Good Morning,
I hate to say it but this garden update is not as exciting as I would hope. I know!! I know, how rude. How stinking rude. I’m not gonna lie, this lack of rain has been getting to us and the season of life that we are in, it is not meshing well together. So let’s dive in and let me explain it all to ya.
To start, we sadly have not been able to succession sew the garden like we originally planned. This year Jeremys garden plans at least quadrupled in size for the amount of plants per bed. He did such a wonderful job at companion planting but we dropped the ball on succession sewing. To which, I think we need to take a moment and give ourselves some grace on this one. We always go big and don’t realize what we can actually take on and accomplish. The garden, yea we really thought we could go crazy. But Ive noticed that if we expand, then that is what we do for the garden this year. Ok so we expanded by adding in about 3-5 more garden beds. Then in said gardens beds we expanded by the quantity of plants per bed. So that was a double expansion. So to add in another expansion, it just wasn’t in the cards for us. I think this is turning into our plan for next year.
Another issue that we have been running into is watering the garden. We have not had the energy or time to water the garden. We have really reassessed our lives and realized that we need to do a majority of our homestead work in the spring and fall. Since we realized this late in the game, we have noticed that our homestead has taken a hit because of our need of a slow season. Once the fall comes, we plan to ramp back up and get back into the swing of things. For example we want to expand the animals starting fall and spring. We plant to have our meat chickens starting in the fall. We also plan to do a Fall garden. So different things but we need to change our tactics on when to do so. So sadly this also plays into the fact that we are barely watering the garden.
With all of that, we are getting a lot of basil, calendula, tomatoes, and peppers. We are actually at the point of being close to making hot sauce for restocking the pantry. I would also like to make some smoked paprika with those peppers too if we have any! The tomatoes will soon be made into Marinara sauce and pasta sauce. Those are our two items that we are low on and need a good reboot on. I think next year I will be seeing if Jeremy can work on some more companion planting with herbs but do a different variety of herbs too. There’s a ton we could expand upon and could use to benefit the spice cabinet. Thats another thing we need to look at. What do we actually use in spices and see what we can do to grow those at home. We have really nailed the basil this year but I hate to say we will need even more basil next year. After drying and grinding up, we have only managed a little over a quart of basil. To which is not bad but we use so much that we could actually go for at least double that.
All in all, we have been able to eat out of the garden just perfectly this year and it has really been a treat but I think we will be yet again expanding next year on the garden. I just think we will be doing it a little differently and adding in more herbs. We did expand the herb section but I think next year will be even bigger!