What's In This Post
When at first you don’t succeed
For several years we have taken a stab at growing vegetables. We grew some things in containers on our small back deck at our first house. We started using a semi-raised bed at our current house a few years ago. We bought a few more giant pots last year and built some railing planters to take advantage of the sunshine up on our big deck. We even popped a blueberry bush in the yard last year. We just keep trying things….
… and we have, eh, well, marginal success. We had a good carrot crop a couple times, though the kids stole most of them last year instead of having them for Thanksgiving like the prior year. (Any activity that kept them outside during COVID summer was acceptable, including digging up the whole garden’s worth of carrots prematurely).
I started some gorgeous tomato plants last summer. Oh I was proud. And then they were swiftly devoured by fungus and some kind of caterpillar. The result was some pretty ravaged plants that looked awful and sort of produced tomatoes.
I was doing well with little fingerling potatoes a few years ago, and then the chipmunks that lived under our shed discovered them too and quickly dug half of them up, killing the plants in the process. Peas did well for a few years and then succumbed to some kind of fungus/rot last summer.
Do you see the pattern? Trial and error. Trial and error.
Try, try again… and learn
Basically we keep trying. And in doing so I learn a little more each season about what works and what doesn’t. What to look out for. What a mild winter is likely to bring to the summer garden. And what to do about those things, like fungus and aphids, before it’s too far gone.
Ultimately, our dream to move to the country and build our own little farmette, homestead-y kind of place includes a desire for growing some food. So, here in the suburbs I figure there’s no reason why we shouldn’t work on the learning curve.
I dream of the day I have a little green house and potting shed. And a big garden rich with compost we produce ourselves. But when we do realize that country living dream, I’d also like to not let everything die by July due to lack of experience! So practice we must.
Something I finally put my finger on last summer, too, was that I am always an extremely enthusiast spring gardener. Here it is January and I’m writing about planning my vegetable garden. I will build a little greenhouse out of an Amazon box and plastic wrap in April or May and monitor the temperature for weeks during the hardening off process for my tomato babies.
But when they’re getting devoured by caterpillars in July, well, I wave my white flag and practically give up. You see, I’m a terribly lazy, wimpy late summer gardener. Once it’s hot and steamy out there and the weeds are in full force, I’m just not bounding out to tend things.
But I learn a bit more each year, including my own tendencies. So here we are, ready to plan another planting year. Ready to learn. Ready to pull off some mini attempt at what our vision for the future holds.
Does our garden save us money?
Not a chance! This really falls into the category of spending on something that brings me joy and helps us learn skills for achieving our future family goals. In the future, yes, I would like to grow some food with the expectation that it will also save us some money, but more so to make us more self sufficient, to keep a more sustainable lifestyle, and eat healthier food.
But currently, it’s more of a hobby and investment in a food growing education. I do have an idea of how these endeavors could pay for themselves a bit for this season, though. Read on…
Planning this year’s garden experiment
Spring fever seedling plan
Since I’ve come to grips with my springtime fever coupled to late summer laziness, I want to focus on early crops this year. Plus a few that are super easy (e.g. carrots) or those I just can’t avoid trying every year (e.g. tomatoes). I also want to capitalize on my love of starting the seeds, but not necessarily be responsible for seeing them all through to fruition.
You see, last year I had some success selling off a number of seedlings on Facebook Marketplace that I wasn’t going to plant (our garden space is pretty teeny!). So, this year I’d like to do that again. It’s maybe something with a little side hustle potential and takes advantage of my interest in potting up seeds in March, as opposed to battling pests in July.
Last year I just sold off the extras that I knew I didn’t have room for and didn’t want to save seed for next year. Doing so, I recouped $45 on 16 baby watermelon plants. Not much, but it was for seed I wasn’t going to use, soil I already had, and plastic party cups I was never going to use. I need to work on a little cost-benefit analysis of intentionally scaling this up, including buying seedling pots, soil, etc. to produce a whole bunch of seedlings for sale.
Then I can consider whether I want to multiply my efforts from last year very much, and see how much worth it would really bring to the table. Another experiment! So stay tuned on what crazy thing I decide to try out in that department 😉
Our kitchen garden plan
As far as what will go into our own garden and pots for this year’s round of lessons and (hopefully) food production… well, I’m going to start with what worked and didn’t last year. Last year we had a bit of butternut squash, lettuce, carrots, strawberries, garlic, peas, a half-attempt at sweet potatoes, attempted broccoli, and watermelon.
Deck containers
Lettuce in the deck railing boxes did fantastic and I used it almost every day to make salads. So, we’ll see if we can repeat that success. Here’s hoping!
As for the big deck pots, last year there were three very large pots with tomatoes, one with butternut squash, and one with a watermelon vine. I’ll try some tomatoes again the same way. This year we will be more prepared for fungus and pests, however. One thing I learned is you need to pinch off any small stems from the plants so you get some strong fruit-producing arms, but eliminate a lot of the excess stem and leaves that block air flow through the large plant, and also use up water and nutrients.
In the smaller deck pots, I will skip the watermelon and butternut squash. They worked, but were super small. Instead I will try some herbs. I usually struggle with herbs bolting once it gets hot. But since this season’s garden is about spring success, bring it on! One pot already has some mint that I moved there this fall (which spreads like wildfire so isn’t great to leave in the ground), and the other I’ll put basil, dill, and cilantro. Those are all things we would easily use in our regular cooking. And the mint is fantastic for all kinds of drinks!
Strawberry patch
The strawberry patch started as two plants two seasons ago in the back corner of the yard, and they’ve spread rapidly. I think we’ll have to cull that patch a bit by digging up some of the plants into pots. Perhaps some we can sell and some could go in a pot on the deck, further from the birds. Otherwise, not much else to do in that area of the yard.
Raised garden bed
So that leaves the main raised bed. It’s usually gotten a little bit of everything. I like to see if something will work better in the garden plot vs a pot on the deck sometimes. But this season I’ll focus on what’s left on my spring-focused list, plus a few easy things.
That list includes head lettuce, a couple more tomato varieties, and more carrots than we did in past years. And in perusing the seed catalog this week, I came across Mexican Sour Cucumbers. They’re little 3/4″ watermelon-looking things that apparently taste a bit like cucumbers or even pickled cucumbers when they are more mature. You can eat the whole thing, including skin, so they make great snacks straight from the vine. And they’re “easy to grow” the catalog claims. Done. Since they climb on vines, they can replace where the peas used to go on the trellis in the back of the bed.
Other farm life experiments for this year
Though our gardening space is hardly expansive, we’re also talking about tinkering with setting up drip irrigation. It would be cool to have perfectly watered plants, even if we’re away. So this year may be the year to start researching DIY approaches to doing this and automating it.
The other thing I’m anxious to get into is composting. I got some books from the library last summer and learned more about how to successfully compost kitchen scraps. And since then I’ve been wavering between a worm bin for “vermiculture” composting or traditional outdoor composting. Being in the ‘burbs we would have to use some sort of reasonable looking bin, as opposed to a simple pile. But nice looking commercial bins that can be rotated are expensive. So I never moved on this last year. However, part of my Christmas gifts this year was to buy a compost bin, so learning to compost is on the agenda for 2021. Yay!
Onward
This actually feels like an ambitious gardening year now that I’ve pulled all our brain noodling into one place. Written down, no less. I may have to make this a series so I can fill in how these various gardening endeavors work out this year. No matter what, I always find joy in the journey.
Leave a comment below if you have an easy vegetable to grow, or have any vegetable garden fails that will help us feel better about our own!