This was the first year for gardening on the farm. For the past 20+ years, prior to marrying the farmer, I had been in locations that didn’t allow for such a big garden and usually did several pots of herbs and some flowers. This year, I began to plan for a garden in about February. I started by watching some YouTube videos to get an idea of what I wanted to plant and how to plan the garden out. Some of my favorite channels to watch are The Ripe Tomato Farm , PawPaw Mountain, The Permaculture Orchard, and Garden Answer. There are so many more helpful YouTube channels but that is just a couple I like to refer back to often. I also utilized my Pinterest board for Yards, Flowers, and Gardens where I love to store ideas.

Soon I began purchasing seed packets from Walmart, Theisen’s, Fleet Farm, Dollar General, and Menards whenever I saw some for under $2 a packet. Menard’s tends to be my favorite when I find them for about 50 cents a packet. I also purchased some potting soil for gardening and utilized shallow under bed totes and cups I had on hand to start the seeds. I followed the instructions on each individual packet to know whether or not they could be direct sown and when the transplants needed to be started. We have a nice sunny East window where I set the plants to grow and I would occasionally spray them with Dr. Earth Pure Gold Pump & Grow All Purpose Plant Food for an extra boost.

It was finally time to transplant the marigolds and tomatoes so I asked the farmer to plow up a plot for me. I thought I was getting a small garden around 10×20 and much to my surprise he plowed up the entire hillside and disced with his IH966.

Our cousin followed with his garden tiller to help even it out a bit and I followed through with a rake and hoe to remove the rocks and grass clumps. The entire process of getting the garden ready for planting took about a week. We also used some dried manure from the cattle yard to help boost the soil.

I decided to use potting soil to add a bit of black dirt into the bottom of the holes dug for the plants and seeds. I was also careful to plan the garden with companion gardening in mind. There are many great resources online for this. I did some direct seeding of sunflowers, butternut squash, carrots, zucchini, corn, pumpkins, peas, carrots, dill, cucumbers and cantaloupe. I also purchased some cherry tomatoes, cantaloupe, green peppers and cucumbers. And I even cut up a couple of potatoes to plant that I had hanging around my basement. The mix of seeds and plants helped with staggering the harvest time.

It wasn’t long and the garden was flourishing! I was religious about watering every morning and some evenings. We did have a couple of very eager guests in our garden including raccoons and moles. The simple fix for the raccoons was our fence purchased from Amazon. And for the moles we simply caved the tunnels in.

Keeping up with weeding was the hardest part of the garden. It was a dry summer but the weeds found a way to grow fast. We did not use any weed killers, just good old fashioned elbow grease. I also put down some garden fabric, mulch and straw to keep the main pathways in the garden weed free. Another issue we dealt with is Aphids. They tend to eat any sunflower as soon as it blooms. It did help to use Insecticidal Soap for a natural way to keep the bug population down a bit.

The cucumbers and zucchini were the first vegetables we harvested. I had so many cucumbers that I decided to try canning them. Every morning for about 2 weeks I collected as many cucumbers as I could and then made a couple batches of pickles as I gathered enough to make it worth my time to can them.

Around that same time the zucchini was going strong so I utilized that for some zucchini bread.

Next came the potatoes and carrots. We got so many potatoes from a mere 3 sprouts. It was fun to go and see how many I could dig up for a nice side to go with dinner. The carrots were pretty small but also very tasty.

Soon the cherry tomatoes started to produce and wouldn’t quit! Buckets upon buckets of cherry tomatoes were harvested. I decided to make some pasta sauce with the green peppers and tomatoes from my garden roasted with sea salt, olive oil, fresh garlic, basil, and onions. They canned pretty nicely and made for a fun evening chore. I rather enjoyed picking the tomatoes until dusk most evenings.

In hindsight I would have waited for the cherry tomatoes to ripen a bit more for a deeper color of sauce but the flavor was amazing! Speaking of amazing, the cantaloupe were as sweet as candy and ripening beautifully. We enjoyed the fresh produce straight from the garden, a welcome treat, compared to having to shop for the sides to go with our beef.

It wasn’t too much longer and the pumpkins and butternut squash began to mature. Late September we began to harvest them as they were ready and enjoyed using the pumpkins to decorate around the farm and stored the squash for winter.

From start to finish my absolute favorite part of gardening was the sense of accomplishment I got from each and every piece of produce I harvested. It was a beautiful picture of patience and persistence and it definitely paid off. I hope you’ll enjoy the video of the final harvest from the garden. I take time to harvest the sunflower seeds, butternut squash and pumpkins. I plan to share more next spring and hope to eventually garden year round. Please share your tips, recipes and photos! I’d love to connect with you.

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