Gardening

In the wake of all of my early posts about our family garden I thought a follow up post was in order. In the beginning of the summer we were naively optimistic. We did our research. We planted. We mulched. We weeded and watered and tended. We loved our plants and coaxed them to grow. And they did.

Then the summer went on. Our cucumbers were hit by a fungus. Our peas has been plagued by God knows what. Our peppers are refusing to grow. Our squash is seeing fit to shed every yellow flower before it becomes fruitful. It's incredibly frustrating. All of the time we have spend on our garden to watch it ebb and flow instead of flourish and produce.

We are learning a ton. We now know that trying to grow peas is not a worthwhile prospect. They're cheap and readily available in the market. We know that squash takes a lot more space than anticipated. We have learned that ants LOVE strawberries if they sweep along the ground. It's definitely a learning process.

But it's one I would do over and over. Watching a space of 72 square feet go from nothing but grass to a dinner for my family is amazing. I am canning and freezing and saving. It's not as much as I had hoped but more than I expected. I am holding out hope that every year we will get better and smarter and more experienced. Our failures will slowly turn into successes.

The biggest lesson that we have learned thus far is that watching our garden go from tiny seedlings to tremendous plants somehow seems absolutely miraculous.