My Vegetable Garden 2018

What's more homemade than home grown vegetables?

This year I decided to try again at growing vegetables.  I hadn't grown any since we lived in our old house.  And my success there was minimal.  I think we had some soil issues, too much shade and a proliferation of pill bugs.  After a couple years there I stopped trying.  

But with our new yard and more sun, we had a mildly successful year.  I will definitely do it again next year.  For the fist year I decided to keep it simple.  I planted one hill of summer squash, two hills of zucchini, six tomato plants and two hills of cucumbers.  I threw in a few green beans but the bunnies demolished those before my husband got the fence up.

I dug my garden the old fashioned way.  And perhaps the stupid way.  The day before I put my garden in I helped my friend with hers.  Pitchforking two gardens two days in a row resulted in a very sore arm and hand.  In the future I will keep this in mind and perhaps invest in some sort of tilling tool.

One of the best things I think I did for my garden was to cover the fresh dirt in cardboard and newspaper.  To ensure it didn't just fly away, I covered it with brown cedar mulch.  Due to that I had barely any weeds.  I'm talking just a few tufts of grass poking out from in between the seams.  I will definitely do this technique again.  My mom does this and I saw it on Pinterest. If your garden is not immense, you should give it a try for sure.

My yellow squash didn't produce a whole lot of great fruit.  That could be for many reasons, but I did see squash bugs in the flowers.  One zucchini plant did quite well, but the other only produced a few zucchini.  The tomatoes produced well, but I was hoping for a bit more.  I had six plants and probably 7 or 8 tomatoes from each plant.

Next year I want to fertilize better.  I went with some Pinterest tips and used coffee grounds and eggshells.  And while my garden did ok, I am sure with more nutrients it could have done even better.  I think this worked well for the cucumbers and tomatoes, but my squash did not have high yields as I mentioned

Just the other day I took in the last of my green tomatoes and put them on the windowsill.  Frost has arrived and frozen green tomatoes aren't that great.

I'm sad I have so few pictures.  I'm not sure what I was thinking!  Next year I'll be sure to take more.

You might also like:
Summer Squash Casserole
Zucchini Sticks
Herb Roasted Green Beans