Garden 2015

 

The summer of 2015 was our 6th year as urban gardeners.  

 

Returning plants:  cabbage, banana peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes (indeterminate regular size, determinate Roma, and black cherry), greens, strawberries, zucchini, onions, Brussels sprouts, okra, oregano, basil, spicy globe basil, blueberries, chocolate mint, thyme, and sage.

 

New additions:  sweet mint, Mexican tarragon, parsley, huckleberries, autumn star kalette, jack-be-little pumpkin, corn, and bok choy.

 

Dropped plants:  marjoram

 

 

 

 

Successes

 

• Although it was small, we had our first blueberry harvest this year.

 

• This year was our first year growing all of our basil from seed.  The harvest was great and we enjoyed lots of pesto!

 

• In addition to planting chocolate mint, we also planted sweet mint.  This gave us time to perfect our minty sweet lemonade recipe. 

 

• Our boys made a request to be involved in the decision making of what we planted.  They wanted to grow radishes.   One key to gardening is to plant what you are going to eat.  As far as we knew, they had never eaten a radish.  They planted the seeds, harvested the radishes when it was time, and ate them.

 

• Our pole beans and tomato harvest was nonstop.  Actually, we lost some of both because they were growing faster than we could harvest.

 

• We finally had some success with bell peppers.  Last year, we grew a plant, but no peppers grew.  This year we harvested three.

 

Struggles/Disappointments

 

• Chipmunks had a field day digging up our Mexican tarragon that was growing in our hanging planters.  The only way we could discourage the chipmunks' behavior was to shake ground red pepper on the plants.

 

• Another nemesis this year was the infamous Cabbage White Butterfly.  They just love laying eggs right on the cabbages.  Those caterpillars can demolish a plant.

 

• This year was our first time planting bok choy/pak choy.  Although the plants grew well and gave us many harvests in May; they kept bolting which made the leaves taste bitter.

 

•  We tried to grow corn this year and we only harvested one little ear of corn and it wasn't edible, but our boys had fun tossing it around like a football.