How does your garden grow?

My neighbor ripped out the hideous bushes between our yards in the spring, and I put in a little garden that runs right down our family's side of the property line. I have been thinking that it would be a good idea to make some notes about what went well and what to do differently next year, and you, dear readers, are the victims of my compulsion lucky recipients of my acquired wisdom.

At the north end of the garden I put in a forsythia bush, because it seemed a little weird to me to have a vegetable garden so visible. Bah, I now say. Maybe if it were more obvious to people that a tomato grows in dirt instead of arising from the scum on supermarket shelves like a vegetal Venus, we wouldn't have so many crazy food issues in this country. I am moving the forsythia bush this fall so I can plant more veggies next year. (Any tips on when to do that without stressing it? I do love forsythia.)

I put in six tomato plants, three cherry and three plum. I couldn't believe, looking at my spindly seedlings, that I would really need to put them 3-4 FEET apart -- I just couldn't see ahead to the sprawling behemoths they would become. It's amazing, isn't it, to get all that life from one speck-sized seed? They are cranking out fruit, too, all six of them. I am going to pick up some tomato cages on clearance this fall, because the stakes-and-twine approach just didn't cut it. I practically need a machete to pick those tomatoes in the middle

In the spaces between baby tomato plants I put leeks, summer savory, and rosemary. Before next year I want to read up on herb gardening. Specifically, I'm wondering about putting all the herbs in the part-shade portion of my garden even though their packages say "full sun." My summer savory and my cilantro went to seed in about fifteen minutes.

Just south of the tomatoes, in the last bit of full sun, I put in six pepper plants: three Hungarian wax, three jalapeño. I should have split the jalapeño three-pack with my neighbor.

All of those things just went straight into the existing dirt. I also did a square-foot gardening bed, to which I added vermiculite, peat moss, and compost. (It was a hassle and I don't see a difference in the health of the plants in the bed.) There I planted radishes, peas, beets, carrots, onions, wax beans, green beans, mixed lettuce, and a half-dozen herbs. I will not regale you with every detail, lest you wander away to do something more interesting like watch an eggplant ripen, but here's the memo for next year: those green beans went berserk. They grew like kudzu, pulling down and devouring the pole tepee I put under them (I exaggerate only slightly -- it's a splintered wreck now). They killed the baby beets because they made so much shade. They need more space because by golly they are bent on garden-wide hegemony. I also want to plant more peas, so I can stand in the garden in June and eat them ALL ALL ALL like an off-the-wagon Twelve Stepper (it's really tough to find a Pea Addicts Anonymous meeting in this town), along with a second wave of those peppery juicy piercingly pink radishes.

The SFG bed is in part shade between our houses, and the shade deepens as the rooflines rise. In the southernmost end of the garden strip I planted zucchini (twice), chard, more onions, and rhubarb. Zucchini was a bust. (Who fails at zucchini?) I suspect something amiss with the seeds, since I never got one to sprout indoors or out. Chard, on the other hand, has been a roaring success, bearing all summer. Maybe next year I'll make it a chard-y lettuce-y bed and buy some different zucchini seeds. I'll need to move the onions, since months of growth got me only little almond-sized guys.

The rhubarb is an exercise in optimism: I should bake my first rhubarb pie in 2012. (I can probably harvest enough to fill out a strawberry-rhubarb pie next summer, though.) Next year I'd like to put in some asparagus, to aim even further into the future. I like the idea of planting something that will feed my children all those months from now. I don't know what we'll be doing when the rhubarb is ready, but I love to see its little leaves curling out, getting ready now for a future I can't see.

Comments

[Amy F]

I had a lot of the same experiences with my gardens this year. I transplanted rhubarb in 2 years ago and this was the first year I got pretty good harvesting out of it. I have the same goofy forward-thinking ideas and put in asparagus this year (the garden store said it was in its second year so I can pick a little next year, at least).

We started a community garden plot this year with full sun (as opposed to our backyard garden, which gets 6 hrs light at the most) and by golly, you aren't kidding about the tomato spacing. It's a jungle out there. We're drowning in cherry tomatoes and I forced myself to can the bigger ones at 3.5 wks postpartum so they wouldn't start rotting.

We do pole beans and bush beans, but the bush beans act like pole beans and climb everywhere. Next year I think we'll just go for pole beans where we at least plan for somewhere to go. We use SFG's approach to pole beans, with 6 foot pipes to climb up.

[Melanie B]

We had a similar experience with our beans. Well one bed of them. We planted two trellises and the one in the center bed went crazy like yours. The other one gets a bit more shade in the afternoons and never took off.

We failed at zucchini too! The seeds that we stuck in the ground did sprout. They produced lots and lots of flowers. And there were plenty of bees bumbling about every morning when I went out. Nonetheless, we only had one little wimpy squash from all those blossoms. And it withered on the vine before it got more than five inches long. We also got three cucumbers and no pumpkins.

[Lilian]

Wow! That's awesome, please do more gardening blogging, ok? With all the details and all, and photos too (I ask too much, I KNOW!). I'm at peace now with my impossibility of planting a real garden, but I'm excited about my four tomato plants in pots!

[SE]

Are you suggesting forsythia bushes are part of the problem? ;-)

[JaneC]

For the herbs, you might try an herb spiral. It's a good way to get a lot of microclimates in a small amount of space. Also, they can be made to look pretty cool.

[Isabella Baby]

Well, my peppers are doing great but my cucumbers are starting to dry up. I don't think my cucumbers have a disease or some sort but I think it has something to do with the weather! Rain now, hot weather later, rain now, rain harder later! IT CERTAINLY WILL KILL ALL MY CROPS IN MY GARDEN!

[rose plated]

Your garden sounds great. I want to see some pictures on your next post. My garden is really doing well. I also transplanted some of my crops and after several months they really grow healthy and produce more especially my strawberries and grapes.

[Melanie Large]

OH. Our zucchinis didn't make it too! LOL. Plus some of our tomatoes. I thinkit has something to do with the weather. The extreme heat and rain makes the soil and the plants wither. Anyway, need to try again. I'm gonna try peppers this month.