This year we got off to an earlier start but still I think we were a bit late. Next year we will have a greenhouse and that should help quite a bit with getting things going on time and also with many of the plants that are not as hardy and need additional heat and shelter like; tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, etc. Last year we didn’t manage to raise even one tomato, we raised the plants from seed on our veranda and they were just too small and slow growing to produce any fruit before the cold Fall weather arrived.
This year we bought greenhouse-raised tomato plants from the farmer’s market which were already beginning to flower and were about 1 ft tall. We moved them out into the garden a few weeks ago and they are doing really well. We also tried once again to raise a few plants from seed but they are again, way too small.
Last year we were so frustrated and disgusted with our dismal results that we didn’t even bother to properly close down the garden, we just left everything as it stood, weeds, dead plants and all, and so this year Peer had to completely dig the beds again.
Last year we had a very dark and wet growing season which no doubt contributed to our failed garden. This year we are having the opposite… it’s way too hot and hardly a drop of rain so far. Using tap water to water our garden isn’t even an option. Water is way too expensive here and it is just not the way it is done. You never see sprinklers or irrigation systems in our area, instead we use rainwater. Up until recently we didn’t have a very large rainwater catch and so we hauled water in buckets from the creek that runs under our property. Now that we’ve got our large rain barrels hooked up, we fill watering cans from them and water the garden that way. We are having to water every 1-2 days currently and it’s about an hour’s job.
But here is what the garden looked like yesterday. We purposefully kept it small this year. We figure it is better to have a few smaller successes than one huge failure like last year. We’ve got potatoes, white cabbage, red cabbage, brussels sprouts, peas, broad beans, bush beans, pumpkins, cucumber, tomato, radishes, carrots, onions, garlic, spinach and sunflowers…a small amount of everything.
Another problem last year was the bugs. We had a HUGE amount of snails and slugs. We were determined not to treat them with anything poisonous, we want to let the land work out the balance between good bugs and bad bugs naturally, but damn, is it hard watching them devour and destroy all your hard work! We waited until nearly the end last year and then put down snail and slug bait. Not poisonous to anything but slugs and snails. It helped but was like spitting on a forest fire at that point. This year we began right away with the snail and slug bait and it is making a huge difference.
We definitely aren’t pest free though. We started keeping out cucumber and pumpkin plants covered at night because we lost 2 plants during the first night to something which just bites the stems completely through down near the base. It didn’t even bother to eat the plant just chewed them in half and left them laying there! I think it was slugs or snails but I’m not sure. The lids seem to be helping, I’m pushing them down about 2″ into the dirt.
A closer view of our potatoes and cabbages, these seem to be doing really well.
Of course we’ve also got a ton of aphids. My MIL gave me a climbing rose bush last year for my birthday and I planted it beside my studio. Of course this year it has just about every kind of pest that a rose bush can have. Along with the tons of aphids, it’s also got something that is completely chewing the flower buds in half. I haven’t seen what is doing that but I’m first going to focus on the aphids…more about that in my next post.
I appreciate the adherence to not putting anything down that would harm anything but the pest. I am trying to stay with that notion as well. However, last year when the tomato hornworms found and destroyed my tomato plants (when I was on vacation for a week) I wanted to use the most destructive, carcinogenic, pathogen I could find. The feeling passed and the hornworms were fascinating (my kids kept them and fed them my destroyed tomato plants- I was at peace at that point) and quite beautiful too. Your garden looks amazing. I don’t think it is small at all- I think you will be able to feed that entire village! Thanks for the great post!
Your cucumbers and pumpkins might be getting eaten by cutworms. You might be able to protect them with a collar, like a cardboard TP roll or perhaps a piece of thin cardboard or aluminium foil taped around the stem at the base of the plant. You should search the Internet or look elsewhere for more information, because I don’t really have any direct experience with this. While I don’t have problems with cut worms, I understand they are very frustrating!
Do you guys use any mulch? Especially when starting a new garden, I find it invaluable to be able to toss a pile of straw or wood chips on bare spots to prevent weeds from growing. In this way garlic is a very good crop to start with on weedy ground. While you should remove as many weeds as possible first, you can cover it with 15cm or so of straw or hay after planting, which will kill most weeds but not bother the garlic. There is also lazy bed potatoes for weedy or grassy land. Both garlic with mulch or lazy bed potatoes leave the land clear of weeds for the next crop.
What kind of ground do you guys have, heavy clay?
I usually put a thick layer of newspaper under the straw, if the weeds are tough and persistant. I just trample them down – digging even, cover with newspaper, overlapping so there are no gaps, water well, cover with straw and , if I want to plant into it straight away, I cut into the newspaper with a sharp knife – just big enough to pop the seedling in. It works a treat! Chooks, though are the best and easiest solution, as I wrote about on my blog recently, and you get eggs too.
That is meant to say….. NO digging even…..sorry – I should have read it before.
Hi Hilary, wow, the garden must look bigger than it actually is, but thank you for the nice compliment! It’s really not very large, I’ll be happy if we get enough out of it this year for my husband and I to get a taste of everything we planted! Last year we certainly didn’t manage that!
The bug thing is hard, but in the end I would surrender my entire garden to them rather than put down anything poisonous. I just know that if we are patient and encourage a balance, that eventually we can achieve one. I had to look up hornworms so now I know what to watch out for. I’m not sure if we have those here, I’ve never seen one. I admit, they do look fascinating…and hungry!
Hi Patrick, yes we are on heavy clay…really heavy :p
Thank you for all the tips, especially the tip about the collars for my pumpkins and cucumbers, those are just what I need! The coke bottle cloches did a great job but the plants are getting too big for them now and I was wondering what to do next.
No we aren’t using any mulch. I thought that mulch would give the slugs and other pests another place to hide and thrive? So far I am keeping on top of the weeds. I do about 30 minutes of hoeing and pulling weeds every day, so far so good. I will do a bit more research into this, also into the lazy bed potatoes, I’ve not hear of these.
Hi there Kate, thank you for expanding on the mulch theme. I need to look into this. I think we would not have had so many weeds to deal with this spring if we would have put the garden to bed properly last fall, we were just too discouraged at that point.
Our biggest problem around here is nettles, morning glory vines and some other vine I’m not sure of the name of. The nettles are slowly coming under control after repeated cutting. The vines are what we are dealing with currently. They sprout and grow a full 6 ” overnight, I swear! And they wrap themselves around everything. I am pulling them out every evening now.
Next year we’ll be adding chickens which I intend to keep in chicken tractors, I think those will be a big help with the weeds also.
The vine you probably have is called bindweed. It’s a really horrible weed! I have it this year for the first time too. The roots are too deep to dig them out.
What I understand you must do is just break it off at or as far below the soil line as possible, and just keep doing that as it comes back. After a year or two of doing this they are supposed to mostly die off.
Yes! Bindweed, that is exactly what it is, you’re right. Very tenacious stuff! Before we began clearing the land a few years ago, we had an absolute impenetrable sea of 5ft tall nettles. Come June the bindweed would completely engulf the nettles! So what I am doing then is all that can be done from what you mentioned in your post…good to know that it might eventually go away someday! Thanks Patrick!