This is the end of the 2020 Garden.
Overall it was a bucket of sweet potatoes, two daikon radishes, and a rather healthy pile of ruby red Okra (not pictured). Some of the sweet potatoes, like the one on the top of the bucket, were actually of a sufficient size to be worthy in a grocery store (the white variety, also pictured, did not do very well at all. Only the orange from now on). And a bushel of basil leaves.
This was not my most successful garden ever. Not sure why, of course - gardening is different enough here from year to year that I never fully know why. The beans did okay, the black eyed peas did amazingly well, the rest was so so. This happens sometimes, of course. It is just a part of life (that people that only buy their food from grocery stores never fully understand).
The Ravishing Mrs. TB suggested removing the border of the garden (it is brick) and expanding and giving it better walls would be a good idea this year. That said, I pulled back my planting to just onions and garlic for the winter (I cannot not plant anything!). I do not want to have to destroy anything to get into it to rebuild, so I have some kind of project to research for the Winter and start in early Spring.
It can be a little depressing when things do not work out quite as I would like, but that is the nature of it sometimes. Onward and upward.
I'm sure I've had more bad harvests than I have bountiful ones but it is the bountiful ones I tend to remember more clearly... thankfully.
ReplyDeleteEd, if we did not, I doubt we would keep at it.
DeleteOne of our friends is a full time farmer out near Pittsburgh.
ReplyDeleteHe recently returned to beekeeping, and all his work and the bee boxes were destroyed by a repeat black bear visitor.
Even when you have done all your work, and thought ahead, Mother Nature has tricks up her sleeve.
Aargh, how aggravating. Back when we kept bees for a few years, we had a small run in with a bear - knocked the boxes about but no real damage. How devastating.
DeleteYet another reason I wish people actually understood where their food came from.
I missed not growing anything this year, but as you say....onward and upward! I have a patch in the cottage garden in which I can grow a few vegetables, and that will have to do for the time being! For some of us, to grow a harvestable crop is rooted deep in our souls.
ReplyDeleteIt is true Vera - even the years here that we rented, I had a garden - it was a terrible one and very little did well (except garlic. Always the garlic) but doing the act was important. That is why I went with at least garlic and onions this year - I had to plant something.
DeleteGardening is fun! Looks like a good part of a haul!
ReplyDeleteThank you EGB! Sweet potatoes do well here. That said, the heat in summer makes growing things more difficult. But it is fun none the less.
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