Garden 2026 is Upon Us!

Our Garden - July 25, 2026

We're back at it for another season! This is our 13th year gardening in this particular spot. (12th if you don't count the year I seeded all the beds in flowers and just let it go.) Over those years, I have realized one important thing: I'm a lazy gardener. I really enjoy gardening...every now and then when the mood strikes me. I wish I was a spend-time-in-the-garden-everyday type of gal, but I'm not. This revelation is a good thing! It has led me to plan this year's garden with my laziness in mind. 

Nearly everything in this year's garden is as close to "set it and forget it" as I could get. I planted summer and winter squash, pumpkins, beans (three kinds), corn, melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, and garlic. I've weeded a couple of times, watered and fertilized, but overall I've only gone into the garden a couple times a week to look over its progress. 

Oh! I did plant radishes too and they turned out beautifully.

Most of the work on the garden was at the beginning of the season. Let's go back in time to the middle of May. Since I had no plans to plant hardy crops like chard, beets, or peas, there was no need to get out and clean up the garden any earlier. My general rule of thumb is to plant the garden on Memorial Day weekend. This year, since that fell on the earliest date possible, I actually waited until the next weekend. Back on May 10, however, I did go through and clear the garden beds of weeds and last year's detritus. I also repaired the upper extension of the garden fence. We added an extra four feet to the top of the fence last year in an effort to keep the deer out (click here to read about that). Over the winter, the wind and the weight of the snow broke many of the bamboo uprights, so I had to repair them in anticipation of this year's onslaught of deer.

The garden on May 10, ready for clearing and repairs.

Nearly three weeks later, I did the actual planting. Everything was from seed in the main garden. I did try to start some seeds indoors, but that was not as successful as in years past. That failure didn't effect me much, though, as I had not planned on transplanting anything into the garden beds in the first place. The first thing I did was dig into the compost bin. 

Mmmm compost!

Rather than add the compost broadly to all the beds, I targeted application to just where the seeds would be planted. I did a lot of digging, but it seemed like the most efficient thing to do.

Targeted composting.

Once that was all set, I put the seeds into the ground, watered them in, wished them luck ("Do your duty!"), took a picture, and walked away.

Not quite like walking away from an explosion. 

Over the next two weeks, all my little seeds started growing (except for one zucchini) and I occasionally pulled weeds to give them the best shot.

June 14

And two weeks after that, the little seedlings were bigger plants and I was weeding less.

June 29

A month after that, the garden is beautifully lush. The vegetable plants are easily out competing the weeds and we've started to harvest. After the radishes, our first fruits of the garden were patisson strie melange squash. The heirloom pattypan squash are fun and funky. They taste pretty good too.

They can be eaten as summer squash or left to become decorative gourds.

The tri-color garden beans have started to come in and we're on the verge of being overwhelmed by cucumbers (my favorite time of the year!).

Yesterday's haul.

My new favorite thing to grow is garlic. I had never considered planting it in the past. For some reason, I thought it was too complicated or too much work. But, in the fall of 2024, we planted garlic just to have scapes the next spring. We ended up actually getting a few bulbs of garlic. I replanted eight of the cloves last fall and all of them grew! We had a lovely, tiny side dish of scapes one night for dinner and, just this morning, I harvested eight beautiful bulbs. I only have a 50/50 idea of what variety of garlic it is. I originally planted two types. Only one grew and I don't know which one. But that's okay. I like the taste of it and really love how easy and effortless it is to grow.

The garlic bed at the end of May.

Yummy garlic scapes!

Garlic sharing its bed with the morning glories.

Look at those beautiful bulbs!

I think that's enough of a report for today. As always, I hope to actually write here more often. Perhaps I actually will this year since the garden itself is so little work! 

Golden zucchini

Honeynut squash

Picklebush cucumbers

Honeybees busy at work!

A couple of our resident lurkers.