The garden in 2009

A post describing the garden in 2009....you might wonder why it is being written in 2010 !

The blog and the posts have been in the works for over 2 years. Getting around to posting anything was a challenge with all the firefighting we were doing around the house.

This is a summary of the what went right and what went wrong in the 2009 garden

First the good

1. the rubble and base rock pile (from the pool demo in 2008) in the backyard was finally hauled away in Spring and we had a clean slate to start.

2. 5 planter boxes went in to the ground (these were boards that came off our old fence). I am glad we got started.....(the bad part on that start later)

3. We had a huge harvest of beans, good for 4 adults for over a 5 month period plus lots to share with friends and family too.

4. We learnt a lot along the way (mainly what not to do), and I hope we don't make those mistakes again

On to the bad

1. We started our seeds late (In early May)

2. I just put all seeds in a packet into one of those nursery pots, too much shock when trying to transplant them and they should have been direct seeded in the first place ! Never read any instructions and thought that it would not matter.

3. We didn't do any companion planting of beneficial plants.

4. Never knew about slugs or what to do with them. They wrecked havoc on the eggplants.

5. We planted almost 8 zucchini plants (when a garden book will tell you that 2 plants would be more than enough for a family of 2). But we never had the problem of plenty. We barely got 2 Zucchini's out of all the plants. There were loads of flowers but no produce. I wonder why.

6. We added fresh wood chips on to the surface of our tomato planters to help prevent evaporation without realizing that it depletes the nitrogen from the soil as it decomposes.

7. We never fertilized any of our beds during the growing period. The only saving grace was that we amended our soil by mixing in compost.

8. That brings me to the last blunder....there were 2 beds where we just dumped pure compost instead of combining it with the soil and it proved terrible.

I hope 2010 is more productive and we put to good use all the reading we have been doing online and offline.