When I plowed up part of the yard for a garden earlier this year I was more or less resigned to not having a great crop. When you go from grass to garden it takes time to get rid of all the grass and weeds that were there and to get the soil built up with organic material and so forth. I hoped for the best, of course, but I knew all my hard work and expense might go largely for naught.
That turned out largely to be the case. The tomatoes did pretty well, as did the zucchini, but that was about it. Four of the five kinds of pole beans failed spectacularly and that’s actually pretty hard to do. Both types of cucumbers failed completely, as did the bitter melons, winter melons and Hami melons. The gourds actually did pretty well, but they sort of don’t count because they’re for decoration, not eating.
I planted a boatload of corn—10-12 rows each of six different varieties. Two were decorative corn, but the others were for eating. Only one variety—Mirai—did anything and what it did wasn’t much. But the few good ears we had were outstanding—sweetest corn I have ever eaten. Of course it helps when it goes right from the garden to the pot, but this stuff was so sweet I’m certain it would have been good a day after picking. The Japanese developed Mirai and it is still a bit hard to find here, but if you can find it, plant it. You will not be sorry.
I rototilled the garden at least three times and worked about 20 cubic yards of really high quality soil into it. I disked it and harrowed it and did everything I could to make it smooth and level. But I never could get it leveled properly and every time it rained hard I had standing water in parts of the corn patch. No wonder the corn never developed properly.
After the initial shot of Roundup to kill the grass before tilling, I didn’t put any additional herbicides on the garden. And boy did I have weed problems. Weeds and grass everywhere. Grew a great crop of weeds, in fact.
The raised beds did much better, especially the peppers. We’ve harvested a bumper crop of hot peppers and there are probably a hundred or more flowers still on the 10 or 12 plants. The Asian eggplant didn’t do too badly, but we only had three plants of it. The herb garden is still going strong, especially the lemon grass, parsley and lemon basil. The dill and cilantro grew like crazy, but I stupidly let them go to seed, so they sorta died off after flowering.
Once everything is done growing I’m going to rototill the ground again, but this time I’m planting grass seed. No more conventional gardens for me. I’m adding at least two more raised beds next to the two I already have and that’s the way we’re going to grow stuff from here on out. They work and they’re much easier to take care of.
The funniest thing was the asparagus. I bought 10 crowns each of two varieties, but they came—mail order—much earlier than I was ready for them. So they sat in the barn until they were pretty sad looking specimens. I thought they were beyond hope, but we decided to plant them—those not completely rotten—anyway just in case there was still some life there.
Nearly all of them grew. Go figure. So now we should have a nice little crop of asparagus next spring.
The strawberries grew pretty nicely, but we didn’t expect to get too many berries this first year and we didn’t. If they survive the winter in decent shape we might have a few quarts of berries next June.
So the final reckoning is about what I’d expected—not too hot, but not a complete waste of time and effort. If nothing else, I got plenty of exercise doing all the work in the gardens, so that’s worth something. And there’s always next year, God willing and the creeks don’t rise. These days that's as good a thing to look forward to as anything. Because if the Democrats with their 9/10 mentality take control of Congress, we might not be around next summer.
