This year was the first year I had ever really tried gardening. The picture above was from right after I planted. I tried a slightly modified version of Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening method. I made my raised bed larger than he recommends in his book. My bed was 5ft by 10ft. I picked the size simply because it was about the length of the building I put it next too and because I only had to by three 10 ft pieces of lumber and a 2x2 in order to build it. I was being cheap. I didn't use his mix for soil either. I used a 50/50 mix of compost and top soil. On top of that I dumped two large bags of hardwood mulch, after I had planted it, in order to hold in moisture. Early after the planting I also put some bluegill at in the ground near the roots of my plants to provide them with some natural fertilize.
I have to say that for a first year garden it did extremely well. My wife canned close to 30 jars of salsa from the tomatoes in the garden. I still had more than enough tomatoes to eat and share with neighbors and family too.
As much as I tried by stringing pie pans around the garden, I couldn't keep the rabbits out. They destroyed my beans. I had planted pole beans around my corn and was using the corn for the beans to trellis up. Needless to say by the time the rabbits were done there weren't any beans.
My pepper plants produced one pepper that was good enough to use for making salsa but did not produce as I had hoped. I am pretty sure I had over-planted the bed and they got smothered out by the other plants.
My corn grew well but a combination of wind and birds left me without any corn this year. I will try it again next year to see if I do any better. Luckily my neighbors had grown corn and were more than willing to trade for my zucchini that I had grown, which brings me to my zucchini plants.
I planted only two zucchini plants and they produced more than enough for our needs and for family and neighbors.
On our back deck I had also planted onions and herbs in pots as well as garlic. We had a few green onions but the herbs never really took off and the garlic was a total loss.
All in all my first year garden was a good learning experience. My 3 year old had a blast watching stuff grow and helping water the plants and pick zucchini and tomatoes. Next year I will probably plant a little later so I don't have to worry as much about frost and I plan on growing some larger variety of tomatoes. The plants that I had gotten that were labeled beefsteak tomatoes weren't what I would consider a true beefsteak variety. I'm going to attempt bush beans instead of pole beans next year and plant the corn where it is a little more protected. I may even build a second bed next to my current one to increase my yield.
My soil mixture worked great and I had very few weeds thanks to a covering of heavy cardboard beneath the soil when I built the garden and to the fact that the plants themselves were planted so close it was hard for the weeds to grow. The soil was loose so the ones that did make it through were easy to pull out.
I hope next year is even better, and I know I will learn more from another year of gardening. If anyone has any tips on how I can improve on my garden, feel free to comment below. I'm always interested in learning more and hearing what others have to say about what works for them and their gardens.
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