What I’ve learned from the garden this year.

You may or may not remember from my other gardening posts that this year I decided to plant herbs in the front bed instead of in containers, try a kids gardening corner to keep them from pulling up everything that grew, and then planted a few veggies in another corner. It was all very experimental. So here’s what I learned:

• The herbs grew very well in the front bed. I planted dill, cilantro/coriander, chives, and basil. The basil didn’t sprout, but I was given a few transplants that are doing fine. It worked out so well that I will  continue to keep herbs planted there.
• Weellll I’ll continue to plant everything I listed above except for the chives. While they did grow, they are so fine that is was hard to weed around them. I’ll go back to growing those in a container.
• The kids did enjoy their gardening corner and even grew a few cherry tomatoes and snap peas. They followed me around to tinker where I was growing my vegetables too. So I think next year I’ll just do one space. Some follow bloggers gave some great advice to get them involved in the garden that worked fantastically. We got the kids little gardening tools and watering cans. They loved it and did a great job of helping and not just “helping”.
• There were only a few plant casualties from kids, dogs, or rabbits this year. I’m pretty sure it is because the okra and squash plants are prickly, and the herbs were less accessible up front.
• Give squash more space! The squash plants produced a lot, but they also crowded out some of the okra and other squash plants. My fault, lesson learned.

Okra on the left. Squash on the right.

Chives and weeds man. Chives and weeds.

 

For the fall we are trying to grow pumpkins for the first time. We chose sugar pumpkins because they are a smaller variety and are used for cooking. I am also going to plant some more herbs up front and maybe another round of okra and/or cauliflower.

Pumpkin Sprouts!

If you know of any other vegetable plants that are prickly or have tips on growing pumpkins or cauliflower please share that knowledge with me 🙂 Also, are you growing anything? How’s it coming along?