My Garden

This year will be my fifth year of having a vegetable/fruit garden. You would think that after five years I would have an abundance of knowledge of gardening and have no problems growing plants that produce fruit- well you would be wrong! Every year my garden is a source of great frustration and a money pit!

Year One- The first year I had a new baby and did not think I had enough time for a garden so I bought two raspberry plants. Within a few days my plants were attacked by Japanese bettles, so I covered them up with fabric tulle and used some sort of powder to get rid of them. They were attacked so viciously I thought they would not make it through the year- however those plants were sturdy and have come back every year since and I think that it even produced about a dozen red raspberries over five years.

Year Two- I planted lettuce (the fancy kind) directly into the ground, tomatoes, and peppers. The lettuce was great- I had a ton, however my husband decided he did not like that type of lettuce so even though I had a ton, a lot was wasted because I could not eat that much lettuce. We also had a drought that summer so even though my tomatoes and peppers were watered almost every day we still had problems and had only a few tomatoes (I think that I planted 8 plants) and the garden did not produce any peppers.

Year Three- I planted tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers. My tomato plants were doing great and I had some huge tomatoes which were a few days from being fully ripe and a coyote attacked my garden and knocked down the fencing destroying my tomato plants and removing the tomatoes from the plants and then deciding he did not like green tomatoes and spit them all over the ground. My zucchini plant looked to be doing great then it was attacked by a bug that killed it. The cucumbers were the only vegetable that we were able to eat that year. I think we had three huge cucmbers then the plant was attacked by a bug and died!

Year Four- Last year I decided to go crazy and plant a bunch of things because surely something may work! I started early and planted several different plants in containers and started them inside. I planted sunflowers, turnips, carrots, peas, watermelon, tomatoes, basil, peppers, lettuce, green onions and artichokes. I was so excited because I had six sunflowers and they were a couple feet tall. The flowers on the plants were beautiful, until the deer came by and ate all the tops of the flowers off leaving the rest of the plant to die. The turnips did not grow big enough to eat, the green onions just kind of died, the lettuce did not make it and the artichokes are a two year plant so hopefully this year they will do well. We had several little tomatoes, about 6-8 green peppers, two dinners worth of carrots, one serving of peas, two tiny watermelon and a bunch of basil. At the end of the year I also planted a grape vine and strawberries, which will hopefully come back up this year.

I am hoping that my garden does well this year. I am planning on starting seeds again this year. Today I went to Lowes and bought yellow squash, brussels sprouts and tomatillos. But we shall see!!!