Last year, I experimented by planting about 25% more vegetables in our garden. I wanted to know how difficult it would be to grow more so that we could give our extras to our local food bank, Fare Share. I wrote about that adventure. Here's a link to that blog post.
This year, we experimented with succession plantings of a few of the short-lived vegetables: spinach, salad greens, beans and beets. Salad greens were trans-planted from the Vegepod to the garden 4 times over the summer. Beans and beets were seeded three different times. The succession plantings were very successful! I guess it's in their name. How can they not be successful.
Today, we brought our this-really-is-our-last-time share to FareShare: 4 bunches of herbs and 2 bunches of radishes. Everything else in the garden has been dug up, or is not pretty enough to share with our neighbours. Who wants spinach leaves that have holes in them?
Our gardens are really not that big. But, they still produced 1050 lbs. over and above what we ate and what I froze or canned for our own use this winter.
Here's an overview of our 2023 Garden Experiment. I hope you feel like you are in the gardens when you view it.
I am so thankful for our hiking/gardening/adventure friend Cynthia who faithfully showed up every Wednesday morning at 7:30 and helped us harvest what was ripe. And, to Ted who does all of the 'grunt work' like putting up and taking down the fences. It was a lovely experiment.
We are already talking about next year's gardens. More chives, dill, beets, beans.......
“I learned this, at least,
by my experiment:
that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Henry David Thoreau
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