We got a late freeze right after I posted about our garden last year. Lost most of our started plants even though we had them in hoop tunnels. So, we immediately started over. We managed to grow enough for ourselves but the garden was not as productive as we wanted.
The late Freeze really hurt our Blueberries. We lost some of the new bushes that Cletus put out. The buds on the established bushes were damaged. We hardly got enough berries for ourselves. That really hurt cause I love Blueberries! I did manage to get some in the freezer though.
We tried some new things last year. Chard has now become a favorite. Cletus' potato patch did pretty well. If you've never tasted or grown Fingerlings well, your really missing out. I don't care if that's the only potato he grows from now on. We're still eating from our storage of potatoes.
Another new thing we tried was the Mulch method of gardening. I highly recommend it! It really cut down on the weeds. Not completely mind you. Some still pop up, but it was a back saver. What we did was when we planted a plant we surrounded them with mulch heavily. With direct seeding we mulched the edges of the row. When the sprouts came up & were big enough we added more mulch to surround the plant. We mainly used chopped up straw, grass clippings & leaves. Dad gave us an old sweeper attachment for the lawn tractor. Whenever Cletus cut the grass he'd dump the clippings on the garden & spread them out. It wasn't long before the entire garden was mulched. I'm really glad we did it cause even with the drought we didn't have to water much. The mulch will also compost right there in the garden to make this years' soil much richer.
I don't know what in the world happened to the Broccoli. We direct seeded them & everything went fine. They grew & then grew some more. Those plants got to be 3 feet tall! I didn't know Broccoli grew so tall. But despite the tall healthy plants, they didn't produce not one head. It was very perplexing. If any one can tell me what I did wrong I'd sure appreciate it. I'm sure all the energy & nutrients went into making the plants grow instead of forming heads. I just didn't know what to do about it.
Well, that's enough about the past. It's time to plan for this year & learn from past mistakes.
Happy Diggin' Ya'll
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