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.

Rebuild Time Part 2

Last spring, we replaced half of the old wooden beds in our garden with metal ones. This year, we finished the job. There were still two 4-foot by 11-foot and two 1-foot by 11-foot wooden bed to replace. One of the smaller beds was filled with asparagus, which we relocated outside the garden. Part of the other smaller bed had horseradish, which we pulled out and deposited along the back treeline. After that, there was just a lot of dirt moving to do.

Garden bed rebuild in progress.

It has been a very wet spring. Because of that, and my lack of enthusiasm for hard work, the rebuild took several weeks to finish. My husband really did most of it. He built the six new metal beds, shoveled tons of dirt, added compost, and relaid the stone paths. I helped by decided which type and how many bags of new soil we would get to fill in and I added those bags to the beds. And finally, it was all done.

All the bed replacements finally finished!

But that was not all of the rebuild. For the past couple of years, the deer have been making themselves at home in the garden. Beyond the nibbled plants and obvious hoof prints, we got photographic proof last fall.

A taller fence was obviously needed. Our original fence was four feet tall. We got a couple more rolls of 4-foot wide plastic mesh fencing and 6-foot long bamboo poles for fence posts. The process of adding height to the existing fence actually went more smoothly than I expected. I had a plan, of course, but was still surprised that the plan worked so well. We wove the bamboo poles through the mesh fencing then lifted them up and zip-tied them to the fence posts that were already there. Then I went around and hand "sewed" the seam between the two fences so there wasn't a gap.

"Sewing" the fence seam together with some garden twine.

The result is an 8-foot tall fence all the way around our garden (except for over the gate).

Let's see those deer jump over this! (I know they could so please don't.)

With the garden now better protected, I got the rest of the seeds and plants into the ground. I had planted the hardier seeds - radishes, arugula, pak choi, chard, and peas - and the direct-sew tomato seeds (as directed) before the average last frost date and before we finished the fence. 

A lovely row of sugar snap peas.

After the fence I planted the bush beans, turtle beans, rattlesnake beans, blue Jarrahdale pumpkins, and glass gem ornamental corn. I also transplanted pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumber plants.

The young plants hardening off a few days before transplanting.

The spring rains continued and I mostly stayed out of the garden. Yesterday, I finally thinned out the seedlings. I also added a fence for the peas. Everything is growing, though much of it is unhappy with the large amount of rain. 

Corn and radishes before thinning.

This poor little cucumber plant isn't well.

One other thing we planted outside the garden was some luffa plants. We had very good luck growing them a few years ago. We still had some seed left and they were still viable, so now there's a tall teepee in the back yard near the new asparagus bed. There is also one long pie pumpkin plant under the teepee. 

I don't know why I didn't take a picture of the whole teepee.

You grow, luffa!

So far, the pumpkin and luffa plants have been left alone by our backyard wildlife. We'll see if that lasts. 

Oh deer, oh deer.

A sweet, fluffy bunny.

 

Oh Deer!

We've known from the time we moved into this house, more than ten years ago now, that there's a thriving population of deer in the neighborhood. That's why we built a fence around the garden as soon as we finished filling the new beds with soil. For years, the narrow strips of lattice supplemented with taller plastic mesh was enough to keep the deer out of the garden. (It didn't, however keep out the rabbits as reported in posts from 2015, 2020, and last year.) That changed last year when I noticed hoof prints in the beds for the first time. 

Some prints and nibbles on August 3, 2023

At that time, we didn't do anything significant about the intrusion. It seemed to be a one-time thing and didn't effect our harvest for the season. Then, one year later, I noticed again, that one of our four-hoofed acquaintances had found its way into our garden.

Another incursion August 21, 2024

I had assumed that, like the year before, the deer had found its way into the garden by accident. With the fence, the plants, and the wooden paths, I felt like it hadn't intentionally leapt into the visual noise. But, since it was there, it went ahead and sampled what the garden had to offer. There was evidence of nibbling on most of the plants including the cucumbers and tomatoes. The beast mainly enjoyed the leaves on the bean plants, but not the beans themselves, and the Swiss chard. There wasn't a huge amount of damage so, again, I didn't worry about it too much.

When more and more prints appeared in the beds over the next weeks, we decided to take action. Our entire backyard has a slight slope to the south. We built the garden where an above ground pool had been so the north side of the fence is closer to the ground than the south side. I deduced, therefore, that it was the north side over which the deer had been jumping. Furthermore, we have very tall, very bushy asparagus at the east end of the garden along the fence, so the deer must be coming over the western portion. That's where my husband built increased fortification. 

Notice the extra tall white fencing at the left.

For a few weeks, it seemed as though the deer had been thwarted. Then, in early October, more hoof prints appeared. This time, the creature ate nearly all our remaining chard. I found that particularly annoying as leaf miners had gotten into the chard earlier in the season and I had basically given up on it for the season when, at the end of September, the plants started sending up fresh, new leaves. I had hoped for a late harvest but that didn't happen.

One evening, I was in our kitchen making dinner when I happened to look out the window toward our garden. I saw a brown blob inside the fence and knew it was a deer. I grabbed my good camera and quietly rushed outside. I managed to get one picture of the offender - as seen at the top of this post - and a brief video of it fleeing the scene.

I also got a couple pictures of the rogue deer rejoining the rest of the herd in our backyard.

I don't like the example this sets with the little ones.

Several years ago, my husband gave me a game camera for Christmas. I've seen many wonderful animals that I wouldn't have even known were passing through if not for the camera. (check out this compilation I made: "Everyone love the hole under our neighbor's shed") The camera had been facing our middle yard but I moved it into the garden with the hopes of catching a future deer visit. 

When I pulled the memory card a few days later, there were hundreds of images on it. This isn't at all unusual. It actually was fewer images than was typical since there were fewer things moving within the confines of the garden to trigger the camera. We had already cleaned up most of the beds since nearly everything had been harvested at that point. Most of the images were of the remaining plants waving randomly and of squirrels - other frequent visitors to the garden.

Two squirrels at once.

My eyes sort of glazed over as I quickly clicked through the images until a sudden change caught my attention.

!!!

There it was: the trespassing deer staring straight at the camera, eyes all aglow from the infrared flash. And it wasn't just a quick in and out. I have 132 images of the deer wandering through the garden.

At this point, we're not going to enact any new anti-deer measures. We've finally had a frost  - though it wasn't a true killing one - and we've gotten what we want out of the garden. In the spring, when we finish the switchover to new beds, we'll remake the fence as well in the hope that next season the garden will go unmolested. In the meantime, I hope to enjoy more pictures of our backyard wildlife doing their wild things.
 

The Garden in June

The garden on June 30, 2024.

On this, the last day of June 2024, our garden is doing beautifully. It's always amazing to me that what began as tiny seeds can become food-bearing plants in just a little over one month's time. 

The garden on June 15, 2024, for comparison.

At the very beginning of June, we harvested all our (meager) crop of pak choi. One week ago, I picked the entirety of our arugula. It had begun to bolt because of the stupidly hot weather. My plan was always to harvest it all at one time anyway. I like putting greens like that with other, later plants. The pak choi, for example, was in the same bed as the zucchini and yellow squash. The arugula surrounded the One-Too-Many pumpkin plant.

Garden bed before and after arugula harvest

Basket o' arugula

We've also started harvesting sugar snap peas. It's just been a couple handfuls so far, but they are just starting. Maybe it's because we used to live and garden on Hoth, but I never expect pea plants to grow very tall. You would think that after nearly ten years of gardening here, I would adjust my expectations. But, no, I still only set up a short fence for the peas to climb upon.

The pea fence. So dainty.

It quickly became clear that I needed to add some height. So, we got a few 6' tall poles and I added them to either side of the existing fence. It appears that even the new height will not be enough, but the peas are just going to have to accept that. 

The new, taller, still rather dainty pea fence.

Eh, they seem happy enough.

When we got the poles for the peas, we got an extra one to add to the bean trellis in the three sisters garden bed. Unlike some beans (that shall remain unnamed), rattlesnake beans are great at finding their own way onto a trellis. They've had no problem climbing like champions as the popcorn reaches for the sky and the Long Pie pumpkin fills in around them. There are several teeny tiny pumpkins on the vines, so I have cautiously-high hopes that we'll have some to put up for the winter.

Three sister thriving. Pardon the barely-contained asparagus in the back.

Something new for us this year is a tomatillo plant. I don't think I've ever knowingly eaten a tomatillo, but I hear they are delicious, particularly in salsa verde. My husband picked up a plant when we were out getting the tomatoes and peppers and I said, why not? I had no idea that it would become the largest, lushest, fullest plant in the garden. It is beautiful, though I feel it needs to be restrained in some way. Some research is in order.

Beautiful tomatillo plant with jealous deer in the distance.

It's got lovely flowers too.

Speaking of lovely flowers (we were if you read that last caption), our trumpet vine is going crazy. I was assured when I first got it from a warm acquaintance many years ago that it would be nearly impossible to kill, in a good way. They were not lying and it is gorgeous this year. The hummingbirds like it too.

I'll have to try to get a picture of a hummingbird on the trumpet vine but those little suckers are fast. (the birds, not the vines)

And now for the wildlife update. The twin fawns are still hanging around in our backyard with their mother. There are a couple of yearlings who bound through occasionally as well. Yesterday, I saw a pair of young bucks in velvet too, so that was fun. 

Mama and babies.

I've tried to make friends with the dumb fawn. (In a pair, there is always a dumb fawn and a nervous fawn. The dumb one would probably walk right up to a person if the nervous one didn't start running.) I got close once while offering some fresh snap peas I had just picked, but I've decided it's probably not a good idea. It's better that wild animals don't get too comfortable around people, at least not making-contact comfortable. So, we will continue to be casually friendly at a distance, like good neighbors. We smile and say hi in passing but have never been formally introduced.

Hello sharer of our backyard.

In rabbit news, she may or may not be fixing to have babies under our clothesline again. Stay tuned.