Looking Back and Forward

Winter is very much upon us now. The day after New Year’s, the seed catalogues started arriving in the mail. I set them aside as I felt that was still a bit early to start planning. A month later, I’m ready to think about the garden again. Before I know it, it will be time to start some seeds indoors, even as the garden lies blanketed in snow.

I never did a final report here on the garden. I would call it a successful year, overall. The tomatoes produced quite well. I actually got enough to make pasta sauce. I found a Ball flavoring mix that made wonderful sauce. I fired up the canner and put away nine quarts of sauce to enjoy all winter.

So many tomatoes!

In late September, I went through and harvested the rest of the vegetables. The corn did not produce very well. The potatoes did not either. It’s always been less expensive and less of an effort to just buy corn and potatoes but I still like growing them myself. I’m about ready to give up on the corn entirely but I really like fresh-dug potatoes. We had a few meals from the Yukon Golds so it was not a total waste of time and space. Next year, maybe we’ll try something more exotic like purples or fingerlings that aren’t available at local stores.

So, it was not a bumper crop.

The garden did produce enough acorn squash and pumpkin to put in storage for the winter. We’ve gone through all the squash now but two pumpkins are still waiting to be used.

I was a bit disappointed that the Rattlesnake beans did not produce as well as they did last year. I did plant them in a different part of the garden that had a tendency to be a bit wetter so that might have had something to do with it. We did get a few that will make some nice bean soup on one of these cold days.

At least there were some beans to shell.

The herbs did very well this season. In October, I cut thyme, marjoram, and fennel seeds to dry. I also brought the parsley plant inside but it didn’t care for the transition, apparently. It went back out into the compost bin last month. I loved being able to step out my back door with a pair of scissors and get fresh herbs and I was actually able to do so well into late fall.

Thyme and marjoram hanging to dry.

Similarly, the chard just kept growing late into the season. Chard has got to be one of my favorite leafy greens (leafy rainbows?) to grow. It comes up quickly and just keeps going. I finally cut the last of it in early November. It probably would have kept going if I had let it but I was ready to get the beds ready for the winter.

The giant maple tree out in front of our house provides wonderful cover material for the garden. My husband processed the fallen leaves through the choppy leaf vacuum thing he bought for the purpose and spread it over the raised beds. In the spring with turn it under with other soil additives and be ready for another growing season.

The garden set for a long winter's nap.

And what shall we plant next season?

Waiting for the Dirt

Things are finally moving along with the garden. We’ve finished up construction of the raised beds (there are now four 4-foot by 11-foot beds and four 2-foot by 11-foot) and got the gravel filled into the side paths. It’s really coming together now.

Finished garden beds

The real work will take place this weekend. The garden soil is scheduled to be delivered on Saturday. I expect it will take many hours and countless wheelbarrow loads to fill the beds with soil, peat moss, compost, and maple leaf mulch from last fall. I’m no stranger to a shovel but I know this is going to be a lot of work. I already warned my coworkers that I will probably be useless on Monday!

Raised beds waiting for soil

Once the soil is in place, I’m ready to plant. After quite a bit of consultation of gardening books, arranging, erasing and rearranging, I think I’ve finally come up with a layout for the garden. I have most of the seeds I want to plant and will be purchasing plants like tomatoes and peppers. I didn’t start any seeds early but I’ll probably try it next year. A majority of the seeds are left over from the small “surrogate” gardens I planted last year. With no space of my own, I worked garden beds at the museum at which I work and at my in-laws’ home. I’m really looking forward to having a nice, big garden of my own with all sorts of vegetables and herbs again.

Plotting and planning on my living room floor

The "final" garden plan

Once the garden beds are all filled and set, we’re going to have to get the fence in place. Last night, we watched two deer wander around our backyard. They are probably the young ones we saw when we first moved here. They are so used to life in the suburbs that they have very little fear of people. They’ve already nipped off some of the daylily leaves right next to my back porch as well as the newly sprouted hostas in front of the house. I fear it’s going to be a long battle against the deer. They are quite nice to watch, though. We’ve also been having a good time watching the rabbit that has been spending its evenings in our back yard. 

Bunny!

Planning and Plotting in the Digital Age

Winter has fully settled in with single digit temperatures and a respectable blanket of snow on the ground. The seed catalogs have started arriving in the mail and I’m spending my evenings flipping through their page and dreaming of spring.

I bet this cardinal is dreaming of spring too.

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m a planner. I love making lists and charts and diagrams. I kept all my notes from previous gardens in a small 3-ring binder. Now that we’ve got a house and don’t expect to move every couple of years, I decided to get a bound notebook for all my new gardening adventures. I also got a book with quad-sheet paper so I can graph out garden layouts.

Yay for new notebooks!

I’ve always done my planning just on paper but I recently thought to myself, this is the 21^st century. Maybe I should find a gardening app or two to help me. There are quite a few garden planning apps out there; both free and paid. I quickly ran into the problem that the 4G iPod that I’ve had for only about a year and a half is way too old to even download many of them. Of the ones that I was able to download, I only found one that I really like – the Garden Time Planner by Burpee. 

You can create different gardens and add vegetables, herbs, and flowers to them. There is information on each plant including basic planting and care instructions, a planting schedule, and, sometimes, how-to videos related to the particular plant. There is also a planner that automatically lists when seeds should be started and transplanted based on what you’ve added to your garden. It lists average frost dates for your area and links to Weather Underground for current conditions and forecasts.

Some screen shots.

All the information is very basic but I have plenty of reference material on my shelves and the internet at my fingertips if I want more details about different varieties of carrots, for example. There is also no way to create a garden layout with the app. Your gardens are simply lists of plants. I’m sure there are other apps out that that let you actually create garden layouts but either I could not download them or they were paid apps. For someone still mostly devoted to paper, I could not see paying for something electronic when I have a perfectly good quad notebook just waiting for my pencil. Overall, I think this baby-step into the modern world will serve me well as I plan for the spring.