Five Months In My Garden, Abridged
Hello beautiful people! It's been quite a while since I published a garden post for you. This is not because my garden had nothing to show off, or that I don't love each and every one of you, but because my life got in the way of blogging. Happily, I am back! I hope to show you, without too many photos, an overview of my garden's high- and low-lights over the past five months.
July 17 had an auspicious beginning. The balloons flew right over my house, all 27 of them that morning. I took this shot specifically for posting in a garden journal entry. Two days later, my life changed dramatically, so I'm just now getting around to showing it to you.
Things were looking very good in my tiny garden on this day. The pole beans were poling, the okra was charging up out of the ground, the zucchini, chard, lettuce, carrots, herbs and cucumbers were producing, tomatoes were coming on, and I was getting a small handful of blueberries most days.
But I was also starting to find problems with some of the plants. A small black beetle had turned my eggplant foliage to lace, Japanese beetles were eating large holes in my okra and beans, and a mysterious disease (I don't look anything up) was causing all my pepper plants to wither at their tops. I did not get one single pepper out of seven plants, or one single egglant out of four. The tobacco, which looked robust and very promising earlier that month, was suddenly covered in tiny black bugs that turned white over time. I tried spraying with clove oil and water, but it did not stop any of those problems.
You might think I would try to ascertain what these critters and rot were, and up my measures to combat them, but, as I have said, life got in the way. I decided to let it all go.
My worst problem was that my blueberries were being heavily shaded by okra and tomato plants, which I had very unwisely planted on the south side of my blueberries. Live and learn!!!
Below is a shot of the two raised beds south of the blueberries, the tomatoes and okra towering over everything.
I had to remove the silver maple visible in the upper left of the photo because it was dying and dangerous. Earlier in the year, I considered removing that tree, to increase sun in my garden, but decided to let the thing live. When a whole trunk of the tree fell onto the fence a month ago, removing the tree was no longer a hard decision to make. Now there will be so much more sun coming from the west (provided my new neighbors don't decide to plant a tree back there), and a larger full sun area to plant goodies in. I didn't lose very much in privacy either, a bonus.
Despite all the unsolved problems and my lack of time to work out there, my tiny garden supplied me with more veggies than I could eat, so that I was able preserve some via canning, dehydrating and fermenting. More learning!
And my garden is still producing food, under a contraption constructed of hoops and garden fabric, visible in my final shot. This year it was just an experiment and was only 15 square feet, but I am very happy with the results. I plan to get one of my raised beds under hoops and fabric in fall of 2023 so that I can harvest fresh veggies into 2024 even here in the northeast US. I managed to get lots of mustard greens, daikon, and napa cabbage this year, along with a few rutabagas and carrots. The parsley is still producing usable greens despite snow!!
One final shot, bringing me up to a total of nine (is there a prize for showing five months in nine photos?), of my tiny garden today, December 1, 2022. Brought to you from New York State, USA.
It has been quite the year!!
What is this.... I'm able to access Steemit but not Hive (by using a different laptop) .... one hurdle crossed; how many more hurdles to go!
Love your garden, Owasco!