Our first year's garden.

I feel that I have learned a lot this year about gardening, mostly I've learned through failure and turning to google, but at least I've learned. I have high hopes for next year. I messed up my garden in more ways than one and we still got a ton of produce, so I'm calling it a successful year!

I wanted to document all of the things I want to remember for next year and I thought I'd just put it on my blog in case someone else can learn from my mistakes.

Here we go....

I did raised rows for the entire garden. This was a mistake for every plant except the broccoli which seemed to thrive. I did have to build up little walls (kind of like a little trough) to help keep the water in because all of them were drying out. It was too much work though. Next year I'm planting everything flat to see if there is a difference.

BROCCOLI: My broccoli went crazy and grew so well, BUT there was a major bug/worm problem. I was trying to be all organic this year so I didn't use any pesticides. I didn't realize how awesome they were going to produce or I would have just sprayed them, it would have been worth it. It was all too buggy to eat. Next year I will plant it nice and early (it's very cold hardy) and at the first sight of bug bites I'll spray with poison. Broccoli was the only plant that had a bug problem which was a pleasant surprise.

I planted 6 plants and 4 survived. Those four plants were more than enough broccoli to keep us busy and gassy. I think I'd still plant the same amount though and hopefully have enough to steam and freeze for soups and chicken pot pie throughout the year.

This picture is of the off-shoots that grew after the main head had been picked, there were tons of them.

TOMATOES

I planted 2 tomato plants that were two different varieties. One lived and one just produced rotted tomatoes (?????). That one plant was more than enough for all of our fresh tomato needs. Next year I'd like to plant four and have enough to can some salsa, ketchup, and spaghetti sauce.

Since I live in Idaho I definitely want to get the "early girls" variety. My tomatoes took at least 3 weeks longer to ripen than everyone who had the other variety. I will buy starts again next year and buy the wall-o-waters early on because the stores run out.

STRAWBERRIES

If I could do it again I would have planted these in a contained area like a garden box, apparently they spread like crazy...even into the grass. We're going to build a box next years and hopefully transplant them so they can spread all that they want. Mine didn't start doing well until later in the summer...I have no idea why.

PUMPKIN

These little babies were so much fun! We ended up getting 5 good sized pumpkins, BUT I did learn some on the way.

1. Make sure the pumpkins are getting pollinated, watch for the mini pumpkins to blossom and then tap one of the "male" flowers on it to share the pollen. We didn't get any pumpkins until we started doing this.

2. Rotate them so that they don't get nasty spots.

3. At the first sign of powdery mildew rip off the affected leaves. Our whole plant became diseased and we had to pick the pumpkins early. Note: they will ripen off the vine if they are still a little green.

Next year we are going to try to grow two plants, one for making a couple giant carving pumpkins and the other for pie pumpkins (smaller variety)
SWISS CHARD

We didn't realize the beauty of this stuff until halfway through the summer, what a bummer! Once we started using it in our smoothies we didn't have enough. This year I had four plants, next year I think I want 6 or 7. It is super hardy and grew despite my weaknesses, love this stuff! ( it is a little bitter, fyi, but the taste does grow on you after a bit).

Speaking of lettuce, I want to try growing romaine next year, but I want a real crunchy variety.
CARROTS

We loved our carrots, but they were all short and fat because our garden wasn't tilled deep enough. Next year we'll have to dig a lot deeper so that they have room to spread.

The purple variety we tried was gross, from now on we're sticking with orange!

I had a friend tell me that you can dig mini 1/4 in trenches for the seeds. First fill the trench with water, then put in the seeds and barely cover them up. The seedlings need to stay pretty wet to sprout. We're going to try this method next year.

Ours didn't keep real well so I don't think I care to make the spot any bigger next time around.
PEPPERS

No pictures, but next year I need to remember that the plants don't get that big so you can put them pretty close to one another. I think 2 bell pepper plants would be plenty, they produce a ton for such tiny plants! I also want to do a bunch of Jalapenos and can them for Zac to use as a sort of relish. I'd much rather a variety of peppers than 4 plants of green bell peppers, we ended up throwing away a ton of them.

I used a wall-a-water on one of the 4 and that plant definitely grew bigger faster, but the others weren't far behind and they caught up quick, I'd say that it's optional for peppers and mandatory for tomatoes.

SQUASH

We don't like squash. I don't want any next year. I might try growing spaghetti squash though, or maybe butternut, but crookneck just isn't our favorite (maybe the fact that we're SO sick of them is having something to do with our feelings though!).

Zucchini

One plant is plenty. I have probably 15 quart size bags of shredded zucchini for muffins (3-4 cups each) in the freezer. All from one plant. CRAZY. Those things are unstoppable. I do like zucchini muffins and we like to throw some zucchini in soups sometimes so I will grow one plant again next year.

PEAS

Be sure to presoak the seeds (I've heard that 12 hours will do the trick). We didn't do that this year and I think that was part of the reason that it took them FOREVER to get going. Half of ours died (I think they weren't getting enough water), next year I'll plant the same amount and hope that they stay alive better.

I only want the kind that you shell and eat as peas, not the sugar snap ones. We never ate those ones. Also, they need to have something to climb (a net or something) or else they lie on the ground and rot, or the lousy Idaho spring wind breaks them off and they die. Hopefully we can improve our crop this year, the few we got were delicious!

TOMATILLOS

Never again. I planted four plants and had HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of the little fruits. One would be more than enough. They didn't ever really thrive so they didn't taste that great either (very tart). I wonder what we did wrong....I guess I'll never know. lol

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Next year I want to try some onions, those are really yummy from the garden!

I'm glad I finally did this post before I forget everything! Wouldn't it be cool to keep a tally of how much each plant produced! I would love to have that to compare from year to year, too bad it'd be a ton of work, I think that is just not for me.

Thank you to everyone who helped make our garden possible this year! My dad, brothers and father-in-law all gave awesome advice that probably saved the garden!