What's more homemade than home grown vegetables?
This year I decided to try again at growing vegetables. I hadn't grown any since we lived in our old house. And my success there was minimal. I think we had some soil issues, too much shade and a proliferation of pill bugs. After a couple years there I stopped trying.
But with our new yard and more sun, we had a mildly successful year. I will definitely do it again next year. For the fist year I decided to keep it simple. I planted one hill of summer squash, two hills of zucchini, six tomato plants and two hills of cucumbers. I threw in a few green beans but the bunnies demolished those before my husband got the fence up.
I dug my garden the old fashioned way. And perhaps the stupid way. The day before I put my garden in I helped my friend with hers. Pitchforking two gardens two days in a row resulted in a very sore arm and hand. In the future I will keep this in mind and perhaps invest in some sort of tilling tool.
One of the best things I think I did for my garden was to cover the fresh dirt in cardboard and newspaper. To ensure it didn't just fly away, I covered it with brown cedar mulch. Due to that I had barely any weeds. I'm talking just a few tufts of grass poking out from in between the seams. I will definitely do this technique again. My mom does this and I saw it on Pinterest. If your garden is not immense, you should give it a try for sure.
My yellow squash didn't produce a whole lot of great fruit. That could be for many reasons, but I did see squash bugs in the flowers. One zucchini plant did quite well, but the other only produced a few zucchini. The tomatoes produced well, but I was hoping for a bit more. I had six plants and probably 7 or 8 tomatoes from each plant.
Next year I want to fertilize better. I went with some Pinterest tips and used coffee grounds and eggshells. And while my garden did ok, I am sure with more nutrients it could have done even better. I think this worked well for the cucumbers and tomatoes, but my squash did not have high yields as I mentioned
Just the other day I took in the last of my green tomatoes and put them on the windowsill. Frost has arrived and frozen green tomatoes aren't that great.
I'm sad I have so few pictures. I'm not sure what I was thinking! Next year I'll be sure to take more.
You might also like:
Summer Squash Casserole
Zucchini Sticks
Herb Roasted Green Beans
