Success, failure, second chances, and redemption - no this isn't a made for TV drama, its our FIRST year garden story!
2020, the year that finally got me to start a veggie garden! I think for a lot of people it was too - thank you COVID 19! Our 2020 garden went about as well as a first year garden can go. By that I mean there was a lot of exuberance and success as well as a sprinkling of mistakes and failures.
“My enthusiasm for seed purchasing spilled over into seed starting to the point where my entire kitchen was covered in red solo cups of germinating black cherry tomatoes, black krim tomatoes, sweet romanian peppers, bell peppers, basil, and jalapeno peppers.”
Growing up we always had a garden. If wanted to find me you just had to look out the window to see me in the garden playing in the dirt and plants, especially if my dad was out there. If he was there then it was a given I would be there too! We eventually moved when I was around 10 years old to have our horses at home and soon discovered that our new land was extremely rocky and obviously not ideal for gardening. Life went on and the desire to create and maintain raised beds just wasn't there for my parents. I dabbled in container gardening when I was living by the ocean in MA for a couple years after college and then started a very small raised bed at my first house in KY that was a mild success.
Fast forward to 2020 - COVID made a lot of us question our food systems for the first time in our lives and a lot of people turned to gardening as a result. If you don't have to be reliant on groceries stores, why would you? My partner grew up on a vegetable farm in Ireland, so he was all for this gardening adventure at our new property together. Luckily he had more realistic experience than I did, since the majority of my gardening happened before the age of 10.
I eagerly and very enthusiastically stocked up on seeds from the seed counters at Walmart and Strictly Medicinal Seeds (highly recommend them!). My enthusiasm for seed purchasing spilled over into seed starting to the point where my entire kitchen was covered in red solo cups of germinating black cherry tomatoes, black krim tomatoes, sweet romanian peppers, bell peppers, basil, and jalapeno peppers. Mind you this was still in my previous house where the entire square footage was 950sqft. My home had turned into a veggie starting factory and I was here for it! What I didn't know was that this was going to a big learning curve for me. I didn't realize you shouldn't use ALL your seeds when starting them unless you're going to use all those plants. I thought for sure all my seeds wouldn't germinate, so I should use all of the seeds in the packets and that I would be left with an appropriate amount of plants. I was wrong, very wrong. Basically all of my seeds germinated and when we planted them in the garden at our new property we had over 100 tomato plants, over 20 jalapeno plants, around 10 basil plants, and about 15 sweet pepper plants. It was kind of ridiculous. By the end of the summer we were joking that we had a tomato forest in our garden.
What I haven't mentioned yet are the three things we tried growing before we were ready to transplant my plethora of seedlings. Ultimately, we ended up tilling the entire garden and starting over…oops. We planted several varieties of corn, organic seed potatoes, and red and white onion sets. What started out as perfect spring weather for potatoes quickly took a turn for the worse. We got tons of cold rain for a week. So much rain that our entire 5 acres was completely saturated. All the potatoes rotted. Not long after we realized all the onion sets were just growing into green onions, even after we had been cutting their tops down. The day of garden destruction started with an argument that lead to the entire garden being tilled under, but it was for the best at the end of the day. Turns out the multiple varieties of corn we had planted together weren't compatible due to their different sweetness structures. Yes, that is a real thing! No one wants mushy dull corn and that’s exactly what happens when you plant different types of sweet corn together that aren't compatible. The removal of the rotten potatoes and 5 60ft rows of green onions made room for the mass of tomato and pepper plants that had started so well for me back in my little kitchen. We did regrow the corn and chose to only plant Silver Queen, which I later found out was my grandfather's favorite corn! I also planted butternut squash and Bennings Green Tint Squash by direct sowing.
Everything grew tremendously well in our Take 2 garden. Our corn was out of this world amazing and is a definite repeat for 2021. We froze and gave away to friends what we didn't eat. The tomatoes were incredibly delicious and sweet, although there were way too many for us to harvest and consume or even give away in a timely manner. The house on our new property was a full reno and we didn't have a kitchen this summer, so I couldn't can anything. We grilled all our meals for the most part all summer long and just got an oven in our finished basement by the time fall rolled around. Our new kitchen will be finished by spring, so by 2021 harvest season I will be able to can to my heart's content! The Romanian Sweet Peppers were not great IMO, but the bell peppers were delicious. The jalapenos were crazy prolific with the perfect amount of heat. I have about 20 butternut squash in the basement to use through the rest of winter too. The absolute star of the garden hands down, besides the corn, was the Bennings Green Tint Summer Squash. We had grilled squash almost every day all summer and I NEVER got sick of it. They are incredible and I've been dreaming about tasting them again ever since we ate the last one. Overall I consider our first garden a resounding success - maybe a little wild and excessive, but definitely a success! We learned a lot and have some big plans for the 2021 garden, which I can't wait to share with ya'll soon! It's gonna be a good one ;). Check out my top garden lessons from 2020 below and let me know what your takeaways were from your garden this year!
Lesson 1: Be committed to the gardening experience - grow as much as you have time to check on, water, and nurture.
Lesson 2: Only start enough seeds for the amount of plants you want - you don't need to sow all 50 tomato seeds!! Maybe just 5 or 6….at least the first year
Lesson 3: Squash is the queen of the garden - EASY to grow and equally as delicious
Lesson 4: Onion sets don't equal full onions - get yourself some onion seeds and save yourself a headache
Lesson 5: Check your corn varieties before planting! - SU, SY, SE, and Standard don't have to be isolated. Sh2 HAS to be isolated or you will affect the kernel flavor and tenderness of other varieties in the vicinity. OR you can always stagger your planting dates so the Sh2 corn does not pollinate when the other varieties are.
Lesson 6: Pay attention to what types of tomatoes you are growing - Indeterminant are vining and you'll want to stake and tie those bad boys up, or you get a tomato forest like us. Determinate you can get away with not staking depending on the variety
Lesson 7: If you fail, try again! Just pay attention to the time of year and the days to harvest of what you're growing
Lesson 8: Have fun!
Xoxo,
Emily
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