The thing with gardening is that one learns something new all the time. So far this year I have learned that I NEED TO LEARN how to harden seedlings. I also have discovered that I don’t like the soil mix that I used for my square foot gardening. I believe it was because I used the cheapest products available. The mix is too dry and there is too much wood in it. Sometimes it is good to pinch pennies and sometimes it isn’t. This was a case of “isn’t”.
I also tried to use paper bags to keep out the weeds. It didn’t work. The grass here is so aggressive that it just pushed the bags out of the way. So in essence, I’ll be changing up the soil and bottom of the stuff. However, I won’t have to be at square one because we have the boxes, tops and wire for the bottom still.
My carrots seem to like the soil. I’ve never had a productive carrot crop. We’ll see how it looks when the carrots are done though. The beets are doing poorly. I think that I am about to call it quits there. Really everything got a slow start because of the poor soil quality. I have been able to harvest some peas, radishes and lettuce. The lettuce likes the soil after awhile. It just took awhile to bolt. I wish that I knew the reasons behind it beyond the generic “poor soil quality”.
Anyway, this weekend I hope to make a long box for melon which I will plant. I plan to weed either today or tomorrow, depending on weather. I also plan to plant some beans, peppers and tomatoes. The peppers and tomatoes I’ll buy at the Farmer’s Market in Franklin on Saturday.
At any rate, I’ve produced more this year than last year at this time, so I’m happy with that! Hopefully every year, as I gain knowledge, our garden will produce enough for us to eat fresh, put away for the winter and maybe some to sell also.
