Every year I look back and reflect on what I've learned about gardening. The challenges I faced. My successes. My failures. My ideas going forward. 2022 has been one of my best gardens ever. And that's a satisfying feeling. Things should improve a little every year. Yes, new things will happen that we learn from but its nice to feel that you have a little more than the basics figured out.
This spring I started as always around March 15th with two week succession plantings of Penelope Peas along with the lettuce and carrots. The one difference is that this year I planted my own pea seeds that I saved from last year's crop. Penelope is an open pollinated variety. The plants grew well and I had a good yield. Not much to report there. However, over the past few years I have noted that the April plantings do much better overall than the March plantings. The early plantings sort of go into a holding pattern during weather shifts and the April ones catch up and you end up harvesting them all at once anyway. Next year I am going to plant early and mid April. As usual, I direct sowed lettuce seeds along each side and that did well, except for the row that was germinating just when a cold snap hit. That one had to be reseeded and never really did as well as the others.
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| Penelope Peas and Lettuce |
My carrots did very well this year. I planted both Sugarsnax and Nantes Half Long. Some were pelleted, some were bare seeds. The pelleted is easier to work with initially, but the leftovers do not keep well for next year because the pellet hardens. I planted them in containers with fresh potting mix and added bone meal for root growth. I made sure to water them every day over the long dry summer. Last year I tried them in grow bags and they did not do well. The grow bags dry out too quickly. I got a really nice harvest, and I have been pulling and using carrots since cole slaw season back in July. I still have one later container to harvest.
This year I again planted both bush beans and pole beans. While in 2020 the pole beans refused to grow, this time it was the Jade bush beans. The pole beans did excellent. I think I am done with bush beans. The pole beans are just so much easier to harvest standing up rather than getting down on my knees. I have many examples of awesome bush bean crops over the years, but this year was too frustrating. I know I wasn't the only person in the country to struggle with bush beans.
This year I planted Monte Gusto Yellow Pole Beans, Fortex Pole Beans and Sychelles Pole Beans. The Monte Gusto are an old favorite and produced like mad. I love growing a yellow bean to contrast with the green on the plate. The Fortex wasn't much to my liking. My husband noticed the difference the first time I served them. They don't have a lot of taste when young and then matured fast to a tougher, tasteless bean. I know they get rave reviews (which was why I tried them) so the taste must just be my growing conditions. The Seychelles were a very tasty and productive green bean. Those will be my choice for a green variety going forward. The beans had a few Japanese beetles on them, but not so many that I couldn't pick them off each day. I treated that bed with Milky Spore in case any of them laid eggs in there.
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| Seychelles |
This year I planted too many summer squash. I do that now and then. There is something just so satisfying with having a big jungle of squash plants, even if you produce way more squash than anyone could possibly use. Chickens would have been helpful at this point. I planted
Cue Ball, Dunja and Clarimore. The Cue Ball and Dunja are old standbys and performed well as expected. The Clarimore was new for me. It is the variety I will be growing again next year. It is a light green squash with silvering on the leaves (which in my experience helps them resist mildew). It produced heavily and resisted mildew. All three varieties were heavy producers and very resistant. I don't have anything negative to say about any of them. But next year, I am only planting one plant. Not three pairs. The green leafed Cue Ball were the first to show signs of mildew. I sprayed them all with SaferGro Mildew Cure at that point and that held it off for several more weeks. I saw some cucumber beetles in the blossoms late in the season, but no squash vine borers this year. The Honey Bees worked hard on these flowers which they have not for several years so its good to see them back.
I also way over planted on Cucumbers due to not having had enough last year. I planted Cool Customer Pickling Cucumbers, Supremo Pickling Cucumbers, Bristol, Corinto, and Burpee's Salad Bush. The Bristol is a repeat but the Corinto and Salad Bush were new. They both produced very heavily and were beautiful plants. Neither one of them can be considered "Burpless" and if you enjoy eating a whole lot of cucumbers, that is a factor that must be considered. For that reason I will go back to the Bristol next year. And I only need one row. Not three rows plus backups. I won't need to do pickles next year so I won't need to plant any picklers at all. No pests on the cucumbers and they were well pollinated by the sweat bees. Because of the volume of plants planted I was able to remove tired plants before they showed any sign of disease.
Cantaloupes were a particular success. This year I chose Napoli and Hannah's Choice and both did very well. I admit I fussed over them. Cantaloupes are something that may or may not work in my area depending on the weather. We got a hot dry summer so they did well. They got enough heat during the day and I also kept them covered for added warmth most of the time and especially at night. I watered them every day.
It paid off. I got about 14 large melons which was plenty for us, plus we were able to give some away to anyone who said "its been so long since I got a good cantaloupe." These were good. They smelled heavenly and they tasted even better.
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| Beautiful vines |
My Sweet Corn had good success overall despite challenges. The first planting went smoothly and had a really good yield of four dozen large ears. The second bed had some germination problems making it late. The ears were not as big, but it was still a success. It would have been better if it were earlier and the ears had had the same hot weather during their growth period Next year I will plant only one bed and maybe buy some from the farmstand as well. The fun thing about the corn crop is that it is always loaded with ladybugs. They're everywhere, Of course now they're trying to get into the house for the winter....
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| Sweet Corn - Gotta Have It |
Over the past few years I have experimented with the spacing and number of rows of the sweet corn. I have never gotten more than three or four dozen from a bed no matter what I do with spacing, fertilizer, water or hand pollination. So thirty three square feet can produce about four dozen ears. For this reason, next year I am going to be sure to thin down to three rows of twenty plants. Sixty plants. We'll see if with the added space I can get closer to sixty ears.
I grew half of my usual amount of Broccoli, Cauliflower and Cabbages. It all did well. I'll plant the same next year but instead of starting from seeds, I'll buy transplants at the end of April. This will shorten my gardening year by the whole month of March. I grew Diplomat Broccoli, Flame Star Cauliflower, Golden Acre Cabbage and Violaceo de Verona Cabbage. I probably won't plant Violaceo de Verona Cabbage again because I've decided I'm not a big fan of its crinkly texture.
The one thing that was different is that I had small black slugs in that bed. This is not something I dealt with before. Some slugs - yes. Scads of little black ones - no. The leaf mulch didn't help matters because it made an excellent environment for the slugs. Next year I will try mulching with regular compost to see if that suits better. It might just be that bed because it was closest to the woods. I'll be using a different bed next year too.
It was a standard year for tomatoes. We avoided blight just about as long as anyone can expect to. Next year I will continue in containers with whatever variety strikes my fancy next spring. Always a yellow and a black variety, and I will also start my grandfather's seeds for my Dad. I won't bother with patio tomatoes or cherries next year. But I do like a month or so of tomato sandwiches.
Another particular stand out this year was the Havasu peppers. They are a mildly hot sweet pepper and had a nice thick wall. They were the perfect size and shape for dipping hummus which is my favorite way to eat fresh peppers. I also grew Sweet Banana which did well but paled in comparison to my enjoyment of the Havasu.
I grew four plants of each in one 10 gallon container and they grew as well as they possibly could.
My potatoes in grow bags did quite well. I started robbing them in mid-July for the occasional potato salad or salt potatoes. We still got a good harvest at the end. I grew the white Satina and Red Maria. Potatoes in grow bags are a big user of resources for me and they are not cost effective to buy seed potatoes each year. Not only do they take a lot of potting mix and leaf mulch, but they have to be watered every, single day. Also they do not keep more than a few months in storage. Next year I will not be growing potatoes.
But I will grow sweet potatoes! I have been growing Mahon Yam in grow bags for several years now and I think I've got it down pat. I also grew them in the ground this year with good success. Next year I will use the potato grow bags and soil for sweet potatoes instead. They store very well for me and I can start my own slips in the spring making them a very cost effective crop. We have been enjoying them both fried and baked. Next I'm going to spring some mashed ones on my husband and see how that goes. 😏
And finally, I grew Parsips. I haven't tried this for ages. I'm getting a really nice harvest. I like them mixed with carrots and roasted. My husband doesn't like them at all. Since he now eats steamed broccoli without complaint I won't be pressing the issue with the parsnips. I'll share them with the neighbors instead. And its about time to start digging horseradish too.
So that's the year in the vegetable garden. It was not a good year for fruit. My Surecrop Strawberry plants were on their third year and didn't seem to appreciate the leaf mulch I put on them last winter at all. So I replaced the plants with Honeoye which have done very well for me in the past. Those plants took off like mad and hopefully they will produce well next spring.
The Apple trees didn't blossom well this year. I suspect that the week of single digit nights in the winter may have damaged the buds. Also we did not have a cross pollinator because we lost the Macintosh tree to a windstorm in April. Still, we got a few apples. Not the bushel after bushel we got last year. So we had a break from drying apples and making apple pies. I still have pies in the freezer left from last year so all is well. We will use those up this fall and hope for a better year next year.
The Pear tree produced six pears, which was twice as many as the year before. It is still a baby tree and didn't put on a lot of new growth in this dry summer so its doing well at that rate. The pears were small because of the drought. I watered it once a week just to keep it going, but didn't want to interfere too much. I'm hoping it will put on more new growth next year.
Everything is put to bed. The food is stored. The seeds are sorted. Nothing to do for the next five months except plan for next year.
