Sunday, October 28, 2012

Garden: Lessons from v2.0

This year's garden was my second in Colorado and I have learned a few things, as I suspect I always will.
  1. Soil fortified with Alpaca Manure grows massive plants.
  2. Thanks to #1, Tomato Cages are woefully insufficient for keeping tomatoes off the ground.
  3. Rabbits LOVE Bean and Pea Sprouts.
  4. Hanging CD's in Fruit Trees protects the Fruit from Birds.
  5. If I don't plant enough Roma Tomatoes, I will be unhappy.
  6. It's worth paying attention to the seed spacing recommended on the pouch.
I've been thinking about next year's garden and tossing around the idea of year-round gardening.  I've been inspired by several blogs based in the Southern Hemisphere, but especially the City Garden, Country Garden.  She grew 75% of the produce they ate in August which would be like me growing food in February.  I think that's amazing.  You only have to know it's possible in order to achieve it.  Right?

In the meantime, our second garden is under construction which should give us plenty of space for rotating crops and keeping winter vegetables, I have drafted a planting plan for next year and my Seeds of Change Catalog has arrived.

Happy Planning. :-)
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3 comments:

  1. MarmePurlOctober 28, 2012 at 10:28 AM

    Yea...I kinda think I learned the same lessons.
    A day without learning something new might just be a waste. Many thanks for the links.

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  2. Kathryn RayOctober 28, 2012 at 1:39 PM

    Agreed. :-)

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  3. NatalieOctober 29, 2012 at 9:49 AM

    Loved this post. I have been expanding our garden for the 10 years we have lived in our house and have learned many of the same lessons myself. I always end up chintzing out on manure because I have to buy it by the bag - and I regret it every time. My tomato cages have been inadequate for years and homebuilt cages have been on the to-do list for a few years now. Love your tip about the CD's, but on our fruit trees, it is Japanese beetles that are the biggest problem. I am pretty sure I have lost my cherry tree because of them. Same here with the Roma tomatoes. I bought 25 heirloom tomato plants from our vendor at the farmers market and he told me most of them were Roma style but he forgot to label any of them. Turns out I had 2 Roma style. Next year I plan to start my own again. And that seed spacing - it gets me every time...mostly because I forget to go back to thin out. My carrots this year are hysterical. I also planned on at least a fall garden this year but was dreadfully late putting in the last batch of seeds so I am pretty sure I'm going to have to call it a cover crop and dig it back in next spring. That's part of the fun though, isn't it - changing things up year to year with what we learned the year before?

    ReplyDelete