Gardening is funny like that

Gardening is such an interesting hobby to take on. It takes skill but also no skill at all. It takes luck, but there’s also an effort required for some level of success. It takes hard work, but you’ll be shocked to find what a healthy dose of early season optimism will get you. That early season optimism can also get you in a lot of trouble that come mid October you’ll be cussing April’s seed starting wrecklessness of younger you!

This year I planted well over 80 tomato plants. I’m guessing 80 because I’m too embarrassed to admit over 100 is probably a more realistic number.

I was so excited to use cattle panels to support them and enjoy the additional growing space Michelle and I had created with the additional weed fabric we installed. I had also purchased a tripod sprinkler at a garage sale for $5 and I just knew it was going to be the irrigation game changer for us this year. If memory serves me correctly we were a little late getting the vegetable garden planted this year - our brassicas had been a success after the year priors flop due to getting everything in late and losing a battle to those damn white moths. It was the second year for some of our raised beds, the new asparagus shocked Michelle when it started popping after she had assured me the roots we had planted were all dead (she is ye of little faith when it comes to plants and their will to live).

The mid May garden

Anyway, it was setting out to be an awesome gardening year so let’s kick it in the tail with 90 tomato plants! I’m willing to admit it was atleast 90 now after reliving the cleanup I started this week.

The garden clean up that had me in such a fit of disappointment- I had technically started it much earlier this season by taking out entire whole tomato plants because I was so sick of harvesting only to fill

My rotten tomato bucket at twice the pace I was filling my harvest baskets.

You may be asking yourself (or me rather) I thought you said this was going to be THE year for the garden. You had consistent irrigation on a weekly basis at least - a dramatic improvement from the usual watering schedule of once when everything gets planted then maybe once more if they’re lucky. Oh and you said you were installing cattle panels so everything could be supported, spaced, and pruned into two perfect main vines! You had a plan this year!

I sure did have a plan. April me had it all figured out this year! So why is October me hauling huge tomato vine masses over the garden fence and into a trailer to be hauled to the birds because there’s so mUCH FRUIT still on the vines?!

Well, gardening is funny like that.

The tomatoes were a massive flop this year. They never got supported, they were planted WAY too close together, pruning? Never heard of her. Add to that all of the additional rain we fortunately got this year that brought with it a new worm infestation I’d never seen in my tomatoes before in all of the years I’ve gardened. It was a disaster. Don’t get me wrong - I had some nice harvests, but the unnecessary level of effort it took sucked all of the joy I typically get from harvesting right out of me. I often left the garden shaking my head and furious I’d let it get and remain that bad. I was pretty busy working extra hours and Michelle had returned to in office work, so our available gardening hours had been reduced, but what gardening time we did have we were spending at the flowers. We planted the high tunnel for the first time, we planted 3 beds of flowers plus a couple of smaller landscaped areas. We irrigated fairly regularly atleast the high tunnel for sure. Then we planted an after thought of a pumpkin patch too. Plus Michelle was meticulously about making sure the area stayed mowed while I was less tenacious but still consistent with weed eating the area so it looked atleast inhabited when we had events and folks visiting.

This area really flourished. Who knew? When you maintain a garden for you - it’s a lot more likely to do what you’d like it to do. Our pumpkin patch THRIVED! So many big healthy pumpkins. Pumpkins that were regularly watered, fertilized, and atleast semi consistently weeded!

The Pumpkin Patch by the High Tunnel

Gardening is funny like that I guess. Where your attention goes your energy flows so maybe gardening isn’t so funny at all? Nah it’s still plenty funny, but it can also be extremely predictable if you stay consistent with it.

The two biggest pumpkins we grew!