The weather this year as been very odd indeed, but I am beyond grateful that we did the huge second fall plantings. It was a strange garden year for us, the second year of gardening in the new big enclosed park garden.

We started the year of with great difficulty, first it wet, and then it went dry with summer type heat, causing both a rotting of seeds/movement of seeds and then bolting or kill off of tiny little seedlings that could not take the heat despite us being regular on our watering.

The park garden has far more sand then any other place we plant in other then one small area in the food forest and it just eats compost like its candy, which is kind of crazy really, I picked this spot for a number of reason’s but one of them was the fact that i had two winters worth of hay/sheep poo blend over the area that was allowed to rot in and be turned in before we even started.

This year we added in massive amounts of well done compost and then layered the walkways with even more, its shocking to me how fast its being taken down in this area compared to my river loam garden areas that enjoy the feeding but they can take a good layer and feeding every two or three years.

The new gardens will need to be heavily feed yearly for, well I am not sure how long but i am going to be happy that my horses are such good producers and this year I will reach out to a friend and add in a load or two of spent barley from beer making for all my small new tree/hedge rows to be.

While almost all of my baby trees made the spring, many did not make the spring/heat/dry, despite our help on watering, they made the winter, leafed out and then went down in the spring heat and drought.

Somethings required up to three rounds of plantings to get full rows up but once they were up, they thrived and yields were excellent.

By the time I was doing my last plantings I was using some of my shortest season and determinate seeds so many produced heavy and then were ready to be pulled out and replaced in time for the fall plantings time of the last week of july or the first week of aug, which this year was pushed to aug 10th. I figured I would get something but not sure what..

what I didn’t count on that was month late first frost date, we didn’t get our first frosts till late oct and while we had some snow/freezing in nov, it was minor..

For the first time ever, on the week of christmas, beets, carrots and dried beans were harvested.. now it would not be surprising to do covered carrots and even maybe covered beets but theses were bare in the ground, no row cover, no protection and that is just wow!

Same with the dried beans, I had harvested the fresh up to frost and then we have a number of personal things come up so I just was like.. leave it, if I have to i will get it in the spring.. but the day or so before i left on my trip, we were walking in the pasture and passed the garden and I popped off a dried pop, cracked it open and poured 8 perfect grey goose seeds into my hand and went huh..

Showed hubby and then picked a different kind, again, dried and ready to be shelled.. and off on the trip I went, Dear hubby was the one that picked and prepared all the beets/carrots and bowl after bowl of beans..

He made sure to dry them that they could be used for seed as well as for cooking, which is great as one of them was a older bean that I grew just a few plants to see if it was still viable and I will have enough this year to do a full row and grow the seed from.

While I am used to having a green christmas a few times since we moved to the farm, we have never still be harvesting from the garden on Dec 24th without row covers or having moved things into the house, from the root cellar yes, from the garden.. no.

It was a good year for fruit overall but the one thing that I had that many did not was the native bees, so many native bees that at times my garden spaces hummed and buzzed as you walked by

This coming year will be year three in the new main park garden which will be expanded again plus all the side smaller gardens and while I love having so much in the space, I will be taking out the tomato’s and some of the space hogs and adding them into different guilds in the forest gardens. 

The big challenge for 2024 will be the Japanese beetles which for some reason exploded last year and will have to managed far more this coming year or they will be overwhelming on some things.

The seed catalogs are coming in, but I am just not ready to be thinking garden yet, strange but true, I am still thinking wood and snow with winter formost in my mind, spring seems so far off yet I know its not true.. only time will tell if its a early spring or later start to the year..

Its a tracking year for 2024, not something I enjoy in some ways and like in others, it can be struggle to always track an weight everything but we have so many things that are hitting their six year from the big rebuild that started producing last year, small amounts to be sure but enough for taste testing that should be producing this year and with the garden coming into its third year, we should get a good overall picture of yields within the new systems.

Are you looking forward to the turn of the wheel and the bringing back of spring and the gardens or are you still in tucked down mode waiting out the cold or for many of us, the current snow storm.