What Did You Learn This Garden Season?

[ducks4you]

I learned from the Webinar that you Can plant cool season crops in the Fall, mostly direct seed in August. You can start inside and transplant, like your normally might decide to do.
Watch overwatering. Where we live, the dew is so thick in this time of year it looks like it rained overnight.

 

[ducks4you]

I learned I have to change. It is 3 years since DH passed away and 5 since he was diagnosed with cancer. The garden has to be designed for just me and when I started this garden I was 12 years younger and had a husband and kids being homeschooled and home all day to help with harvesting, canning, weeding, DD planted and transplanted bulbs, and DH did all the heavy work. Also, in that time the rabbits came and at one point I had 10 rabbits. I am down to 3. Of the original 10, I only have Lulu left and she is 8-1/2 years old. The other 2 are rabbits recently dumped on me in the last couple of years and they are not the big Flemish Giants, so now I am taking apart the 3 compost bins in the yard and I will keep one large one at the edge of the garden. I will not be having the huge amounts of rabbit bedding and manure, which means I will be depending more and more on getting compost from another source. My chiropractor spent over $300 on some compost/manure and it did not grow anything. He thinks it had the broad leaf weed killer in the manure. I have to decide where my next source of manure will come from.

If you make coffee daily, compost the grounds. I have a "burn barrel," which is a lightweight, plastic garbage can with wheels that I throw all burnables into. I dump the used coffee grounds into a used ice cream container, bc it's lightweight and has a handle, and toss the used filter into my burn barrel.
You could toss the used filter in the trash, OR compost them both.

A Common-Sense Guide to Using Coffee Grounds in the Garden

Some gardeners suggest that using coffee grounds in the vegetable garden could be ineffective or, worse, harmful to plants. I decided to sort the facts from the hype...

www.growveg.com

"Coffee shops often give coffee grounds away free to gardeners, as they’re a waste product they would normally have to pay to dispose of."
"Using Coffee Grounds as Fertilizer
Many of us will have dumped the cold remains of a forgotten coffee in a plant pot at some point, and then perhaps wondered if it was the wrong thing to do! But it turns out that coffee grounds contain a good amount of the essential nutrient nitrogen as well as some potassium and phosphorus, plus other micronutrients. The quantity and proportions of these nutrients varies, but coffee grounds can be used as a slow-release fertilizer."

 

[canesisters]

... that big, scary quarantines make everyone I know want to come visit during the summer and that I need to figure out how to garden in the winter when I'll have time.
I've practically been running a B&B since mid June
The house is cleaner than it's been in a LONG time.. and cleaner than it's been during ANY summer.. but the yard/garden looks like the place has been abandoned for a year
.. One step up Halloween decorations, I guess

 

[Pulsegleaner]

It seems to me that, every year, I am being taught the SAME lesson and not learning, or more accurately refusing to learn, the lesson of "Don't even bother, gardening is futile." Every year, it seems like everything conspires against me, weather, animals, seed, everything. Every year I try things to get around them, and every year they hammer me even harder.

 

[flowerbug]

... that big, scary quarantines make everyone I know want to come visit during the summer and that I need to figure out how to garden in the winter when I'll have time.
I've practically been running a B&B since mid June
The house is cleaner than it's been in a LONG time.. and cleaner than it's been during ANY summer.. but the yard/garden looks like the place has been abandoned for a year
.. One step up Halloween decorations, I guess

haha! there you are! miss you! i guess that is one way to call it done, i can guarantee you that if you put those visitors to work in the gardens or on the lawn you'll have a lot fewer of them in the future... hope Eva is doing well!

 

[flowerbug]

It seems to me that, every year, I am being taught the SAME lesson and not learning, or more accurately refusing to learn, the lesson of "Don't even bother, gardening is futile." Every year, it seems like everything conspires against me, weather, animals, seed, everything. Every year I try things to get around them, and every year they hammer me even harder.

with a lot of animals and not a good enough fence it's a tough row to hoe... i'm now working on a 2nd line of fencing that cuts down on traffic, but it doesn't eliminate it so we still get some damage here or there even inside the fully fenced gardens (the raccoons climb over or through and the rabbits and groundhogs can get through too because the fence isn't the proper type). the 2nd line of fence will keep out larger rabbits and discourage the rest of the animals but if they are determined they can climb over or dig under or go around. the deer traffic is what i'm trying to cut down as much as possible since they do so much damage and they drop the ticks around.

the lack of light and space is also adding degrees of difficulty. trying to do things in pots makes it harder to protect the plants if you don't have some kind of enclosure. at that scale i wonder if it would be better to just do what you want indoors with lights? most of what you seem to be interested in growing is self-fertile (other than corn), but perhaps i'm missing something...

 

[ducks4you]

... that big, scary quarantines make everyone I know want to come visit during the summer and that I need to figure out how to garden in the winter when I'll have time.
I've practically been running a B&B since mid June
The house is cleaner than it's been in a LONG time.. and cleaner than it's been during ANY summer.. but the yard/garden looks like the place has been abandoned for a year
.. One step up Halloween decorations, I guess

EVERYBODY HERE has Halloween decorations up.
I started Dusk til Dawn "fairy lights" on my porch one year ago. I have been changing out colors through the year for the holidays, just took down red, white and blue, and will put up Christmas right after October 31st.
DD bought me some very outdoor light bulbs, which are hooked right under the eaves, and windstorms have not affected them. I can use the controller to set colors, but it doesn't seem to want to work on my light timer. No matter.
Funny, my HOUSE is a mess, but the yard is looking better and better!
Bet if you watch any shows where they reclaim a yard you will get some courage.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

with a lot of animals and not a good enough fence it's a tough row to hoe... i'm now working on a 2nd line of fencing that cuts down on traffic, but it doesn't eliminate it so we still get some damage here or there even inside the fully fenced gardens (the raccoons climb over or through and the rabbits and groundhogs can get through too because the fence isn't the proper type). the 2nd line of fence will keep out larger rabbits and discourage the rest of the animals but if they are determined they can climb over or dig under or go around. the deer traffic is what i'm trying to cut down as much as possible since they do so much damage and they drop the ticks around.

the lack of light and space is also adding degrees of difficulty. trying to do things in pots makes it harder to protect the plants if you don't have some kind of enclosure. at that scale i wonder if it would be better to just do what you want indoors with lights? most of what you seem to be interested in growing is self-fertile (other than corn), but perhaps i'm missing something...

I've thought about it, but there is even less space indoors than outside. Not to mention corn is most definitely NOT self fertile. Neither are cucurbits (plus both get BIG before they flower) Besides grown inside (even with a proper grow light) with no wind, things tend to get scraggly and to never flower.

Not to mention that, in the case of a lot of the legumes, I am growing them to whittle them down to those that will grow HERE (from a mix that was grown somewhere probably with a much longer season). Indoors, I'd never get good data, since I, not nature would be controlling the day length.

 

[AMKuska]

New thing I learned from the garden: One row of beans is WAY TOO MUCH for my family. Just foisted a bag off on my son's friend's mom and there's a year's worth in my freezer and there's still a goodly amount on the vines. Next year I'm planning to do a variety that can be both a dry bean and a green bean so if nothing else, I have chilli.

 

[baymule]

I learned that I need a bigger Purple Hull Pea patch.
I learned that Giant Pink Banana Squash really are giant and the vines are determined to take over the world.
I learned that weed cloth is a good thing, but I need to get a better grade of it.
I learned that dogs running around on the cheap weed cloth tears it to bits.
I learned that I should have picked up all those bits immediately.