2010 Gardening Lessons Learned

As the 2010 growing season winds down, I thought I would summarize some of the things I've learned this year. Hopefully some of this will be useful next year. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Vegetables take longer to grow than it says on the back of the seed package. My Broccoli this year is a good example. It should have been ready for harvest before summer (listed at 55 days), but it didn't mature enough before it got hot out, and the plants seemed to basically go into hibernation during the summer. The first harvest was actually at 120 days. Only one out of my 5 plants produced a head by mid-summer. Happily, they are producing well now in the fall. I planted my Brussell's Sprouts based on the directions of 3-4 months before the first fall frost, and now that it has been 3-4 months, it is pretty clear that they will not have enough time to grow their sprouts before the end of the year. Any veggetables that have a window of opportunity need to be planted early or start them extra early indoors and transplant them.

2. I'm not good at growing seeds for transplant. I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, though I suspect some combination of overwatering, not enough light, and not enough heat. In the spring I started some Broccoli seed indoors for transplanting. About two weeks later, I planted some seed directly in the ground. After about 4 weeks of growing, I transplanted the indoor seedlings into the garden. The outdoor seedlings that were half as old were the same size, and actually surpassed the indoor started ones in size soon after that. After being in the ground for a week or so, the transplants seemed to grow at the same speed as the direct-sowed ones. Its not just a matter of not having enough light/heat indoors, though. I started Brussell's Sprouts during midsummer, and I sprouted and grew those outdoors in full sun(in little plastic containers). I transplanted most of them, but didn't have space for all, so I left a couple seedlings in the containers in case any of the transplants died. I noticed that after a week or two, there was a dramatic difference in the size of the ones that had been transplanted vs. the ones left in the container. I suspect that at least part of the problem was overwatering. I'm really going to have to improve my seedling growing next year.

3. Use disease resistant seeds/plants. My disease/pest plan for this year was to assume that since I was in the middle of the city, and far from farm fields, I wouldn't have too much of a problem. I was actually most worried about varmints eating on my plants. Turned out not to be the case. I had one plant killed by a cat going to the bathroom on it and my Melon seedlings were maimed and killed(but not eaten) by some evil creature, but none of the plants were eaten by varmints. Bugs weren't too bad, though they might get worse in future years. On the other hand, diseases decimated some of my plants. Powdery Mildew killed my Spaghetti Squash, Downy Mildew killed the Cucumber, Bean Mosaic Virus prematurely ended the harvest of beans. Late blight affected the tomatoes, but not too dramatically. Most seed companies offer some varieties that have been bred to be resistant to different kinds of disease. Knowing that the above mentioned diseases are a problem around here, I will try to get varieties that are resistant to them.

4. Plants take up a lot of space. Granted, I tried to crowd some things in this year, but many of the plants exceeded my expectations for how big they would get. Who would have thought that a row of bush beans would spread out to be 3' wide? Potatoes that fall over and grow 3' sideways along the ground? Pak Choi growing to be 20" wide? Tomatoes growing 9'+ high? The Cucurbits were the worst. I had set aside a 4' by 4' area for the "Bush-Type" Zucchini. It grew to take up an area about 10' X 15'. The Spaghetti Squash grew to absurd proportions(multiple 20'+ vines), and would have been even bigger if it hadn't been killed by Powdery Mildew. About the only thing that didn't take up more space than expected was onions. Perhaps thats just because they didn't grow too well, though.

5. Good access to all plants is needed. Partially this is in reference to having a better path system between my plants than I did this year. Its also a matter of being able to get at each plant. I think part of the reason my peas were so annoying to pick this year is because it was difficult to reach some of the peas.

6. A roto-tiller isn't totally necessary for annual maintenance on the homestead. Since the garden is modest in size (~300 sq. ft.), turning my garden over with a shovel isn't a terrible ordeal. I'm glad that I had one when I was first making the garden, but now that the soil has been loosened a couple times, its not too bad with the shovel. It would probably take 3 hours or so to do the whole thing, but if I'm not renting or borrowing a tiller, I can turn over small parts of the garden individually when different crops are ready to be planted. Besides, using a shovel leaves more worms alive and I can dig deeper with the shovel than the tillers were able to dig.

7. The growing season is slightly longer at the homestead than other areas around Rochester. There was a frost advisory for the greater Rochester area on 10/13 with the comments that it would be widespread, with only areas near the lake escaping frost. We didn't get any frost, but I know that the farm that provides food for our CSA (its well outside of the city) did get hit. It was a similar story in the spring when the expected frost(s) did not appear. I think that being in the city proper and being surrounded by buildings on two sides and tall fence on the other two sides offers some protection from temperature extremes. Last year I planted some hardier things (peas, onions, pak choi) outdoors the first week of April and they seemed quite happy. Next year I may try planting some things as early as mid-march.