Garden retrospective

The summer of 2024 we gave the beds a rest.

• As planned, we gave our raised garden beds a rest from nightshades.
• Wet, wet, wet spring and early summer, followed by drought conditions.

2024 harvest by the numbers

• apples none (Hat Trick espalier, planted April 2021)
• berries birds beat us to the juneberries, a few strawberries and blueberries, about two gallons of raspberries
• cucumbers none planted
• herbs some transplants from last year in the bed
• peppers very few, a few in pots drown in early summer and never recovered
• tomatillos none
• tomatoes a few starts placed on lot line to take advantage of sun, left to their own without much attention, we did get some fruits
• radishes planted and grew well, but none for eating
• wheat wheatgrass as “green manure”
• green beans two gallons fresh and two cups dried beans

What went well

• Tomatoes directly in the ground did OK, considering they received very little attention
• Feral, volunteer red shiso created a nice thicket in the back
• Rhubarb was very happy this year

What went wrong

• Creeping bellflower battles continue
• Morning glory seeds turned out to be bindweed, so we battled that most of the summer, huge mistake

What did we learn

• It’s very hard to dig up all the creeping bellflower, even in a small area; continue to do the best we can and be sure to pull them before the go to seed
• Seed packets can be wrong, I think we’ll be fighting the bindweed for a long while now

How should next summer play out

• We had a garden consult for the back corner of our yard, we will use her plan for back corner
• Keep on the noxious weeds

Photo by Bob Bowie on Unsplash