It's time to hear about how my little garden did this summer. So, I meant to do this awhile ago, but didn't really think anyone would care or notice if I didn't. A friend said she'd been waiting for it though!
I planted everything from small plants since we got a late start on the garden. Plus, it's easier and is 1 step closer to success (hopefully).
We had:
4 cherry tomato plants
1 plum tomato plant
1 bush tomato plant
1 cucumber plant
4 derby green bean plants
2 variations of Bell Peppers
1 honeydew plant
2 cantaloupe plants
My mom usually had a garden growing up and I remember weeding, picking beans and strawberries, and finding super-gross huge worms on the tomato plants - but that's about all that I remember.
Here's what was successful for me this year:
- Tomatoes! I had cherry tomatoes coming out of my ears! So yummy, but I'm the only one in the house that really likes them. The 2 larger variations did really well also. I had plenty of tomatoes and I ended up dicing a lot of them and freezing them for later use.
- My cucumber plant was pretty successful and produced quite a bit...but I'll talk more about them later.
- Green beans. I LOVE fresh green beans. My plants did good. We had 4-5 meals that included beans from my garden. But I want MORE next year!
Here's what was NOT successful:
- Honeydew. I saw a couple of flowers, but it never produced any fruit.
- Cantaloupe. These were given to me from a friend from church that works at a farm. He had no idea what variations they were or if they would do much. We got 1 medium-sized fruit.
- Green Peppers. I got 1 very small pepper from each plant. And they were on the plant for like a month. I kept waiting for them to get bigger, but they never did. :(
Things I want to change for next year:
- I want another little box garden next to this one.
- I want more beans.
- I will not plant Cucumbers and Melons next to each other. My grandpa Jackson warned me about this and said they would cross-pollinate making them taste funny and I needed to get them away from each other. I had a smaaaaall garden....you can't get anything away from anything else without removing it altogether! I did some internet research and found multiple sources that said that concept was a myth and I thought I would just have to learn on my own and test it out. My cucumbers tasted fine early on in the season, but towards the end, they definately had a sweet taste to them that wasn't very enjoyable.
- I will put tomato cages around my tomato plants next year. I just used stakes to hold them up, which still drastically helped. The tomato plants seemed so small and innocent at the start of things. Who knew they would go nuts and get HUGE?!
- I want to have Zucchini and maybe yellow Squash next year. Maybe some strawberries and rhubarb.
It was fun and worth the effort!
