This year has overall been good so far. Initial plantings went well. The overall planting structure was successful and the harvests have been great. Things I could work on are the prep work for succession, trellising and having a better idea of what my goals are for the season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did much better this year about being prepared for the initial spring planting. I got a whole new indoor seed starting setup that is easily reconfigurable and it worked out great. I have had the best garden this year that I have ever had. I spoke with Gendr about the crops that we thought would be good to cover our diet and what was expensive at the store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The structure of each bed was also better this year. The beds were mixed with different crops and staggered for sun exposure. I do think next year I would prefer to have the tallest crops centered in the beds to give me a shady area for the veggies I would like to have all season that bolt in the sun. The lettuce and mustard, specifically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The harvests have been much better than previous years. The plants overall appear healthier and lush. We saved a significant amount of money on just mustard greens alone this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where the ball began to be dropped this year started with planning succession. I just got enamored with everything that was already in the ground and life and forgot to plan for what was going to replace the current plants when they were finished. I currently have three beds that are mostly empty. I decided to give large vine plants a chance due to this oversight and to have something to take over the beds. We picked some pumpkin and watermelon varieties to give a go, so we will see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trellising will also need to be addressed for next season. I have four trellis panels that we picked up from Home Depot that worked very well last year. This year, the pear tomatoes have gone nuts and are just too hefty for them. I will be adding to my project tracker some sort of robust trellising system to attempt to address it. It will probably be more difficult now that everything is so expensive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lastly, I need to have a better overall idea of the scope of my goals for next year. Since my project this year is the fountain, I am thinking next year will probably be another expansion year. We are working to get a large and dangerous tree on our property removed. This will open the canopy up and give us more light on the ground and hopefully much more growing space. General brainstorming on the idea though is that I would really like to make the largest dent possible in the grocery bill. I really like the beauty of the garden and how it attracts butterflies and FIREFLIES!!!! But at the end of the day, the idea to is to grow our food. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have a smartsheet tracking how much we have saved by growing food this year. I will update it to take into account inputs to get a net value out of the garden. I don’t want to end up delusional thinking I am saving us money by paying a crap ton of money for inputs and never taking them into account. I am also interested in more unusual plants. We love things like chickpeas, but they are so cheap it hasn’t been worth it to waste the effort. But I think it would be fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year has overall been good so far. Initial plantings went well. The overall planting structure was successful and the harvests have been great. Things I could work on are the prep work for succession, trellising and having a better idea of what my goals are for the season. I did much better this year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-garden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tanshicorn.unicornfuntime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}