Backyard Gardening: Round 2

 I am not so secretly obsessed with my backyard garden.  My dad was the family gardener growing up, so a lot of this development comes from him.  He focused on flowers and grew beautiful gardens every single year.  Usually each year, they'd get a little bigger and take up more grass.  This is especially true now that I no longer live at home.  There aren't kids running around daily and tearing up the yard anymore!  

When I did live at home, my dad encouraged me to garden and even give me a place to plant whatever I wanted.  I remember growing cucumbers, trying to grow peas, corn, etc.  There was some mild success in that tiny garden plot.  Not everything grew and I fought a number of battles in an effort to get things to grow.  I learned a lot and became excited to do that more when I moved out.  

I've lived in a couple apartments and tried to grow an indoor container garden.  Mild success.  I definitely needed outdoor space in order to be more successful.  It turns out, bees are important and I kind of forgot about that.  So then I was excited to live in a house and actually have a yard!

Fast forward to May/June of last year (2022).  We had been living in our house for a couple of months and it was time to plant things in the ground.  I started seeds inside and was ready to transplant them.  I cleared an in-ground plot and planted zucchini, tomatoes, and some other things.  It was definitely more successful than my pitiful indoor apartment container garden!  I actually got tomatoes and a few giant zucchini before the squash bugs took over!  I loved the feeling of growing my own food.  After my first real garden, I learned:

1. Squash bugs are the worst.  But there are things I can do to deter them.  I had some strategies I could try during the 2023 growing season.
   
   
2. Green tomatoes at the end of the season can still be used!  I found out that if you pick all of your green tomatoes and put them in a paper bag with a banana, most of them, if not all of them, will turn red.  That blew my mind.  I wasted a lot of perfectly good, but underripe tomatoes.
   
   
3. Label everything right away.  You will not, in fact, remember where you planted things.

Lots of good things, only some of which I applied right away this year as I planted my second garden at this house.

This year, I upgraded my garden and, with my dad, built three more garden boxes using some old decking I had acquired from my local Buy Nothing group.  I love having the extra space!  And I've made sure to fill every bit of it.  This year, I'm growing:

• Strawberries (ordered live starts from CZ Grain through Amazon and so far so good!)
• Sweet corn
• Pumpkins
• Chives
• Tomatoes
• Bell Peppers
• Raspberries (from my local Buy Nothing group!)
• Cucumbers
• Green Beans
• Zucchini
• Carrots

I have recently moved my carrots out of their original pot and into my raised bed in the hopes that they'll be able to spread out more and get bigger.  They were definitely growing, but they were pretty small when I pulled them out of their pot!  

Raspberries are doing really well but are reaching the point where they're starting to look spent.  That makes sense though.  I just found out that raspberries are typically in season until mid-July usually.  Raspberries tend to spread though, so my plan is to go in and spread out the new canes so that we can have even more raspberries next year!  I also learned about ever-bearing raspberries or fall-bearing raspberries.  Maybe I'll look into those for next year (or to plant this summer to get fully established).

Zucchini is my losing battle right now.  I've had to pull a zucchini plant already, leaving one of my original ones.  But that one is starting to get overrun by squash bugs.  I have put out a jar of soapy water so that I can put bugs in there when I hand-pick them off my plants.  Another neighbor suggested taking a spray bottle of soapy water and spraying down the plants.  I have planted chives, which is a good companion plant, but that's still growing and probably isn't affecting anything right now.  My next moves are probably going to be adding garden netting over the top of my plants (creating a hoop cover) and putting in diatomaceous earth.  Surely between those two tools, my zucchini will survive longer?

I did better with labeling things this year, but not well enough.  I thought I was really awesome at growing peppers!  But I mislabeled them and I actually have grown tomatoes.  I feel a little silly for getting some tomato plants from Home Depot when I had four perfectly good plants growing in my bigger garden bed right now!  There are some green tomatoes sprouting, so I'm excited to get some tomatoes in not that much time.  Then I get to learn how to make tomato sauce!  And ketchup :). There are a couple of things I will do differently though.  First, I will make sure to pick all of the green tomatoes off of my plants before the first frost.  Second, I want to try to overwinter my plants.  Last year, I pulled my tomatoes out of the ground and put them in organic recycling.  But that seems like such a waste.  What if I could keep the same plants and continue their production or at least keep them alive through the winter so they're ready for spring!  

There are some cosmetic things that I want to do in my garden as well over time.

1. I want to put landscape fabric and woodchips down between the garden beds.  I don't need the grass there and I think it'll help my garden look nicer too.  
   
   
2. I'd like to place stepping stones from my front yard to my backyard so that I can start trickling into my side yard and front yard, if I'm able.  Every year, I'm planning to expand my garden a little bit more.  It's really expensive otherwise.

One thing that's new in the garden this year is a compost tumbler!  I've been wanting to compost since we moved in and I was gifted one this year when I made that desire known (thanks, dad!).  I'm still learning how to cultivate that soil.  I just found out I need to be adding paper and watering it when it looks dry as well as adding my kitchen scraps.  I might have some compost ready to add to the garden by the end of the summer.  Cross your fingers.

A lot of things are happening!  I love this garden and I love figuring out how to make it better and grow more things.  I'm excited to see how things develop for the rest of the season and what things will look like into next year!