And so it begins…

The seed catalogues are arriving, and my excitement and anticipation are growing. I want to buy all the things, the flowers, the veggies and even the fruit! I must pull myself back, hold and evaluate what grew well and what didn’t and why.

Let’s start with the wins. The tomatoes, kale, carrots, sunchokes and peppers were the bombs! Why were these so good? I chose the right spot and amended the soil with compost and manure, added minerals and covered with chopped straw to hold the moisture.

The peas, cauliflower, beets, cabbage and beans, not so much. I did get a yield, it was small, and they weren’t as large as I had hoped. These were not as plentiful or as large because I did not do the things mentioned above. I thought the soil was still good enough from the last years’ amendments, so I got lazy and just planted. I also had a couple of weeks where I was just completely overwhelmed when my mother passed away, and I just didn’t water the beds as much as I should have. I didn’t cover the beds with chopped straw either to hold the moisture, lesson learned.

One thing I did choose to do that blessed me every day was I decided to plant flowerbeds in the vegetable garden. This one choice made my days a little brighter and allowed me to smile because I was able to stop and watch the bees we house on the property, buzzing from flower to flower.

I have been watching YouTube and reading to learn what I can change to do better this year on those crops. I have learned a few things that I will use to tweak how I grow this year. I initially thought that I would just give up on growing those things, but I have since changed my mind and will instead relocate them and set up a gravity-fed watering system. We are also increasing our composting this year, we just have not taken it seriously enough and always come up short of what we need, not this year!

So what are we going to grow this year? Well, I figure we will continue with beans, carrots, tomatoes, peppers (sweet and hot), peas, lettuce, zucchini, spinach, onions, cabbage, and cucumber. We will be adding potatoes, squash, pumpkin, swiss chard, broccoli and grains (wheat and oats). In the orchard, we will be adding more herbs, flowers and comfrey to bring in more beneficial insects.

We will be fencing our chickens for the first time ever to tear up some sod to create a rotating pastured pen for them. We used to free-range them, but it isn’t working in our best interest, more on that later.

I will be starting an organic spray cycle to the orchard to deal with many of the ongoing issues that have severely impacted our fruit yields. Again, I had been overwhelmed because of not planning to be very successful in the orchard. We are looking forward to an abundant crop of apples, Asian pears, plums, pears, cherries as well as berries this year.

I look forward to sharing the varieties that I decide to grow and the plan once it is done! My question to you is, what if anything has this inspired you to grow?

Ease, Joy and Prosperity,

Wanda