Garden Goofs 2009

Son checks to see if the carrots are large enough to harvest.

“If you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a co-disciple; for I am but a learner; an eager one, indeed, but yet desperate, being too old now to learn any new art.  However, I am as much delighted and occupied with it as if I was the greatest adept.” Thomas Jefferson. 1795.

Me and TJ.  We have TONS in common.  Actually, this quote illustrates exactly where I’m at.  Jefferson believed farming to be the most difficult of occupations. I bragged, in the spring, of my adeptness in veggie growing.  I said it wasn’t rocket science. Nature must have heard my boastfulness and decided to test me.  TJ’s right. Growing food is hard.  My garden was less than stellar this summer.

But I’m glad Jefferson referred to it as an art.

I fall solidly, so far, on the art side of it.  I garden to make myself happy.  And experimenting with new stuff is a large part of my enjoyment of gardening.  So, I make a lot or mistakes.  In art classes, they’d tell us that mistakes can be happy accidents.  I have many a mishap in the garden.  Some, happy.  Some, not so much.

As New Years nears and everyone is making lists, I thought I’d share some of this season’s mishaps that I won’t knowingly repeat.  Much of this is opinion.  And much of it is stuff I knew before but didn’t pay enough attention to it.

We eat swiss chard and it is so beautiful.

Laura’s biggest garden mistakes 2009:

7)  I planted vegetables that my family won’t eat.  I planted bok choi.  A good amount.  My five year old is not so fond of bok choi.   He loved the broccoli.  He’s having trouble transitioning back to store broccoli.

6)  I didn’t plant enough of some vegetables. I tried to create veggie beds that were ornamental masterpieces.  What I got was a serving of peas here, too much lettuce there, too few beets and again, excessive lemon cucumbers.  I’ll increase the quantities of certain things next spring.

5)  I over-experimented with tomato varieties this year.  I must have had 15 different types growing this year.  Right now, I’m thinking I’ll stick to a few varieties I like.  But I’ve been looking at seed catalogues and I’m already beginning to lose conviction.

I'll try cherry tomatoes on an arbor in the spring.

4)  Tomatoes don’t work ornamentally.  I stuck tomatoes in my flowerbeds here and there.  It was unrewarding and I’m worried about tons of volunteer tomatoes crashing the party into my perennials beds next season.  Think I’ll be pulling tomato seedlings out all next summer.

3)  I didn’t want to move an ornamental bed so I expanded my veggie garden south into an area that gets slightly less sun.  Bad move.  It was stunning to see how much one less hour of sun affected the vegetable plant growth rate.  Time to move that ornamental bed.  Ugghh.

2)   My fall veggie seedlings were munched to lace by something.  One friend said extending the fall growing season means small plants encounter mature bugs in the fall which causes more damage.  Homework assigned to me? Learn about organic pest control and row cover use in extending the growing season.

I found with enough space, squash is nice with ornamentals.

1)  Biggest bonehead move of 2009?  I built a raised bed for tomatoes right next to my raspberry patch.  Though raspberries are a highlight in the summer, they’ve quickly spread into the new bed.  Ya know, they just don’t look very nice either.

One friend exasperatedly said, “ Who would even think of planting raspberries near tomatoes???”  So I am evidently a complete idiot.  I’ll have to attack the raspberries and relocate them.   Even so, roots will still be under my boxes and seeds may eventually sprout.  I think raspberries will be dancing with my veggies for a while.

The good thing about all this is I get my 18th or 19th chance to do it all again here in a few months.