Vegetable Garden Year 3

I can’t believe it’s August already, and that summer is half over. It feels dreamy to be out and about and reuniting with gatherings and friends!

It’s year 3 of our vegetable garden, and it finally feels less scary, and a little bit more intuitive. It was definitely a huge learning curve. Not much survival or yield from year 1, but in hindsight, we had to make those mistakes in order to grow and learn what to do instead. There was overcrowding the first year, and some plants didn’t make it due to lack of light. We didn’t know how to to prune the tomato plants, which grew bigger and wilder than expected, and we didn’t prune anything back which led to smaller fruit yield. Gotta prune those suckers to prevent too much foliage and branches, leaving less energy for fruit growth. Now that we’re a bit more experienced, we intuitively go and water the garden a second time in the day when it’s been super hot and dry out. There’s less crowding, and we’re pruning suckers and helping flowers self pollinate. We’re excited to see lots of kale, tomatoes, and baby cucumber and squash come forth. And we’ll see if the yield will improve from last year! Garden chores are fun and easy for the kids, who love to help water, pluck out weeds, and throw clippings and food scraps into our compost (which gave us lots of fertilizer this year!). It feels really good to have a portion of our organic produce come from the garden. Now that everything is set up, and there’s more than enough seeds to plant indefinitely, it’s nice to know that your garden won’t be impacted by recession or food price hikes. Here’s to home or community vegetable gardens!