Gnawing Humble Pie: Mid-Summer Garden Reflection
I’m feeling like a mediocre homesteader these days. We have big goals for our homestead, and baby steps of every day choices to get us there. I’d love for us to grow our own food. But holy cow is that an ambitious goal for new homesteaders.
To be fair, our goal this year wasn’t to grow our own food. It was to start growing our own food. We talked in February about how we couldn’t wait for February the following year, after a year of doing and trying things.
You can read all the books in the world, but it takes 10 years to be a good farmer, remember?
On top of it, COVID-19 really altered our plans, as it has with everyone. We had talked about starting a CSA (community supported agriculture) to grow our food, and some extra to feed a few other pantries, and even extra still for an area soup kitchen. But with COVID, we pulled back, and didn’t do the farmer’s market stand, nor the CSA, because we weren’t liking what we were seeing with the asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19. Crazy stuff!
And thank goodness we scaled back. I have a saying I jokingly use with myself all the time. ‘Bite off more than you can chew, and then sit there and chew it.’ I may be a wee bit stubborn!
Turns out, even ‘scaling back’ was still biting off more than I could chew! I love the fact that our garden is bigger than our house, in terms of square feet. I’m not making excuses with my humble pie, I made choices and prioritized other things, but I’m feeling a tad remorseful for those choices. For example, sweating a little more in the sun to pull a few more weeds probably wouldn’t have killed me. I opted to come back inside and cool off, worried about heat exhaustion. That’s a real concern, but I could have ventured back outside after a couple hours. I didn’t. Instead I waited until evening to go back out.
The funny thing is, Mother Nature is still providing, despite the possible neglect. Every time I go out, I could bring more produce back with me, if I was so inclined. I’m really excited for the tomatillos to bust through their paper husks to harvest to make hot sauce! Hopefully this week!
But the rows are FULL of grass. I guess we had done a good job at the beginning because the plants weren’t being overrun by the grass. It probably just looks worse than it is. However, the problem with the grass is I can’t see the bugs eating our plants. I need to rip out the weeds so I can pluck out the bugs!
And so, I’m going to redeem myself. To end the year on a high note, we’re going to have a boss of a fall garden.
Progress reclaiming the garden from the grass forest! The left and right rows will be our fall garden!
We loved roasted radishes and turnips. So we’ll plant tons of those. We’ll try cabbage again, along with greens, kale, spinach, and other veg for us and the rabbits to eat. Bunching onions, chives, and some more herbs will go in the covered raised beds. We’ll see if we can get more beans yet, and give brussel spouts a whirl. Maybe more cucumbers, too! We have row cover on the way, lots of grass collected and yet to cut and collect for thick mulching around the plants, and heaps of compost ready to put down as we plant.
I am ready for a rockin’ fall garden. I’ll post an update on the garden adventures next week so you can follow along!
