Vegetable Garden Review

October is a good month to review the season’s vegetable garden for both style and performance.  This was the first year in a long time that I grew vegetables in raised beds.  Nothing fancy, just a mounding of the soil, which creates a generous amount of loosened soil.  It also allows the soil to warm up more quickly and there’s excellent drainage for vegetable growth.  The raised beds are also pleasing to the eye and no vegetable garden needs to be ugly.There is beauty in symmetry.  I do plant vegetables in two different areas, one inside a fence and the other, which holds the corn crop, the asparagus bed, pumpkins, squash and the bulk of the tomatoes, in more of a field setting.  Most people have smaller gardens due to time and space constraints and the smaller, fenced garden is the one in review here.  Other than the raised beds, I did add a brick edging, mainly because it makes the small strip of lawn easier to mow.It is essential to make maintenence a bit easier, since we’re all so very busy with the other demands of life.  I did find that the raised beds seemed to make a difference in production.  The beds were pleasing to the eye and I’ll continue to use them.  I did add quite a bit of compost to each bed.  At least two wheelbarrows full mixed with a granular organic fertilizer were added to each four by twelve-foot area. Overall, this system was very satisfying.

I grew a variety of vegetables, including garlic, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, squash (both yellow and zucchini), beets, carrots, parsnips (these are still in the ground), Swiss chard, basil for edging and eating, and green beans.  It sounds like a lot but you can see from the pictures that this is not a huge space.  It’s about 12 by 60 and plants were spaced close together.  In addition to the vegetables, I added calendula and marigolds for companion planting.  I’ve found that the flowers not only add color but they attract beneficial insects that prey on problem insects. 

Most of the vegetables grew very well this year.  The tomatoes provided a bumper crop that seemed to be in compensation for last year’s disappointment of few fruit and the disease problems of late blight. The cucumbers were great and next year I need a better system for them to climb.  They were on the upright green tutuer and it was just not big enough.  My squash plants were healthy but the yellow squash did not produce many fruit.  I think this was because of the variety and I’ll seek out another for next year.  The Swiss chard continues to produce and late plantings of lettuce are ready for picking now and should continue into the late fall.The parsnips are looking lush but I’ve pulled a few and the roots are on the small side.  I’m sure this is because I did not water them enough during the dry period of August.  We did have some dry spells this season and while I know watering is most important, sometimes it just doesn’t get done.  Parsnips are best left in the ground until after the first frost.  The cold causes the starch in the roots to convert to sugar and the parsnips will be sweeter.  Carrots also become sweeter with the cold weather.   The beets were great.  Have you tried Golden Chiogga beets?  If not, plant some next year.  They are not only sweet and delicious; they are beautiful to look at, too. 

In all, this season was a great one for the vegetable garden.  I’ll try a few different varieties of vegetables next year and it’s always fun to add something you’ve never grown before.  This year it was tiger melons, which were beautiful but had a melon flavor with no sweetness.  Not so good.I’m still waiting for a frost.  It is hard to tell if it’s anticipation or dread, but frost does signal the end of the growing cycle. It also signals that it’s time to, once again, plant the garlic. The cycle continues. What was your garden’s star performer this year?