Let's Talk About the Garden

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The 2024 garden was a success. We started the garden in late April, planting seeds with our Jiffy Seed Starting Greenhouse Kits. Peas, snap peas, green beans, a variety of lettuces, Brussel sprouts, cucumbers, pickles, a variety of tomatoes, pumpkins, and sunflowers. We had great luck with some of our starters, and not so much luck with other of our starters.

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We had high hopes for the 2024. We choose to plant our largest selection of vegetables. Along with our starters, we picked up sweet corn, cabbage, another blueberry bush, and a few more herbs. Our goal was to expand the garden with a few new vegetables that we could learn with. New vegetables we could freeze or can, and herbs we dry, grind, and use. The corn was a huge experiment. We had never attempted corn before so we didn't know what to expect.

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Mother's Day came and it was time to begin planting. We started turning up the soil in the tomato bed and along the side of the house. We planted some peas, beans, and two blueberry starters that we picked up on sale at a local home store.

The tomato bed was repurposed for more peas and beans, broccoli, and zucchini plants. We moved the chickens from their winter location to the lower part of the yard to make room for our new garden bed.

The new bed allowed us to plant pumpkins, our Roma tomatoes, the sweet corn, and a few peppers. Chickens left the soil ready for planting. We turned over the deep bedding, spread everything out, created rows, put our plants in the ground.​

It didn't take long for things to take root and begin growing. By mid-June we were already harvesting some of the red Romaine lettuce, the curly kale, and a few early green beans and peas.

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By the end of the growing season, we had harvested countless cucumbers, pickles, tomatoes, peas and beans, our largest selection of pumpkins, lettuce, raspberries, blueberries, herbs, and cabbage. We were super excited to have been able to grow and eat such a variety vegetables.

But the time has come to begin thinking about the 2025 growing season. However, this growing season is going to be different. After the successful 2024 season, we're going to take a step back.

We will plant this season, but we are going to be very limited in what we plant. Since we are renting, we don't have the space to dig up new beds or bring in our raised beds. So our plan is to bring in the buckets and plant a small selection of vegetables. We'll focus on our favorites; cucumbers, a few pickles, a small group of tomatoes, and some herbs. 

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It's going to feel a little weird not having our regular set up, but it's a good opportunity to take some time to reset. Until we find our next home, we can't really plan for our garden. So instead, we'll work with what we got.

- jay

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