The first week of September is behind us. Mornings now that that touch of chill letting us know winter is around the corner. The first frost date is now on the horizon, a mere 35 days away for my 6A/5B garden zone.
The peaches did fantastic this year — I am seeing folks with a glut of peaches on all my gardening groups! Last year we got absolutely none, so this was a pleasant surprise. I have given away, dehyrdrated and frozen more than I can count. I meant to weigh the haul, but alas, I forgot.
I bought some pears from a school band sale and spent a day canning and making something like an applesauce but with pears instead. I hot packed the pear halves in a very light syrup into pints. About 4 pear halves fit per pint for me. I cannot wait to have them over the winter!
Mr. Cozy’s grandparents gave us a bag of wormy apples from their tree. I started with 11 pounds of apples, but after cutting out all the bad parts and making sauce, I only ended up with 4 pints. Still a fine way to spend a Saturday afternoon I think.
Overall the garden has been a bit of a disappointment this year. I read a few books about natural gardening, and I have seen these chaos gardening, and even Ruth Stout’s method of straw. I essentially tried each of those methods, and found that none of that particularly works for me. But, in the dark pits of despair there was one absolute success. Charles Dowding’s no dig.
I let the grass grow in the lentil bed, thinking it would be in the style of Masanobu Fukuoka. Not a single lentil. I had very few flax seeds, but did admittedly get a few. Granted, he outright says his way of natural farming is specific to his climate, and he had years of earlier failures. Maybe living in a less harsh climate would yield better results. Pretty big failure here in Colorado — unless you want to grow runner grass.
I scattered a ton of wild flower seeds in the back on top of the wood mulch, but in an area watered by a sprinkler. I think one flower haphazardly came up from that experiment.
And, finally, Ruth Stout’s straw everywhere and more straw method. I tried it, I wanted to love it. I will admit the straw did help some with reduced weeds, and it certainly keeps the ground moist for water retention. It also makes a perfect utopia for roly polies. This would not be so much an issue if they stuck to eating only the decaying straw. Alas the little buggers cleared out almost all of my seedlings. I planted hundreds of bean seeds, and had only a handful come up. They took down pumpkins, squashes, and pretty much everything I started for the fall garden. Somehow two cabbages at the community garden survived.
I (my husband mostly) built 6 raised beds in our designated garden when we first bought the house. We were dirt poor, putting all our money into the down payment and some immediate projects that needed to be done, so to save money, I basically just broke up the dirt where the beds would go, put a few bags of compost into each one, and planted. That first garden went surprisingly well, and I’ve topped the beds off with a few inches of compost every year. I get bulk orders now instead of bagged to save money, but it’s still a pretty expensive yearly investment.
I have one 8 x 4 bed that is in particularly good shape and after the onions came out, in went the fall plants. They have absolutely thrived. I could not be happier with how they are doing. There are a few roly polies, but they really haven’t cause damage. This was my “Aha!” moment. The lightbulb went off. This is the way to garden in my climate.
So, the plan for next year is this:
- Clear out all the old plant debris
- Create 4 long beds that run the length of my 19×19 plots
- I have 2 plots, so I will end up with 8 4×19 foot beds, with 1 foot paths in between for a total of 608 square feet of growing space
- Using a compost calculator, this means I need to spread 4 CY of compost to end up with 2 full inches on each bed. Yikes, my back is not going to be happy!
- Lay drip line in the spring. I think 4 lines one foot apart in each bed with drip emitters spaced to 6″ will be sufficient.
I’ve also decided to skip grain growing next year. Maybe some day I will come back to it, but it’s honestly a lot of work to clean the grain for how little reward there is. I think I will be better of planting dry beans. They are also a space hog for less reward, but I really love growing them and shelling the beans at the end of the season. That feels like a better use of the space.
Okay, that’s all for now!