2018 is over, and when it comes to gardening, thank goodness. Not a peak gardening year. The biggest challenge was the rain. So so much rain. In fact, it was the wettest year in DC history! The summer was especially rainy, and it did not bode well for most of my crops.
But it wasn’t all bad! We still got plenty of vegetables from the garden, and I still love my tiny little urban farm. Here’s a quick rundown of how things went.
Topics of Interest
In my original garden plan, I had a list of topics of interest – things I wanted to learn more about or try. Here’s an update on what I did with those.
- Soil testing: Didn’t do it. Probably still should.
- Composting: Working on it. I bought a compost tumbler at the beginning of the year and a fancy new trash can to collect compost without making our kitchen smell like rotten fruit. I did a pretty ok job here, but have not harvested compost yet. Struggled to get the right balance between brown and green materials. Hoping to have some this spring.
- Animal control & pest management: Didn’t do a lot here and didn’t have any issues.
- Tea ladder: We planted tea herbs and they grew great! Then, I laid them out to dry and put the dry herbs in tea bags. They tasted like eating grass because I didn’t actually research how to make tea – oops!
- Melon patch: Didn’t do it. Still convincing my wife to give up a portion of the yard. Not likely to win this debate.
- Side yard bed: Didn’t touch it. Still have some herbs growing there, but mostly ornamental plants.
- 3 sisters: Total fail! My squash never grew larger than a few inches. And the varieties of beans that I grew were far stronger than the corn, so the bean vines basically took over the corn stalks and drug them to the ground.
- Flame weeding: Bought a torch (/flamethrower), but didn’t use it for this. Mostly just burned a bunch of boxes in the fire pit like a responsible adult.
Crops:
Also in my original garden plan, I developed the Reitz Farm Value Index to determine which crops I would grow for the year. Here’s a quick report card on the results for each crop.
- Lettuce, Spinach, Kale: B+ (These always grow well and did this year. I could have harvested more regularly, but whatevs.)
- Tomatoes: C (Not as good as usual. I tried a lot of new varieties and it didn’t pay off. Got a lot of cherry tomatoes as usual, but the rest of the crop was light.)
- Carrots: A (Big success! I have had horrible luck with carrots, and this was my first year with a strong crop.)
- Radish: A (The easiest garden vegetable continues it’s long-standing record.)
- Zucchini, Yellow Squash: D (Usually a strong crop, the heavy rain got the best of my squashes this year. I got about 5 zucchinis/yellow squashes this year before the plants rotted out.)
- Green Beans, Beans: C+ (These did ok. Harvest wasn’t as strong as prior years, but still decent.)
- Corn: D (Would have been great if I hadn’t grown some very sturdy beans that drug them to the ground.)
- Peas: B- (Spring crop was strong. Fall crop was unsuccessful.)
- Sunflowers: A- (They were so big and wonderful! And then I waited a little too long to harvest. A heavy rain came and wiped out all of the seeds, so I didn’t get a harvest.)
- White Sweet Potato: B+ (These grew great in buckets. I let them go too long, so when I harvested them in *cough*November*cough* there were a lot of cracks and a few had rotted. But when peeled, most were great. I made soup.)
- Cabbage: D (Why do I keep growing these? The heads never get tight enough, I never harvest them, they take up a ton of space, and my wife hates cabbage. They are off the list for 2019.)
- Bok Choy: F (Never grew past sprouts.)
- Spaghetti Squash: F (Also never grew more than a few inches.)
- Tomatillo: B (Planted 2 plants this year so they could pollinate. Both grew to be gigantic, but only one fruited. Still a pretty big harvest.)
- Blackberry: F- (The seedlings I bought at the beginning of the season didn’t survive – I suspect due to frost. So we bought a few more plants – basically sticks with roots. They also died. Total fail.)
Reflections on the Year
I started this post a little negative. After sifting through photos to put in the post, I realized it was more successful than I thought. I made the best I could out of a rainy situation.
The garden continues to be a fulfilling endeavor despite its challenges. I had a busy year outside of the garden – lots of travel and professional commitments. The garden was grounding.
There’s a lot of lessons learned from this past year and changes I’ll make as a result. There are also some new things I’d like to try. 2019 will be a fun year for the garden!
