How Does Your Garden Grow? My own Adventure in Gardening

                                                 All photos are from last year

          This time last year I was doing everything in my power to keep my vegetable and flower gardens watered. This year, I'm doing all that I can to keep them from drowning. According to a local news page we have had a little over twelve inches of rain since June 1, the average rainfall is 4.9 inches a year. No one, no where at no current time can say we are any where near drought status.  Just the opposite. The ground is saturated; streams, rivers and lakes are filling and overflowing. Trees are uprooting and falling. And my poor squash are suffering. Now the cucumber right next to it are loving the water.

     Gardening is an ever evolving challenge and adventure for me. Every year I seem to do a bit better, but I still don't have dozens of canning jars lining my cabinets. Then there is the gardener's envy I suffer through listening to others talk about what all they have canned or frozen or even given away. (hint..if you're giving extras away........just saying). I'm not ashamed of my gardening skills of lack of because I am improving. I get disappointed in the lack of results, even as I realize that it isn't always my fault. One can only water so much, or siphon off so much water. Some deer- or other wild life- are going to chow down no matter what you do to try and prevent them from turning your garden into their personal buffet. Insects are a bad problem as well. I don't want to cover my vegetables with toxic poisons, whether they are toxic to humans, insects or my beloved bees. (Think about it folks, we need the bees if we want the gardens and fruit trees to produce). I'm working with organic stuff, but the rains that we've had just keeps washing it away.

 My garden is really not all that large. While I don't have exact measurements, guessing would make it approximately fifteen feet by thirty feet. Give or take a few feet. It is not the most sunny location thanks to the large Oaks that nearly surround it. Still, it is producing some, and that helps. I tried to do some things a little differently this year.

My son tilled up the garden a few days before I wanted to plant. Thing is, he tilled it to where the rows were running in a direction that would have allowed the first rain to carry off a large percent of my topsoil. Which meant that someone had to go back and till it to where the rows ran the other way. That someone ended up being me. Now, I had never to my memory worked a tiller to this degree. It was not fun. It was not exciting. It was like wrestling a lawn mower gone mad and trying to alternately mow the yard, the fence and the tops of trees. I will admit that at one point I hit a rock that caused the tiller to jump-- a jump that the boys in the Dukes of Hazard would have loved. The problem was that when it landed it landed right on top of a wire tomato cage which instantly wrapped around the tines. My son James had to help me correct that. He used my limb trimmer... it doesn't work any more. When I finished tilling the garden I then took and made elevated rows. I wanted to plant in a way that when it rained ( this was way before our now record rainfalls) the raised rows would stop the water from running off and allow it to soak into the ground there by helping keep the plants watered. Once the rows were laid out I dug a shallow trench down the middle. In this I put some organic fertilizer. Which was an improvement over last year because I forgot to put any in. Once that was done I got the seeds and or plants and got busy planting them where I thought they would grow best. I planted radishes, cabbage, two different types of green beans, onion, tomatoes, cucumber, squash, and bell pepper. I didn't plant my okra because it wasn't hot enough yet. One of my mistakes was that I purchased some of my seeds from a dollar store. Par for the course for me and even though others said that they had good luck with dollar store seeds, mine didn't come up very well. I had to go and purchase more expensive seeds- those came up.

 My worry then was about the deer and other critters. My garden is on the far side of our over sized storage building, right near the edge of the woods. Easily accessible to wildlife. My green beans are running on a section of fence that crosses almost  the entire end of the garden but there is just enough space for them to get by. That meant going to the store and finding one of the many granuals that promise to keep wildlife away. So far it seems to be working- even as I know I need to put more out thanks to the rain.

I over heard a coworker of mine talking about his garden and how he runs his cucumber on a fence like he does his beans. Sounded good to me because when I let the plants run along the ground they tend to dry up and die quickly. Thanks to the Good Lord, the fence and the rain my cucumbers are doing better than they have ever done. I love cucumbers and am quite happily enjoying the bounty. One problem though is the weight. I went out to the garden the other afternoon and the weight of the many vines had pulled the fence over. Between my husband, son and myself we managed to get the fence back up and stabilized. I was back out there today propping it with my posts.

The okra that I did finally plant a few weeks ago is doing pretty well. I planted two rows and both are coming up. There aren't any blooms yet, and I will admit to worrying about that until I heard others saying theirs was doing the same way. The tomato plants that are in the garden are not doing as well as I would have liked. They are growing, there are a few blooms, but they simply are not getting enough sunlight. On the other hand, the tomato plants that I put in planters near the gate into the yard, that are getting enough sun are huge. They are taller than me, so tall that a couple of them have bent over and are making a second reach for the sky. Covered in blooms and with a few tomatoes tempting my palate. One thing about these plants, or one plant in particular is that our puppy Bella seems to either like the taste of this plant or have something serious against it. She has broken the stem of this plant completely in two- twice. Each time I have managed to find it before it is too badly wilted. I have taken and shoved it back down into the dirt in the planter and hoped for the best. Not only is it still alive and still growing it is producing. I have tried blocking her access to the plants but that little Houdini can find a way to where she wants to be. I do manage to keep her out of the garden now when I go over there by closing the make shift gate quickly behind me. Her manner of gardening is very destructive. I found that out very  early on.

 With all the rain I thinking about either finding little life preservers for the squash, or possibly lining the rows with plastic to try and divert some of the water away from that row. I thought about and then discarded the thoughts of tiny umbrellas as that would block the much needed sun. I'm wondering if its too late to plant more because I was really, seriously drooling at the thought of fresh squash and so far that isn't happening.

I'm not really fully unappreciative of the rain, because it has cleaned the air of most of that pollen we were suffering through. My vehicle looks green again instead of that weird yellow. I can breathe without sneezing. I just can't swim and all this water makes a non-swimmer nervous...and hungry. Don't forget hungry.