Garden Progress: The Plan vs. Reality

Back in January of this year, I was going bonkers with wanting to get some dirt therapy. This last winter seemed particularly long, dark, and drawn out. I decided to change things up and strategize how to get the most out of my garden. We decided (well, OK it was me haha) that we were going to go with Less Variety and Larger Harvests. Here is an update on the garden progress.

Our goal for this year was to get larger harvests of the staples we eat so that it will last the majority of the winter and give me enough to use for the large batches of soups and stews that I jar up for quick ‘heat and eat’ meals.

The Plan

• Potatoes – 100+ pounds
• Green Beans – Enough for 3-4 cases of pint jars
• Carrots – Enough for 3-4 cases of pint jars
• Onions – 40-50 pounds of white, 15-20 pounds of red, and as many green onions as possible
• Garlic – 50+ bulbs
• Beets – 15 + for pickling
• Kale – Enough for several large bags of chips.
• Celery – Enough to dehydrate and use in my stew starters and other dishes. Used more as a spice.
• Crisphead Lettuce – This one is just mostly so we have some tasty, fresh lettuce for the best salads all summer long.
• Cucumbers – Enough for a dozen pints of pickles. More is better, of course.
• Basil, Sage, Parsley, Oregano, Dill – Enough to dry out and use until the next growing season. (The point is to not buy even one bottle of any of these spices from the store. They are expensive here!)
• Scallions – Enough to eat on through summer, maybe dehydrate.

Quite the list, eh? Ohhh it all looks so good on paper and in a gardening planner. Of course, the best laid plans are merely suggestions one you start planting the seeds! 🙂 We didn’t get everything we wanted to in the dirt this year plus, with the incredible amount of sunshine, higher temps, and lack of rain well….some things just didn’t make it. Like the dill for example. It wilted in the greenhouse heat (90 degrees, ack!) and never recovered. Then, the slugs came in and finished it off. Thankfully, I have some fresh dill in the freezer from my mom’s EuroGarden set up and enough for pickling up the cucumbers and some garlic this fall.

The Reality

Of course, we won’t know if we met our goals until the harvest but we DO have the following plants firmly established:

• 10 potato plants
• 9 Elephant Garlic
• 32 Red German Garlic
• 20 sq ft of Danver Half-long Carrots
• 15-17 Red Onions
• 25-30 White Onions
• 1-2 Dozen Green Onions
• 20 sq feet of Green Beans (approx 40+/- plants)
• 1 Spaghetti Squash
• 4-5 Patio Snacker Cucumber
• Box of Strawberries (6 sq ft) we let go wild (and have picked more from this year than the last two combined. Go figure)
• 1 Sage Plant
• 1 Lonely Beet

Not exactly what we hoped for BUT, there are certainly more of each kind planted and I expect they will yield a nice harvest, if not as much as we hoped for. The last two years, I was just trying to grow some food to help supplement our stocks and lower the food bill some. This year, I decided to focus on getting more out of it and expect that will be the case as time goes on. I am determined to grow enough of the basic staples listed in The Plan so that we just don’t have to buy them anymore. It will take some in depth research into each plant to really learn what it likes, doesn’t like, length of time to mature from seed, etc. and I am up for the challenge!

I already take great pride in the fact that for 3 years, we haven’t had to buy a single jar of jam or jelly because I make them myself (from FREE wild berries even!). In fact, there are a LOT of things I simply don’t buy anymore because I make it myself. I made lists of those items which can be found here and here that include links on how YOU can make your own, too.

The next phase of the overall plan is to go a whole year without having to buy any potatoes, onions, or garlic. Then I will work my way up to carrots and other various veggies but I don’t want to get overwhelmed and end up losing the entire crop because I wasn’t prepared or ran out of good storage space.

Be on the lookout for “Garden 2015: The Results” to come out sometime in September to see how we did! Don’t forget, we LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear from our fans and see what they are doing in the garden, too. Give us a shout and share a garden pic on our Facebook Page!