Year Four - 2013

I really amped up my organic gardening research from the fall of 2012 to spring of 2013. One book I read was "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" by Edward C. Smith
which highlights using raised beds and organic growing practices as well as Mel Bartholomew's "Square Foot Gardening Method". This method entails planting things in large patches instead of rows, providing room for more plants, while also preventing weed growth by grouping a number of plants closely together. This method intrigued me and if it was less work, more plants and more food than the traditional row method, then I should probably give it a try.

I found a great garden planner program at http://www.growveg.com/freetrial.aspx and downloaded it. They have a free trial for 30 days, and then it's $24 a year, but you can always use a different email address for a new free trial if you don't want to buy it. I did that a couple times, but found it so useful that I finally bought a 2 year subscription and unless I find something better I will probably keep renewing it. It's a great program with tons of information for beginners and experienced growers as well.

So after getting my free trial for this, I began planning my 2013 garden in August of 2013. Here is my final plan for the 2013 Garden:

I love this because it lets you set the varieties, shows you when to plant, what to start inside, and when to plant it out. On the square foot gardening mode (this plan does not use SFG mode), it shows how many plants you can fit in each square foot. I hadn't found that option on the program when I designed this plan, unfortunately.

We have a large south-facing window, perfect for seed starting. I started onions, shallots, scallions, leeks, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers from seed in February. Maybe a bit too early, but live and learn. Some friends also gave us some ground cherry seedlings. Everything grew very well, the tomatoes and peppers were a bit leggy, but I bury them deep so I wasn't concerned.

Onion, leek, and shallot seedlings

Pepper plants

Ground cherries in foreground, tomatoes in background

My Mom passed away the day after American Thanksgiving in 2012. One of the things she loved most about summer was planting and enjoying flowers, especially her petunias. She grew pots and pots of these outside her house, and then her apartment every summer. It was sad that she didn't make it to another summer to grow her petunias, so I grew some for her. I bought these locally and threw them in a big pot together.

Mom's Petunias

This year a friend's dad came and tilled for us. I had him till an additional 5' on to the length of the garden. The soil has improved greatly, likely due to the 15 bags of leaf mould I had tilled in the previous fall. Lots of worms present now, hard at work. There were 8, 4' x 20' beds this year. Erin had the task of digging manure into each bed and picking out rocks while I planted. We had the idea to put the rocks in the paths, thinking they would choke out the weeds, but that didn't really work, just made the weeds harder to remove.

Northern half of the garden

You can see why this method results in very few weeds. I probably should have thinned this patch of beets a little better, but we mostly eat the greens so I wasn't that particular.

Beets

Peas

Mom's Petunias

Lettuce, I believe the variety is Lollo Rossa. I love taking pictures in the garden right after the rain.

Heinz tomatoes

These are nasturtiums. They are beautiful and edible. You can use the flowers to brighten up a salad and the leaves are very peppery and nice with other mixed greens. They also keep some pests away, so I like to plant them here and there around the garden, as well as marigolds.

This variety of zucchini is an Italian heirloom called "Costata Romanesco". They are beautiful, prolific, very tasty and best of all, they put out a large number of male blossoms. This might not excite most people, but we love our deep fried zucchini blossoms here. This variety is definitely worth growing for a number of reasons.

This is a small Lilac Bell pepper. They are supposed to be the size of a regular bell pepper, but we had a very rainy summer this year and it just wasn't hot enough for the peppers to thrive. Still, very pretty.

I will completely admit that I have a total tomato addiction. Not even so much eating them, but the smell of the plants, the different varieties and how beautiful they all are. I can't help but grow half a dozen varieties or more every year. They grew very well this summer, but the damp got to them eventually and late blight set in. We lost most every plant, only salvaging a couple tomatoes from each variety.

The tomatillos on the other hand were a smashing success. We harvested over 40 lbs of them and made a delicious salsa verde with them. Tomatillos are great to grow if you enjoy Mexican cuisine, plus they are easy to grow as well.

Another addiction I have is Calendula. This was my first year growing it and I loved how beautiful the blossoms were. They brought a lot of bees into the garden and I harvested probably 20 times as much seed from the ones I planted than there were in the original packet.

These were the only peppers that really took off this summer, banana peppers. Despite the cold and rain, they grew and grew and grew. I harvested them all summer long.

Yellow and Royal Burgundy Beans

Orange Fantasia Swiss Chard

Carrots

This was my first try with garlic. I bought some spring garlic from Vesey's. It seemed to take off okay at first but then just stopped growing and rotted in the ground. Not sure what happened, but I found out later that planting fall garlic is much more suitable to our climate.

If you haven't ever grown ground cherries, you should. They are related to tomatoes and tomatillos and they're delicious and one of my favorite snacks in the garden. They look like little golden berries, about the size of a blueberry and they grow in little "lanterns" that hang off the plant. I like them best raw, right in the garden. Not a lot of them make it out I have to admit. Those that do have made a lovely jam and I imagine would make an interesting pie. They have a bit of a pineapple-ish flavor. They grow in just about any conditions and are very prolific, as well as easy to harvest. You can gently shake the plant and any ripe ones will fall to the ground in their little "paper" lanterns, when you open them they are completely clean and pristine and don't even require washing.

  

I'm not really a huge radish fan, but I liked these. The variety is "French Breakfast", and while I doubt I'd ever have them for breakfast, they are quite mild and very tasty sliced into a nice garden salad.

Broccoli grew well, but never formed an actual head.

 

Overall, the garden was quite successful in 2013, despite a really crappy, rainy summer and some pest and disease problems. Cucumber beetles decimated all our cucumber plants, they were everywhere. Cabbage worms got the broccoli and of course, the aforementioned tomato blight. We harvested a lot of other stuff though and learned a great deal from all our successes and failures alike.