Veggie Tales

This year we experimented quite a bit with our garden, and we had probably the most productive gardening adventure that we've ever had!


We bought seeds in February, when it was sleeting outside. In a fit of defiance against Old Man Winter, we went to Ashland Feed & Seed and demanded our seeds. The clerks thought we were deranged, but they opened boxes and packages that were still back in storage and gave us our seeds, costing about $15 total (because they will sell in part-ounces for some seeds versus whole packets which are usually far too many).


We juiced up the ground with as much composted horse manure we could find, and expanded the plot size by a third (to about 45 feet by 25 feet). We started everything from seed, including the tomatoes, and some plants we sowed directly into the ground. We started [;anting outside pretty early (around 4/15), betting that the harsh winter was over (thankfully we were right). We harvested our first yellow squash on 5/24/2010, and soon thereafter we were inundated with all sorts of squash.

Thankfully, other vegetables soon followed, but squash mainly ruled out lives until the end. Our potatoes were a tasty success, the cucumbers did well. The broccoli was a bust, as was the corn, and the green peppers never seem to live up to our expectations (nor did the peas this year, oddly enough). However, the tomatoes, pumpkins, and all squash varieties were plentiful, and we even got some decent watermelons a few times. Carrots proved too hard to harvest usefully, and the beans were killed off by our laziness.

The cows only rampaged the garden a few times, and we kept the weeds away until late June, by which time we gave up and let the mature plants fend for themselves (this probably killed off our bush bean plants, but I can live without beans).


We happily gave away at least two-thirds of our garden to friends and neighbors, and we probably could have harvested at least a third more produce had we picked and weeded with some sort of scheduled regimen. But, we committed to only garden while it was fun, and that required some slacking every once in a while. We've now given up for the year, and let the cows in to have their way with the place, it took them a day to clear the place out.



We actually learned how to preserve a few things this year, and we made some sauces from our vegetables that were surprisingly tasty!


All in all it was a real success, not terribly too much work, and mostly a lot of fun. The girls really liked picking and cataloging the yield. We keep an imperfect count of our bounty, described here: zucchini - 70, yellow squash - 47, snap peas - 200(+), cucumbers - 132, beans - 112, pumpkins - 19, tomatoes (cherry) - 383(+), potatoes - 100, spaghetti squash - 74, butternut squash - 30,carrots - 114(+), tomatoes (roma) - 339, watermelons - 5, cantaloupes - 4. Yum, yum.