This year was my biggest garden ever! I was inspired by the Seasonal Homesteader on YouTube and decided to expand my gardening efforts with help from Scott. So we put in quite a few more beds and I still want to do more! I guess now that my children are mostly grown up, my garden has become my baby.
Tonight there is a freeze warning which means a possible end to the garden for this year. I don't think it will happen tonight but it won't be long. Here's my garden report for 2023 to help me remember what went well and what didn't.
Early crops
Snow Peas: It was a good crop and we got lots. We ate some, shared some and froze some. They overwhelmed the supports we put up for them.
Lettuce, Spinach, Kale: I had tons of lettuce. I did not need to plant so much especially since it's hard to preserve. We ate a lot and I shared a lot. The spinach crop was not that impressive; I'm not sure why. The kale was very vigorous. I froze some, made some kale salads, and put it in smoothies. I pulled out most of it but there is still one stalk out there growing from the first of April when I planted it. I liked the purple kale better than the other variety although it was slower to grow.
Beets and Radishes: I planted some beets really early. They struggled along and eventually we harvested a reasonable amount. I had never planted beets before so it was fun to use them. We roasted them and enjoyed them that way. I planted the "Cylindra" variety so they were longer and skinnier than standard beets. I planted radishes just to get a crop quickly. We used them but I must confess that I still have some radishes in my fridge from when I harvested them a couple of months ago. They're probably still edible, right?
Mid-Season Crops:
Zucchini, Summer Squash: I battled the squash bug early on so they wouldn't kill my zucchini plants but eventually they won. I got some zucchini but not a ton.
My most successful crop of the entire summer was the Lemon Squash. So. Many. Lemon. Squash. They're cute yellow squash that look like...wait for it...lemons. I only planted one plant but it grew and grew and produced so many squash. It seemed like I was harvesting 5 or 6 every day. That was even after I cut the plant way back twice! If enough people planted lemon squash, it could take over the world. We ate a lot, shared a lot, froze some--especially shredded--and dried a few. I'll have to plant it again next summer to cover for the zucchini when the squash bugs get them again. I plan on using the frozen shredded squash in muffins and bread.
Green Beans: I had a pretty good harvest of beans. Once again, we ate a lot, shared a lot, and I froze some. I tried steam blanching them instead of the immersion blanching. We'll eat them this winter and see how we like them. I had three separate plantings and it gave us a good amount from July-October. I really liked the new variety I planted called "Jade". It produced very long beautiful beans and the plants kept producing a long time. I'm definitely planting that variety again.
Carrots: I'm a novice carrot gardener and it shows. The ones in the picture are quite small and tasted fairly bitter. I did not give them enough space or sunlight. I'm currently trying to grow a fall crop of carrots but I'm not very hopeful.
Corn: We made two plantings of sweet corn and got a good amount. We decided to freeze quite a bit of it because they all got ripe at the same time. It was quite tasty and we enjoyed it. Corn is a space hog so I'm a little conflicted about whether it's worth it or not.
Cucumbers: This was a big cucumber year. I planted two plants but only one of them did anything which was fine because it did a lot. I probably got over 100 cucumbers from that one plant. It was my second most successful crop. We were able to use up or share most of them, thankfully. I hate wasting them. I did a little research and found out that the best way to store cucumbers is to wrap them individually in paper towels, stick them in a Ziploc bag and put them in the coldest spot in your fridge.
Onions: I planted lots of onions and they did okay but could have used more space and more fertile soil. I'm using a lot of onions in the canning and preserving I'm doing so I'll probably use up most of my onions pretty soon.
Basil: I planted three or four basil plants which was not necessary. They were pretty happy! Probably one or two plants would have given me all the basil I wanted. I made some pesto and used the basil to season some dishes. I froze some pesto and hopefully I will use it up. I have to find more pesto recipes.
Tomatoes: The tomato crop was my biggest disappointment. I wanted a big harvest of tomatoes this year so I planted 17 plants this spring. I planted three indeterminate varieties from seeds that I started at the beginning of April: Amish Paste, Cherokee Purple, and Sunrise Bumblebee. I also decided I should cover my bases and got three Celebrity tomato plants at the local nursery. The indeterminate varieties were somewhat disappointing although it was probably mostly my fault. I planted them pretty close together and they just didn't have enough space or sunlight. The Amish Paste got infested with hornworms and they gave me the ugliest tomatoes EVER. I also had the usual cracking problem which plagues my tomatoes year after year. I tried to water more for the cracking with marginal improvement. I also got a pesticide for the hornworms--I didn't see any actual hornworms but I did see their droppings--so gross. We sprayed at least twice and it seemed to help a little. The indeterminate plants were very out of control, despite some extensive pruning. They overwhelmed the supports we put up which seemed pretty heavy-duty at the time.
The Cherokee Purple did better and were a tasty variety. I liked that they looked a little different than your standard tomato.
The Sunrise Bumblebee tomato was a cherry tomato. The taste was a little disappointing and wasn't as sweet or strong as I wanted it. As far as production goes: on the one hand, we were never overwhelmed by too many cherry tomatoes. On the other hand, we were never overwhelmed by too many cherry tomatoes. It kind of poked along and finally today, I picked a large amount. The redder ones on top are the ripest but the more yellow ones are also ripe enough to eat. I probably won't plant this again.
The tomato plants from the nursery did not have a great location since they were an afterthought and they took somewhat longer to start producing but gave me some good standard tomatoes.
All in all, my tomato harvest was pretty disappointing. I hope to do better next year.
Late-Season Crops:
Peppers: My peppers did reasonably well. I've never grown an impressive pepper crop. This one was not bad though. I got quite a few Lemon Spice Jalapenos from two plants. I was worried when I saw how many I had that I wouldn't be able to use them all, so I tried fermenting some:
In theory, I can use them in place of the diced green chiles you buy in the little cans. I haven't used them yet but they're in the fridge at the ready.
In the end, I used all my jalapenos making salsa. If you remove the spines and seeds, they really aren't that hot. I'm not fond of hot salsas but I like a little zing.
I also grew a Bell-type pepper called "Yellow Monster" that was supposed to turn yellow. They never turned yellow--the season just isn't long enough for that here. I bought a pepper plant at the nursery that had a shorter days to maturity that turned orange for me that I quite liked--I should have planted more of those. Next year I will get a variety with a shorter days to maturity. I also planted a pepper plant called "Jimmy Nardello" that was quite a disappointment. It was supposed to be a sweet pepper but it didn't have a great flavor.
Melons: This year I planted watermelon and honeydew that had orange flesh. I have never grown watermelon that I liked and I have had limited success with cantaloupe. This year I had good success with both of them! The honeydew was quite good. It looked like honeydew on the outside but tasted just like cantaloupe when it was fully ripe. They were light-colored and had seeds and had a moderately good flavor. We got quite a few melons from the few plants we put out.
Pumpkins: Early in the season, I noticed that the compost we put out was producing pumpkin plants. We had them EVERYWHERE. It happened because we put our Halloween pumpkins in the compost last fall. Obviously the seeds did not decay like they were supposed to. I pulled out most of the pumpkin plants but I let the ones in the asparagus bed grow. They produced some small pumpkins and in late August, I picked them and pulled out the plants. Last week our grandchildren painted them. They're a good size for painting but not so much for carving. The grandchildren had a great time painting them.
I think the theme of my garden this year was overcrowding is a bad idea. But despite that, it was a pretty good harvest and I managed to use almost all of it. I'll talk about how I did that in another post. We also had a good fruit year but I'll save that for another post too.
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