In 2021 I decided to plant a much larger garden than I have in the past. And there are 7 specific lessons I learned in the process. I suppose in order to talk about what I learned from my garden this year I should first talk about what my goals were to begin with. I really kept my expectations somewhat low for the garden this year. Because I am still new to gardening, I didn’t want to overwhelm myself with over-the-top goals and then burn out.
My main goal this year was to be open to learning, to apply the things I was hearing and reading about from experienced gardeners, to see what works in my garden, and what practices resonate with me. I wanted to be informed by my garden rather than dictating what I wanted it to do. Of course, I planned what things I would plant, when I planted, and where I would put them. But I saw my garden as sort of a laboratory with me as the scientist conducting experiments and observing the results. In the end, my findings were quite enlightening.
1) Dirt and Soil are Not the Same Thing
This is the first year I did a garden of this scale, and I knew not everything would be successful. I’m still new to growing veggies and so is my soil. Which brings me to the first thing I learned, soil is very important and takes time and tending so that it can grow big, beautiful plants.
In the past two years I have been pretty successful growing herbs in pots. And last year I added some vegetables to the garden. Tomatoes, peppers, squash, lettuce, and spinach. All the typical “new garden” veggies. My lettuce and spinach bolted, the peppers were puny, we were swimming in yellow squash and zucchini, the tomatoes were ok, but I lost 1 plant to blossom end rot. I hadn’t really done my research and was completely winging it, hoping that the plants would do their thing without much effort on my part.
Looking back with the knowledge I have now, I’m not surprised at the wimpy state of my garden last year. I didn’t know enough. I hadn’t prepared my mind, or the ever-important soil, for the task at hand. My plants did what they could with limited resources and not surprisingly, because plants are amazing, they did produce some fruit. But I was curious, could this be better? How could I be a better gardener? Could I create a garden that produced an abundant yield? In the end the answer is yes…and no.
I needed some guidance and inspiration. I had the desire to have a successful garden but didn’t really know enough to be effective. So, I delved into social media, seeking out gardeners and homesteaders for wisdom. I had casually been watching some homesteading channels on Youtube, fascinated with how different their lifestyle was than mine. I appreciated that they talked about the successes and “failures” in their own gardens, and I began to understand that this is a process.
One of the biggest takeaways I found was that much of a gardener’s success depends on experimentation in their own garden. There are few hard and fast rules but mostly you have to just try things until something works. And ultimately it all starts with your soil.
Dirt and soil are not the same thing! Dirt is lifeless, void of nutrition and used for utilitarian purposes. Soil on the other hand is rich, full of life and vitality. Every garden starts with soil, good or bad, and the way your plants produce is a direct reflection of the quality of soil. Of course, there are some plants that do fine in poor soil, in fact there are some plants that are soil fixers, but for the most part you will get the most yield if you have great soil to begin with. You get out of it what you put into it. Taking a few extra steps before planting, at the beginning and end of each season, and having a basic understanding of what your plants need to thrive will make all the difference in the world.
In my raised bed I tried to achieve a ratio of 40% soil, 40% compost, and 10% aeration. In the end I’m not sure my ratios were perfect, but I think it was close. In the next growing season, I need to address my in-ground garden soil. I know it’s not close to this ratio yet and we have clay soil, so it needs a bit more attention to lightening it up.
I also added some amendments, mostly directly into holes where I was planting, worm castings, mycorrhizae, eggshells for tomatoes (to prevent the dreaded blossom end rot, it worked by the way), and some all-purpose fertilizers. As I go forward in my journey I will continue to enrich and amend my soil.
At the end of the growing season the soil needs protection and should be put to bed with a cozy cover of some kind. My goal was to use the fallen leaves from our tree, which I did. We raked and scooped and covered the beds. But the wind had other ideas. It was terribly windy for several days and blew all the leaves off the beds.
This made me very anxious, as you can imagine. I didn’t want my soil to be naked! So rather than trying the leaves again we found straw blankets at the hardware store and staked them into the beds. This was not ideal because there will be some waste from the nylon mesh that holds the straw in place, but it will do for this year.
And so, the garden rests…
2) Get in the Zone
Another important factor that I learned this year was my growing zone and growing season. I live in zone 5b and I’m at an elevation of about 1 mile. We are considered high dessert and have short spring and fall seasons and tend to quickly go from very cold to very hot and back again. You have to dress in layers here and it’s typical to have frost on your car windows in the morning and be in shorts and using the AC in the afternoon.
Knowing your growing zone and growing season is important because plants are not “all season”. Some thrive in the cold and some in hot. Some have very long growing time and some shorter. The key is to know these factors and plan ahead so you can plant at the right time in order to get the most from your harvest.
Growing zones seem to be unique to the USA, as far as I know. Zones are determined by the lowest temperature range in the region, zone 5 having an annual minimum temperature of -15˚Fahrenheit. This information is much less important to know than the length of the growing season in your region. Growing season is how many days there are without frost, zone 5a averages 153 days. Knowing the length of the growing season is so important because the amount of days plants need to grow varies by variety and warmer weather crops can die immediately upon freezing whereas cooler weather crops can sometimes tolerate frost.
Regions with longer growing seasons tend to get very hot in the summer, which can cause problems too. In zone 5 we can have a handful of 100˚ days in the summer and in 2021 we had 46 days in the 90’s, most of them being consecutive and without rain. So, plants start to suffer from the heat and get wilty, even warm weather crops. Plants that prefer cooler weather will either bolt (go to seed), stop producing, scorch, or die completely as was the case for me with a few plants this year.
The lesson here is to know how many frost free days you have and how heat and cold tolerant your plants are. I was surprised by how long some of my plants tolerated the heat, namely All Year Long lettuce, and was bummed that I lost a couple of plants fairly early in the season and had some that didn’t produce because the heat overtook them. I will try to have better timing next year.
I learned this year that you can extend the growing season by starting seeds indoors, which worked well for the most part. You can also cover and protect plants from frost once they are growing outdoors. We randomly have snow into May and June sometimes because Colorado weather is bonkers. A subject I plan to learn more about is succession sowing. This prolongs the harvest of particular crops rather than just having a one and done type harvest.
I also learned that I could have started some of my seeds outside a little earlier than I thought, and they would have done much better. Some of my heat sensitive plants either bolted early or didn’t produce because they did not have the right conditions. This is something that could be very frustrating if you don’t understand plant hardiness, growing seasons and zones.
Get this book! The First Time Gardner by Jessica Sowards
There were a few plants I tried, that are not recommended for my zone, just to see how they would do and unsurprisingly they didn’t do well when the heat ramped up. Specifically, Chervil and Brussel sprouts. The Chervil quickly wilted, and the Brussel sprouts became huge, lovely plants with absolutely no sprouts. Ha! Lesson learned, those must be allowed to fruit in the cooler weather.
Read about the varieties I planted and how they performed HERE.
3) Begin With the End in Mind
Be clear about the purpose of your garden, even if you are learning and experimenting. I hadn’t really thought ahead to what I would be doing with my harvest until well into the season. To be honest I didn’t expect things to be as productive as they were, never underestimate plants. Looking at a bowl of abundant ripe fruit on my countertop and thinking “I’ll never be able to use all of this before it goes bad”. That was a pretty terrible feeling.
I had nurtured and cared for these plants, called them my babies and then when they repaid me with a wealth of precious fruit, I didn’t have any plans for it. I’d never had as much produce from my garden as I did this year and didn’t know to plan for preservation. This was a big eye opener. I will definitely do a better job planting with a view to preservation next season.
Because preservation will be a big part of my growing season next year I will plan ahead and make space in my pantry and freezer. I did a lot of freezing this year, which worked out well, but I was strapped for space. My favorite things to freeze are tomatoes, peppers, and squash.
The takeaway from this is to think ahead. Know that plants are going to do their job, produce fruit, even if we don’t do a great job as gardeners. You can plant a small garden and have only enough produce to eat within the growing season. Or you can plant a large garden and preserve your harvest for use in the coming weeks and months. The choice is yours.
Read 4 Simple Ways to Preserve Your Harvest
4) Plant Lovely Things
In addition to thinking ahead to preservation, consider what you want from your garden, aside from food. All plants have something of an aesthetic nature, I think they’re supposed to so that we will be attracted to them and partake of their offerings. Something surprising I found this year was how much I loved having flowers in the garden. Not only are they beautiful in their own right but they bring such life to the landscape.
I knew flowers would be beneficial in the respects of pest control and attracting pollinators, I chose specific varieties for these purposes, but they attracted me too. The best part of my days was walking in my garden admiring how the tightly closed buds had opened into a burst of color. Looking out from my kitchen window at the charming flower faces with bees and butterflies deciding the best bloom on which to land.
Your garden should be a place that makes your heart happy, somewhere you long to be, and adding things that you love will bring such joy to the often difficult task of gardening. Whether that be windchimes, birdhouses, pinwheels, or just the plants themselves, put things in your garden that charm you, make you smile and make you look forward to the work of gardening.
5) Go Ahead, Be Different
When buying plants from the local garden center or grocery we are limited by what the store thinks they can sell. People will buy and grow plants they are familiar with, vegetables they’re used to seeing at the grocery store. I would never discourage anyone from gardening, and this is a perfectly fine method.
However, there is so much variety out there to choose from. I was so surprised when I really started delving into seed catalogs and seeing what other gardeners were planting, that there is an enormous abundance of unfamiliar veggies and fruits that are amazing.
I was shocked to see my husband eat tomatoes right of the vine after a lifelong refusal of even touching them. Things we are used to getting at the grocery are sad and flavorless, waxed, packed and stored. Growing your own food opens up a new world of options and flavors that will blow your mind. If you’ve never liked a particular veggie, I would recommend growing it and see if it changes how you feel about it.
That being said, there are still things I don’t really like. It’s possible I haven’t found the right variety yet and I will keep looking. But the great thing about having your own garden is you can plant whatever you want, and you should plant what you like.
If you are planning to preserve your harvest, plant a large amount of things you like and use often. Plant smaller amounts of things you like to only eat fresh or that you’re experimenting with. If you end up not liking something and have an abundance it can become wasteful.
Plan to share your harvest. Your friends and family will be so happy to receive precious gems from your garden. Especially if plant produce they won’t see in the grocery. You may just inspire someone to start a garden of their own once they see the amazing varieties they could have.
6) Caring for the Plant Babies
Plants are like children or pets that need attention and care. Maintenance is required for the plants to thrive and produce, and the type of care plants need differs depending on the variety. Weeding, pruning, de-bugging, fertilizing, watering and all the other things are such an important part of getting an abundant harvest. Believe me, it’s so sad to work so hard at raising up a plant just to lose it to some creepy bug.
Learning how to maintain plants was a big lesson for me this year and will continue to be in the future growing seasons. It starts from when you begin the process of growing your seedlings all the way until the end of the season.
What Worked and What Didn’t Work
Trellising with Cattle or Hog Panels:
I used trellises for tomatoes and cucumbers. My tomatoes got so tall that they ended up being about 3 feet taller than the panels. Next year I will reorient the panels, so they are taller and can support the large plants. These trellises worked so well for the cucumber. All I had to do was direct the vines and tendrils to the trellis and the plant did the rest. Unlike cucumbers, tomatoes don’t have tendrils so I tied the stalks to the trellis loosely with cotton twine.
I also used a tomato cage for one of my watermelons as an experiment. The watermelon plant stayed relatively small, so this worked fine. I think if the plant had gotten any bigger it would not have been enough support. I also only ended up with only 1 melon that was very small. I need to do some research for next year to get a better yield.
Single-Stalk Pruning:
This was brilliant! I did this method for my tomatoes and will do it for cucumbers as well next year. This is a video from Roots and Refuge Farm where I learned this method. Jess gives a wonderful explanation of how to prune tomatoes and why. This video from Gary from The Rusted Garden about pruning cucumber. In a nutshell, single stalk pruning allows for airflow around the main stalk and controls of the amount of fruit you grow on a single plant. It also keeps the plant(s) tidy on the trellis.
Tomatoes, when left to their own devices, will fall over when they are about 2 feet tall and start growing along the ground sending out roots from their stalks. They can then vine all over the ground until they are very long. This is fine if you have the space for it. However, the plants are more susceptible to disease and the fruit is more exposed to critters and can be difficult to locate under the unruly vines.
We had an excess of cucumbers this year and I wish I would have pruned the plants. Because I let it grow wild it was basically a viny bush that I had to dig through to find the fruit. Cucumber stalks have pokey spines that are unpleasant when digging for fruit. Next year I will tame the beasts!
Topping Peppers:
This is a skill I have not yet mastered. The theory is if you remove the upper central branch when the plant is young it encourages bushing and can produce more fruit. My pepper seedlings were very slow growing and still quite small when I transplanted them. I tried topping them while they were still in the seedling pots, but I think I was too early.
This method didn’t seem to make a difference in production and my plants never really got more than 7 or 8 inches tall. Except for the ancho’s that got to be a 3 foot tall single stalk with no peppers, oy! So, I will review this method and try again. I would like to have a better pepper yield next year.
In temperate climates, pepper plants are actually perennials, growing continuously over many years. Some actually grow to the size of small trees. Incredible! Because peppers like to be warm, they are annuals in this climate.
Soaker Hose Watering:
With a small backyard garden one of the most time-consuming tasks can be watering. We did hand water some, but mostly we made use of our sprinkler system and a soaker hose. We have an in-ground garden that is close enough that we could tap into the sprinkler system and thread a drip line around the plants and into a couple pots.
In our raised bed garden, that is nowhere near our sprinklers, we bought a soaker hose that attached it to the garden hose. We would run that for a several minutes a few times a week. We some hand watering too, but the soakers did the larger beds and saved us a lot of time. The amount of water needed will vary with your climate and weather patterns.
The benefit of soaker hose watering is that it evenly saturates the soil and gets the moisture to the roots where the plants really need it. Watering the soil this way also keeps water droplets off leaves and prevents sunburn. Water acts like a magnifying glass and intensifies the suns rays on the leaves. Soaker watering also helps to control disease. Watering from above the plants can wash spores into the soil and potentially spread disease to other plants. I have not experienced this but understand it can be a possibility.
Hand watering was needed for our containers that had no access to the drip line. We did hand water on a few days that were exceptionally hot, waiting until evening when the sun was less intense to prevent scorching.
Pest Control:
Fortunately this year we didn’t deal with many pests. It was a little confusing as everything I was reading about talks so much about pest control. Anyway, I credit a couple factors, good companion plants and looking at the garden daily. I planted marigolds pretty much everywhere and I really think that helped with pests. I also planted rosemary, dill and mint (in a pot) around the raised beds.
I believe I counted 8 or 9 hornworms that we removed from the tomatoes. We did pretty good finding the pests, but I ended up losing a large portion of one my bush goliath tomato plants to one of them, little booger. I also squished an insect that looked a little like a grasshopper but was white with translucent wings. I’m not sure what it was but it was eating one of my tomatoes and I went into to mama bear mode without thinking to take picture of it.
Some silly critter had a little feast from one of my unripe butternut squashes. It was either a squirrel or raccoon. So, I started to cover the juvenile fruit with fabric produce bags once I knew they had been pollinated. We didn’t have any problems after that. I will continue to use companion plants and check the garden daily to help with pests. Maybe this was an unusual year, I’m not sure. Hopefully, our low pest population will continue.
Weeding:
Like the lack of pests this year, we weren’t overrun by weeds either, thank goodness. Our raised beds didn’t have any weeds, which was awesome, and our in-ground bed did have a few but they were manageable. I credit two things that helped with this; mulching and weeding. The earth likes to be covered and will find a way to do so. If you don’t cover the earth with plants and/or mulch it will cover itself with weeds.
Weeds are not necessarily bad plants as we have come to believe. They are just plants that are growing somewhere we don’t want them to be. Some plants that are considered weeds are actually great for food or medicine. But many “weeds” can be persistent and take nutrients away from your plant babies. Regularly pulling weeds and mulching should help quell the invasion.
7) Gardener for Life
An unexpected lesson I learned from my garden this year was about myself. I need gardening, it soothes me and makes me feel purposeful. It builds my appreciation for important things and is a distraction from the noise of life. I’ve never felt so successful and fulfilled and excited to continue. I’m so grateful that gardening challenges me in a wonderful way, keeping my mind and body active, and most of all provides an abundance of nourishment for body and mind.
