Garden 2023

 I started gardening last year after watching a few YouTubers, mainly Gary Pilarchik and Becky from Acre Homestead. It turned into something that I am very passionate about and love doing. I love seeing something I grew from a tiny seed into something I can then eat and feed to my family. Last year we had 3 raised beds and some flowers and herbs in pots. This year we decided to try two in ground beds along with our 3 raised beds. Not everything in those in ground beds have been a huge success but I’m still learning and we weren’t sure how soil would do. So of course I did start some things from seed indoors weeks before we were able to get stuff in the ground. I think I started the last week in March. What I start indoors are tomatoes, peppers, onions, lettuce, kale, and some herbs and flowers. My flowers did horrible this year unfortunately, along with a lot of my herbs. 3 things that did do well were my Coleus, Celosia and lemon balm. Oh my goodness plant some lemon balm just for the smell! I will be planting way more of those next year. Lettuce does not need to be started indoors necessarily but I like to give them a head start and stagger the planting so that we have lettuce all summer long. So, in our 3 raised beds we have peppers, lettuce, kale, and onion in one bed. I also have a small container just of onions. Next bed has snap peas, carrots and green beans which I think are garden staples and very easy to grow. The last raised bed is all tomatoes. I planted Roma, San Marzano, cherry, Wisconsin 55 and I think a couple others. We will have plenty of tomatoes! In one of the in ground beds I have more peppers, summer squash, cucumbers and pumpkins. I tried planting strawberry plants but I don’t think they did anything. The other in ground bed has corn (major fail) cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini and more pumpkins. I absolutely love growing pumpkins and squash. The plants get so big and beautiful with their bright flowers. Just make sure they are able to grow and trellis/cascade where they need to. I recommend putting them on the edges of wherever you plan on planting them. There is nothing better than going out tot the gardens and seeing that something has grown. We would love to expand the garden in the backyard and basically make our whole backyard a garden. I’m also hoping to plant some garlic this Fall. I’ve never done that before so we’ll see how it goes. Things I would do different next year. No corn or get it in the ground way earlier. Way more flowers!! I miss having so many pretty flowers all over. Way more peas and beans. Like at least double. Maybe no kale although I’ve been giving a lot to my sister for her bearded dragon Gordon. Way more onions. I am having way more success with onions this year and I’ve loved having the scallions. They are so good! I honestly feel like I could double everything. I know that my soil probably needs some work too. I’m always learning and experimenting so that the next year can be bigger and better. Hopefully I will be able to do some preserving and canning this year. Our apple tree is also producing like crazy so I see more apple pies in my future. How are your gardens doing? What has been your favorite thing that you’ve grown this year? What are you doing differently next year if anything? I’ll include a few pics of the season and hopefully it continues to give us lots of goodies! Happy gardening :)