Thanks to a break from the sweltering heat, we've seen a lot of veggies this year from our bigger and better garden. I also have to thank my daughter who took care of the watering this year in between all of the rain. This has been a strange summer in Oklahoma.
It's funny, the Mr. and I were commenting earlier this year about the drought in 2011 and 2012. He said, "That water has to be somewhere!" Well, it's here now. I even heard someone comment on the radio garden show that some of their veggies were too wet and were rotting from fungus.
This year we started with a raised bed near the house. We had carrots, onions, radishes, beets, and spinach. Our takeaway: PLANT MORE!The beets were fabulous, but there weren't enough. I pickled two quarts that didn't last a month.
We started planning the garden in February. I ordered the seeds and starter pots from Amazon. I started tomatoes at the condo and set up very inadequate "grow lights" in our master bath. The plants died when I set them outside to harden off. They just didn't mature well enough in my setup. We ended up buying 17 tomato plants from Lowes. I love tomatoes so much I wonder why we didn't buy 30. We never have enough tomatoes.
The main garden was 2 1/2 times as big as last year (30' x 45'). It ended up being too small for all of the seeds we bought. We started with 100 - 50 lb bags of manure from Lowes to work into the soil since that red dirt is mostly clay.
Did you know that Lowes delivers? After hauling 3 loads ourselves, we gave up and ordered a palette to be delivered. I even ordered it online and then followed up by phone to schedule the delivery. The delivery fee was worth the cost.
Like a lot of people, we have more zucchini and squash than we really wanted. Well, actually we have more squash than we want because the zucchini is being turned into dried zucchini chips that we are eating as fast as we can make.
I shot this video from our front porch a few weeks ago. You can see the garden in the background but it is hard to get a feel for how large it really is. Even as big as it is, I want bigger next year.
My husband says we can do that on one condition: we figure out who can deliver mulch. (The weeds got out of control and overwhelmed the beans).
 |
| Last year we couldn't grow a single cucumber. This year we can't keep up! |
