A summer of gardening

November 01, 2018

Spring took off with a bang and all the gardening to do. I had started seedlings indoors at home, first in the basement with a grow light and then took batches in stages out to the greenhouse, then started more! I ended up with 80 tomato plants, among many other things!

I was planting gardens like mad all through May and into June. The educational garden at the City park was the most urgent as it had to be ready by June 24 for the ONLY day of the year that the public can come to visit. Then the Church garden was my second priority, and my own gardens got worked in whenever I could manage it.

Looking back... It was an awful year for gardens.... Petersen Farm started off well with a nice early planting, but we had two new raised beds built and in order to fill them with dirt, the truck ran over the newly planted potatoes and corn.... after I got the new beds planted I got really busy with the other gardens and while SOME things were growing well in the raised beds, the in-ground section of the garden got kind of weedy....

Mt Hope church garden did not fare very well, either. We got off to a decent start with the early plantings, but then some horribly hot, dry weather hit early and we couldn't get the later seeds planted in the ground... too hot and dry for them to germinate. And then the tomatoes were hit with blight...
But we had zucchini! And sweet corn, and potatoes, and carrots and beets. Later in the summer we finally got the green beans to grow.

MG Betty was a real help this year!

kind of shaggy but still producing

We did have produce to share, but not enough to donate to the food pantry.

We bought a tractor and cart to help move water.. and other stuff, too.

My own gardens were not any better. I started off with building 4 new raised beds. I never did get around to planting my potatoes and sweetcorn in open ground... so I finally covered that space with black plastic to keep the weeds down.

They were neglected in turn as the other gardens were more important. I did get some good out of them. My green beans were planted early, so they were rather productive. I got some broccoli, but not enough. My onions and other root crops were a dead loss, and while my pea plants looked great, they did not produce much. I did have tomatoes, but not many. At home, I grew 11 tomato plants from seeds sent from Karin in Estonia, but they were not terribly productive, either. Only the Brown Berry cherry variety.. and I ended up with 3 of those plants! I think I ended up with mayby 13 pints of sauce??? Quite a few bags of green beans to freeze, only a couple of peas. We ate the broccoli as it came on, and a few peppers, as well.