Veggie & Flower Garden Recap

I spent a lot of time in my garden this year and I thought it might be fun to do a little recap. 

 Raised beds in the summertime. One has just been planted but others are full of vegetable and flower plants.Bouquet of dahlia flowers in a blue mason jar sits on a picnic table. Flowers are yellow, white, purple and orange.

I was thrilled to finally be able to put in some raised beds!  8 in total!  I have fought with my ground for as long as I’ve gardened in my little corner of the world.  So, so, so many rocks.  Raised beds allowed me to get ahead (above?) the rocks for a change and in return my plants thrived.

I also dealt with so much less weed pressure and for some reason, the raised beds feel much easier to weed and maintain than the row gardens I used to grow in. 

Having limited space also helped.  I had to be very selective about what I wanted to grow, what I thought would do well and what would play nice with its neighbors.  I did a bit of companion planting and want to do more next year.  I want to get a book from the library about square foot gardening.  I’d love to maximize my yields by being more diligent about succession planting.

Hands reach to pick green beans. A woven basket sits in the foreground.Sungold cherry tomatoes hang off the stem. They are ripening in an ombre order, orange to yellow to green.

I have got to figure out a way to deter deer.  I started with a fence, then added fishing line to get more height (and so I didn’t have to look at even more fencing), but they still jumped over everything and when they got lazy, they just crashed through it.  I’d rather not have to cover every bed with cloth, but it might come to that.

In the first bed, I grew a mix of onions, lettuces (both leaf and head), sugar snap peas and beets.  Everything did well, although the onions were smaller than I would like.  I’ll try again next year with a different variety of onion.

The second bed was carrots and squash.  The zucchini and yellow crook neck squash grew like crazy, like they always do, and I spent most of the early part of the summer trying a lot of different recipes for summer squash.  My favorite ended up being zucchini boats.  Kind of like a weird pizza with red sauce, whatever protein you prefer and melted cheese on top if that’s your jam.  The plants eventually got overtaken by squash bugs. The carrots in that bed were amazing!  I had never had such success growing carrots!

Woman stands next to raised beds in a garden harvesting dahlia flowers.Hand is holding bouquet of dahlia flowers. Flowers are white, pink and purple.

Onward to tomatoes.  I planted 5 tomato plants and only one did well – the sunburst cherry tomato.  Delicious orange cherry tomatoes and super prolific.  So prolific that I soon got really tired of eating them.  I was disappointed that none of my slicer tomatoes did well, at all.  I think out of the entire summer, I had 3 slicers.  Luckily, the farmer’s market bailed me out of my tomato drought and I could fulfill my summer wish list item of eating as many BLTs as humanly possible.

My next bed consists of herbs – lots of chamomile which I dried for tea, three varieties of rosemary, lavender, sage and some lemon verbena.  I also planted bush beans and potatoes in this bed.  The beans did really well until the deer got to them and I was happy to have enough extra to freeze a few bags.  The two small rows of potatoes also did well!  I’ve grown Kennebec potatoes for years and they did not disappoint.  I also grew some purple potatoes and they did well, although they did have a small yield.

I planted peppers and basil in my next garden bed.  They both did well!  I’m not a fan of hot peppers, so I usually just grow sweet bells.  The hot, dry summer really helped. The basil rocked it out, also.  I dried so much basil.  I’m looking forward to using that this winter.

Hand holds baby cucumber. Hand features a pink queen conch ring.Hand holds large kennebec potato. Basket with more potatoes and shovel is in the background.

I have one bed of perennials – asparagus, chives and strawberries.  This was the first year for the asparagus, so I won’t be harvesting any of that until 2026 since it needs a few years to get established.  The strawberries were rocking it out until the deer hammered them.  I’ll have to figure out some better protection for them next year.

I also grew an amazing crop of broccoli and cabbage!  I generally have terrible luck with brassicas due to cabbage moths, but this year I was ahead of the curve and managed to keep them covered with insect netting and lo and behold, the best brassicas I have ever grown.  Will repeat the covering next year and also need to stagger the planting – having 6 cabbages ready to harvest all at once is a lot of cabbage to deal with.  Next year I want to grow some for sauerkraut.

Hand holds dainty white chamomile flowers. Hand features large ring with variscite stone and morel mushroom made of sterling silver.Small pile of a garden harvest with bell pepper, garlic bulb, carrots and orange dahlia flower.

Last, but not least – my 8th and final bed, I filled with flowers.  In late winter, I found myself obsessing over dahlias and scouring the internet for some named varieties.  I bought a few expensive tubers, a few of the cheaper tubers and some seed and planted them all in the same bed.  It was wonderful to grow them and I can’t wait to try them out again next year.  I’ve been diligently saving seeds and I’m excited to see what cross pollinated in my little patch.

I am thrilled with the raised beds and have been scheming about how to expand my space to add just a couple more!

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