14 replies to this topic

[kate]

For the past few years, I've been gardening organically. It's not easy!  I've used heirloom or saved seeds, made all my own compost, hauled good dirt from one part of the property to enrich soil where needed, rotated my crops, interplanted for natural pest repellent and never let a bad chemical, fertilizer or pesticide, fungicide or weed killer anywhere near the place.

Each year, I also wanted to expand my garden, made even more challenging by the fact that my best land is on a pretty steep slope and I'm no spring chicken!  For the first few years, I cleared everything by hand and YIKES.  The best I can say about that effort is that I sure slept well at night!

Mother Nature did her best to foil my efforts.  The first year, after the killing frost, I found a dozen lovely squash on a vine that was practically dangling into the one-acre pond that's downhill from my garden. There were torrential rainstorms in early summer that literally washed my seedlings into each other and caused my garden to produce some of the oddest hybrids ever!  Orange cucumbers climbed my fences!
This year, we had no spring at all. My garden diary laments on June 13 that spring will never arrive.  Then spring came -- for about a day or two.  Then summer arrived, and it was instantly 90 and humid and wet.  I was still picking peas in August and hadn't seen but a few measly beans by then!

We had straight line winds of 70 MPH that literally flattened my entire garden TWICE this year.  You know in the movie Twister, where Jo asks, "Where's my truck?"  That was me, asking "Where's my garden?"  I did my best patching up the vines, tied what was left of the tomatoes back to their cages, fetched the rest of the cages out of the fields where they'd landed, and the poor garden looked for a while like an exotic plant hospital!

Well, long story short, the season is over, short as it was.  I opened the garden gate and let the goat inside to clear the rest of the bean vines (don't even ask about the vines climbing into the cherry tree!) and the tomatoes and squash and whatever else she can find that I didn't get first.

So, farewell, my organic garden ...for now.  You've been a high-maintenance child, but I love ya anyway!  See you in the spring!

[Mon-Jes]

Wow. That's got to be frustrating. That was a great post, by the way.

Gosh, I want to suggest so many ways to combat what you went through, but you've probably tried them already. At least it looks like you have a really good testing ground for strange hybrids. Seriously, orange cucumbers?

[mariaandrea]

I love this story. I mean, I'm really sorry about all the work and frustration and feel your pain, but it's so well-written I can see your poor garden in my mind. I'm also picturing this on a larger scale with renewed sympathy for farmers whose livelihoods depend on forces of nature that are out of their control.

And seriously, I want to know more about the orange cucumbers too. Did you eat them? You could have a hybrid named after you if it's any good and if you can ever figure out just what crossed with the cucumbers!

[kate]

Thanks for the kind words!  I have to admit that the first couple of years, it was very difficult to have a sense of humor about it because I worried I could not ever get it right.  However, I kept at it. A key to surviving it has been to plant a lot more than I need, so that when a storm blows through or hail flattens it or a raccoon gets in and eats my corn the very moment it ripens, I am not totally bereft!

Yes, we did indeed eat the orange cucumbers!  Somewhere I may even have photos.  They tasted exactly like cukes should taste!  It was pretty horrifying at first, picking them off the fences, because clearly they were ... unusual!

[zararina]

Orange cucumbers are really unusual and I got a little excited to see some of your pics.
Really hard to battle the weather nowadays as it gets worse and more destructive just like for crops. I used to have a little vegetable garden too but I had bid goodbye to it several years ago since the "space" had been used for some other purposes.

[kate]

Yes, I think they must have crossed with squash or perhaps the pie pumpkins?  We always have some interesting oddity in the garden!  We're literally right at the edge of a wilderness, with just a pond separating the garden from an old wooded area, and a big field and wetlands that presses right up against my garden fence.  The soil is phenomenally fertile, and it's not unusual for me to get gigantic plants and fruit.  My squash leaves are terrifying!  My green beans can be longer than my hand before they even ripen!

This year I interplanted marigolds all around. I started with a few tiny little bargain plants from the nursery.  Right ow, I still have literally hundreds of bright yellow blooms on plants that grew to be several feet wide and very lush.  Even my hollyhocks reach at least 10 feet tall!

I am blessed and cursed at the same time!  But it's certainly never boring!

[Alli]

The orange cucumbers sound wild! I wonder if they have any of the beneficial health aspects that orange veggies usually do? I know the carotenes that make sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and carrots all appear orange are extremely healthy. You might have made a new variety of cucumber with beta carotene that helps protect eyesight!

[kate]

I'm really going to find those photos now!  It never occurred to me to wonder about the health bennies -- I was just so happy they were perfectly edible.  If the photos surface, I will drop a note to our extension agent and see if anyone at MSU is interested!

[Green Thumb]

I'm glad you're only leasing it to the goats only for now. I’m sure gardening make valuable most of your time put in growing your vegetation. I’ll be awaiting your story unveiling your productive secret garden.

[kate]

Green Thumb, on 27 October 2011 - 10:48 PM, said:

I'm glad you're only leasing it to the goats only for now. I’m sure gardening make valuable most of your time put in growing your vegetation. I’ll be awaiting your story unveiling your productive secret garden.

Thanks ;-)  I ought to note that my garden is really only fractionally frustrating.  Most of the time it is a real joy to behold, and I do love working in it.  There's nothing to compare to that wonderful fragrance of tilled soil in the spring, when I'm getting ready to plant.  I love shoveling my compost piles into wheelbarrows and wheeling it to my garden, just because I know it's stuff I made myself that's going to reward my efforts and attentions.  Not to mention how I love to watch the birds and bees and butterflies and dragonflies as they hum around and visit my little growing and blooming babes!  Then there are the morning glories and nasturtiums and pumpkins and cukes and squash that climb my fence!  Ahhhh.... in a few months ...

[Mon-Jes]

Okay, you really have to find those photos now. I wanna see those orange cukes!

Are you in a volcanic area, like the Pacific Northwest? I'm trying to figure out why the soil there makes anything you grow go nuts. Either that, or you've developed super-strong compost that you could market and make a fortune of off....

[kate]

No, actually I'm in a fertile area near Lake Michigan in the Fruit Belt.  My garden is situated in a cleared area that just has great, fabulous black soil. There's an intruding area of clay, and where the black gold meets the clay is where I like to plant my cukes and such. As I also plant corn and other nitrogen hogs, I do replenish the garden with my compost and do the "three sisters" planting with squash and beans and corn.
Not everything does great every year!  This year, my eggplants were about the size of my thumb!  But my pumpkins were amazing, as were my beans.  Tomatoes, not so much this year, although usually I can get hundreds of pounds.  So much also has to do with the weather.  Everything was so late this year getting in the ground.
I do swear by my compost, 'tis true.
Daughter is the keeper of the photos, so she'll have to do a search for the orange cukes.  They were perfectly delicious!

[Germs]

I can only imagine the hard work you must have put into that garden, but all good things must come to an end.

I have a lot of spare time on my hands, as well as a fair amount of land to work with, something i've wanted to try for a while now, i'll have to give it a try when the time is right.

[kate]

Germs, on 31 October 2011 - 02:56 AM, said:

I can only imagine the hard work you must have put into that garden, but all good things must come to an end.

I have a lot of spare time on my hands, as well as a fair amount of land to work with, something i've wanted to try for a while now, i'll have to give it a try when the time is right.

It is work, but the kind of work one really looks forward to each day!  If you do get into it, consider starting out small and then growing your garden as you get it established.   I'd love to have an even bigger garden, but with the baby and the animals and now the orchard, time is really short!  Next season we will split up the chores a bit more evenly (so sayeth my daughter!) so I'll have some more hands in the process!  Weeding on extremely hot, humid days is my downfall.  I wilt rather quickly.

[makeitmom]

I just want to give you a hug.

Gardens, like chidren, are often very high matenence, but in the end, its well worth it.

And listen, I am far from being the best gardener myself. My mom who moved in with us a couple of years back is the one with the green thumb, so I only take my cues from her and learn something new everytime time outside gardening with her. One thing I've learned is 'don't garden big'.

Try a small space with a few choice vegitables, and then go to your local market for the rest. The point is to enjoy gardening and feel good about what your doing.

And remember, next years theres always another spring.