sun) or the variety. I'll try it again next year I think, but will also probably try something different to see if one is more successful than the other. (By success I mean the number of seeds that actually germinate.)


• Everything is bolting. Last year my arugula was so bountiful. As was my cilantro. This year: bolt-mania. I'm not sure if this has to do with the weird weather patterns this year or my overall lack of attentiveness this year, but damn it's annoying. I love both of these plants and they seem to keep going from "nearly ready" to bolt-astic over night. I swear.


• As already mentioned, I've been a bit lame at keeping on top of replanting this year. I had the best of intentions, but then life/bookwriting/meltdowns/bad weather all got in the way. As such I've not taken full advantage of the whole square foot thing this year. Which kinda bums me out, but live and learn. Next year I'll be more committed to staying on top of things, plagued by memories of disappointment this year. I missed out entirely on a few things by just not staying on top of planting seasons, and I definitely cut things like my pea harvest and beans down by not being totally on the ball.

So, that's the state of the garden here this year. How's everybody else doing?