Harvest 2018: the Year of the Zucchini
We are finishing up our harvest here after our first real year of having a garden on our homestead, so I thought I would share with you how things went, what we learned, and a little bit of our journey.
Even though this is our third summer here, this was the first year we really got a chance to plant a garden. The first summer, we only planted a plant or two while we settled in and discovered our land a little bit. Between the crazy weather (we had the wettest year on record for area), and having our second baby, we decided to just skip last summer altogether. And that's how we got to summer #3 without really having a garden! Despite not planting anything last summer, we did, however, do some prep work to get ready for this summer. We made sure the area that was set aside for the garden was well cleaned out (the previous owners had a wooden border there that was rotting away, and then a few other left-behind items that needed to be cleaned out), and we also decided to order some dirt for the spot as well.
If we were going to be growing our food there, we wanted it to be growing in really good soil, so we got enough to cover the area with about a foot of fresh garden soil.
So with our new layer of dirt in place, we started off not knowing how it all would go, but happy for the chance to really start living off our land in this small way.
I have to say that I was surprised with how much we got from our little garden. At roughly 12ft by 15ft (the size of a decent-sized bedroom), it's a smaller garden by country standards, but definitely a larger one by urban standards.
We planted two rows of carrots that did really well. We ate quite a few, and were able to prep and freeze quite a few as well. Our onions didn't come up at all, so my guess is that we had some bad seeds, or much, much more likely, we thought that they were weeds early on and pulled them out! We even planted two watermelon seeds, and we're surprised that one came up and flourished. It even gave us three watermelons! For the longest time, I thought that our tomato plants were not doing well at all... And then we realized and remembered that we had actually planted grape tomatoes, so they were meant to be small all along!
We grew some peas and beans, both of which did well, especially the beans, since we are still harvesting them, and have been all summer. One thing we will do different differently next year with them is to make sure we have some sticks, or poles, or supports of some kind for them to grow up on. Poor things, they were growing into and onto themselves, but still did well. I think that's what did in the peas in the end -- they choked themselves :-( Our corn came in nicely, but being newbies, we left it on a little too long so it was a little tough. We still got to enjoy it, though, so that was nice.
We also planted a row that was half lettuce and half spinach. Again, since we're still learning, I didn't keep on top of the spinach as much as I should of, and it ended up bolting very early on. As for the lettuce, it also did really, really well. I don't think we'll plant as much next year since we couldn't really keep up.
Speaking of not being able to keep up, we will now move on to the real story of our garden this summer: zucchini.
So. Much. Zucchini.
First mistake was that we planted half to two-thirds of a row of it... You do not need that many zucchini plants. Ever. We were enthusiastic in our planting because we missed having some last year -- we really do enjoy it -- and wanted "lots." Oh my... did we ever get "lots." The first bit that we had harvested, we eagerly devoured. Fried zucchini, baked zucchini, lots of zucchini sticks and dip. We even bought a spiralizer to make zucchini pasta (which was divine, by the way. Highly recommended). We then prepped and froze some to try to keep up. Then we "advertised" our good fortune, hoping someone who hadn't planted a thousand zucchini plants wanted a few. After a few takers, we were still horribly overrun. The desperate call went out again and we had a sweet soul who took some of our hands (thanks Danielle!). Then we did a massive harvest, and in one afternoon shredded and bagged well over 100 cups worth. These will be turned into bread, muffins, and cakes for the foreseeable future until my children are in college. We still have a few growing on the vine, but the end, I'm happy to say, is finally in sight. Lesson learned... At least for now!
As we head into Thanksgiving and then winter, we will take the lessons learned from this year's gardening experience, and come up with a plan to make next summer's garden even better. Looking forward to the surprises, challenges, and lessons next summer has in store for us.
Also, do you have any great zucchini recipes? Asking for a friend. ;)
Until next time,
Happy Thanksgiving and God bless,
Cheryl
