How did your garden grow? How was your final harvests? Have you had your first hard frost? Still growing, still harvesting?

My overview of the gardens for the farm for 2024

Hard Fruit, including Apples, Pears, Cherries, Plums, Peaches

Apples- Wonderful crop 8.8/10

Pears- First year three trees came on line, lovely fruit for the regular Pears and OUTSTANDING for the Asian pears 9/10

Peaches, first year for harvest from our seed started peaches, all three trees produced 20 plus pounds each, over a hundred pits of the best have been selected and saved to grow more peach trees from.

Plums -Total loss plum pocket

Cherries (5 types) best year ever, we picked bowl after bowl after bowl while the birds feasted until they got to ripe and we finally stopped picking and processing. (this was something that happened all around as as well, best cherry year!

Bush Fruits

Blueberries- very good, large, sweet and lovely

Haskaps -Fully loaded, all 8 types produced large amounts of fruit

Gooseberries -Good Year, not the best and not the worst

Jostsa Berries, Best year yet!

Highbush cranberry -Outstanding

Black Chokeberry – Good

Black Chokecherry- poor

Pincherry- average

Hawthorn – Outstanding

Nannyberry-average

Small fruits

Raspberries- average

Strawberries -outstanding

Blackberries- average

Logonberries-excellent

Now we get to the garden itself, o the rains, the rains did a number on us this year.. SO MUCH RAIN

So many days where spent watching it pour rain down, the farm was so lush and green this year, those that could handle the rains did very well indeed. It effected the crops around us, including hay, so wet!

Rain that washed out seeds, rain that made it impossible to work the ground, rain that killed or drowned out tomato’s and even killed a cherry tree that was as it turns out planted in a drain line that would not drain.

In the end raised beds and a version of strawbale gardening is what gave us what we got..

Garden Harvests on the farm in summer/fall of 2024

Potato’s excellent Grown in bedding, hilled three times with more cover

Carrots- In ground raised bed

Beets- In ground Raised bed

Beans – In ground Raised bed

Cucumber – In ground Raised bed

Zucchini – Raised mini mounds made just for them

Green onions in ground Raised beds

Salad Greens, in ground Raised beds

That’s it, everything else drowned, stunted, and or died, including tomato plants, pepper plants and a host of other things planted in other gardens. Potato’s grew in the main garden area well but only because we moved to the straw/bedding method which we did as it was so wet we could not work in there and it was the best choice we could think of to get the potato’s in to start the growing season.

The squash worked only because we made two 16 to 18 inch hills to plant them into on the top to control the amount of water/rain and even then we had to replant them twice due to rot of the seeds.

The kitchen garden with its built beds, its built in swales and its built in dry creek/rain garden leading to the pond was the winner winner of the year. it was what and where the found was produced and is still being grown.

First hard killing frost arrived Oct 17th and all tenders are done, but the beets/carrots and such are still looking good yet.

What a strange garden season its been, and we will need to try and figure out what the plan is for next year, seeds are already ordered for 2025.