The Deliberate Owl

Around our suburban homestead, we're preparing for winter. The last of my green tomatoes are ripening to pink. We've switched from salads to soups and from mornings outside in the sun to reading by the fireplace.

This past year, we had a wet winter that felt, for the most part, mild, but an early deep freeze without insulating snow made it a harsh one. Spring turned into summer fast, with a heated July. Some of my plants took a while to establish themselves as a result of the dramatic temperature shifts. Raspberries were about on schedule, but many other plants were a week or even several weeks later than typical.

This year, I didn't try anything big or especially new; I didn't add new garden areas or many new plants. Instead, I had a baby, and tried to plan the garden to be less work than in previous years, since from past experience, gardening with a tiny, mobile human who wants to taste rocks and grab flowers can be a challenge!

Read about my gardening journey so far:

• 2019: How we built garden beds
• 2019: Year 1
• 2020: Year 2
• 2021: Year 3's plan, how it went, and why and how we preserved food
• 2022: Year 4's plan, and how it went
• 2023: Year 5's plan, and how it went.
• 2024: Year 6's plan

Garden goals

My gardening goals this year were: (1) improve crop rotation; (2) keep better records of what grew where and how it grew; and (3) reduce garden work because of the baby.

It's unclear how crop rotation turned out… As described in my spring post, I did move crops to different garden beds and interspersed peas, beans, and clover among many of my other crops. It's a multi-year project so I'll update on how it's going next year—the tomatoes will be the real test.

Record-keeping is in progress. I have a decent planting map written down but I don't think I updated it after finishing all the planting. Still to do! I have photos of the garden throughout the season, so the main task is transferring that information to paper.

I did manage to reduce garden work! More on that below…

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are the main reason I garden! Picking sun-warmed tomatoes off the vine for a summery afternoon snack reminds me of being a kid again.

This year, tomatoes took a while to get going. They felt slower than in previous years—and when I checked my photo records, they actually were slower, several weeks behind. As a result, we got a lower yield than anticipated (but still plenty).

I put in about 50 tomato plants along the back row of garden beds. This was fewer than last year, when I had at least 64 plants. I tried to plant more large tomatoes and fewer small ones, to minimize the amount of picking work that needed to be done regularly throughout the end of summer. More Amish paste, roma, black krim, yellow, costoluto… lots of nice fat tomatoes. I also had a dozen or so cherry, candy, black strawberry and spoon tomato plants. The ratio turned out well—I didn't have to spend an hour every other day picking tiny tomatoes this year, and there were still plenty of the smaller ones for snacks, salads, and hungry children wandering through the garden.

Last year, I grew around 500lbs of tomatoes. I canned a ton of them—puree and jam. I also dehydrated some, and of course, we ate plenty of tomato soup and tomato sauce during the summer.

This year, again, I weighed the tomatoes as they came into the house. We got approximately 300lbs. This is less than last year's crop, but given that I had fewer plants overall, it took longer for them to get going, and the soil wasn't as perfect (last year, it was a new 50/50 compost topsoil mix; this year, it had been used before by tomatoes), a reduced crop was to be expected.

I dehydrated as much as I could. I picked dehydrating over canning because it's the more interruptible activity, and with a highly inquisitive mobile 8 month old, I am interrupted often. I froze a bunch of the tiny spoon tomatoes in quart freezer bags for later use in rice or other dishes.

We also tried to use more for meals. Tomato soup and grilled cheese is a favorite! We especially liked making it with the big yellow tomatoes and candy tomatoes, which resulted in a very sweet creamy soup. I used a very simple (read: lazy) recipe: half a pot of tomatoes, a handful of basil leaves, some butter and olive oil, a container of meat broth (chicken or whatever I had on hand), salt, and some cream swirled in at the end.

We pulled the last green ones off the vine October 14-15. Our first frost was the evening of Oct 17. I was so glad I had opted for fewer cherry, candy, and spoon plants this year—clearing out the garden went faster! I also had great help. My 7-year-old did most of a 4x12 bed himself! The younger two kids mostly hung out and snacked on the tiny spoon tomatoes, which is helpful in its own way… About half our tomatoes came in during the late summer months; the other half we picked these days in mid October.

Squash, melon, cukes, peppers, etc

My squash, melon, and cucumber plants were slow to get going. I heard from a few other local gardeners that theirs were slower, too. In my case, the plants didn't do well early, something about the cold then the heat, but if I had replanted them or planted them later they may have done better. Oh well! It was a lazy gardening year.

The squash got powdery mildew at the end of September. This happens every year, probably because I have overhead watering. Maybe next year will be the year I add drip watering…

I got a couple good zucchini, and one pie pumpkin that we turned into pie. It was delicious. The peppers were slow, so we didn't get a lot.

Rhubarb

The rhubarb is one of my favorite plants, because it has been so low effort and so productive. It's enormous! We harvested over 20lbs of rhubarb from this plant this year, including one single stalk that was over a pound.

Flowers

Every year, I want more flowers, and this year was no exception.

I had many volunteer flowers from last year's calendula, snapdragons, pansies, and black-eyed susans. In fact, last year's calendula was incredibly successful at reseeding itself; I moved over 50 baby plants to other parts of the yard, and could have easily moved 50 more had I had time. I easily had at a 8x6 area full of calendula, spread between three beds and the pathways between them. I collected a lot of the flowers and dried them for tea and other future uses. With all these, plus a few of the front flower garden plants and my annual zinnias, I had plenty of flowers to cut for bouquets from late spring through fall.

Like in prior years, I shopped a local nursery's fall sale to add more perennial flowers to my front flower garden. I picked up a couple dozen plants for infill. The front is definitely improving. I had something flowering all season, from the first crocus buds on to the start of fall. But I did not always have as many plants blooming any given day as I would have liked.

One of the big challenges with that front flower garden is the soil. That stretch was, for a long time, a row of evergreen privacy trees. I doubt any work was put into the soil during that time. That section also tends to dry out in the hot summer sun. Mulching and additions of compost seem to have helped significantly over the past couple years, but it is still a work in progress.

Greens and herbs

My greens grew well! I love the bloody dock and arugula in salads as well as cooked. I dried some kale for winter use. I love that dock is a perennial. I may move one (or more?) of my dock plants to a new location out front; I think their pretty red-veined leaves and dark stalks of seeds would be a statement in the front flower garden.

I planted a bunch of herbs, as usual. The cilantro bolted early; the basil was slow but in the late summer we got a couple wonderful batches of pesto out of it. My oregano and mint supply is huge… I have two kinds of oregano, and we have lemon mint, spearmint, peppermint, and lemon balm. Chives continue to grow in their pot. I have several large thyme and sage plants as perennials in the front flower garden. We dried a bunch of herbs for later use.

I added echinacea this year, and let a couple mullein plants that popped up stick around, since they're a useful medicinal plant.

Leeks and onions

My onions were tiny but tasty. Many were so small I could have saved them as seed onions for next year, but we decided to eat them all instead. Since this was my first attempt at growing onions from seed, I'm just happy that something grew and that we got enough tiny onions for an entire meal.

The leeks were a fun addition to a potato leek soup. Again, however, they were on the small side. Something to figure out next year! I'll definitely try growing these again, as they're a good addition to my crop rotation.

Peas and Beans

I felt like I planted far too many peas and beans, but when it came time to harvest and eat them, I felt like I didn't have enough! Lesson learned; keep planting peas and beans everywhere. I remembered to do a second planting of peas, and could have done more if I'd had more seeds sitting around. We mostly snacked on the peas and put them in salads; the green beans we cooked with garlic and basil.

Carrots

This was the first year my carrots actually did okay, in that I got more than one carrot. Garden-fresh carrots are so delicious; I wish we'd had more. I planted a lot of carrots but didn't get that many (enough for the occasional salad and a side dish or two). I suspect the small birds living in my yard have been eating the seeds. Again, something to figure out and improve next year.

Berries and fruit

I think we finally have enough raspberries! By the end of raspberry season, the kids were no longer eating every berry they found and I had enough to add to bowls of vanilla ice cream, granola and yogurt breakfasts, and fermented lemonade soda.

Our blueberry bushes did not produce a ton of berries this year. Of the three liberty bushes out front, one gave us berries but the other two did not. The backyard bushes (one patriot, one bluecrop) might get too much shade… I'm wondering if I should dig them up and move them somewhere sunnier. A project for the spring…

We also got about 60lbs of plums off our green gage plum tree—twice as many as last year! Our bees did a good job, I guess! I dehydrated a bunch and made plum sauce.

My grandma's garden

We had the opportunity to plant a few things in my grandma's garden, about a 45-minute drive north of us. Unfortunately, we didn't go out to the beach near her as often this summer (opting for beaches closer to home, since the baby was frequently grumpy in the car), so we neglected that garden. Oops! I had known going in that I wouldn't check on it every week, so we had opted to plant predominantly squash and potatoes, which don't need as much effort week to week. I intended to harvest them in late September, given that frosts start earlier up there, but the kids got colds, so we had to delay.

Plans for next year

I made a list last year of all my future garden plans, and because of the reduced effort that I put into the yard and garden this year, most of those things are still on my future list! For instance, I still want a greenhouse. It would be especially nice for seed starting in the late winter and early spring. I have a south-facing spot in mind in the yard, but it's a big project that can only be done when the soil isn't frozen… maybe next spring or fall.

I would also still like a drip watering system, which might help especially in the later season September, October preventing powdery mildew, which shows up everywhere. We also didn't get the grape trellis or grapes in along the fence by the new garden beds, so that's a spring project, too. I have a spot in mind for a few blueberry and lingonberry bushes; I want ot put in more bulbs and other flowers; there's always more!

Next year, I'll also be continuing my crop rotation project. I've had tomatoes in the newer garden beds for two years. That means the beds on the other side of the yard have had a two year break from tomatoes. It might be time to move some of the tomatoes back, and give some of the newer beds a rest. Given how many tomatoes I want to grow and where my trellises are, I'm limited in how I can rotate. But we found a few more crops we like that we can add to the rotation (such as onions and leeks), so we'll keep at it.

As we move into winter, there is more yard preparation to do. I'm collecting fallen leaves to mulch the garden beds; my seven-year-old wants to collect crabapples for jelly; we're getting ready for snow…