Perfect time for a garden
We had planned a year ago that 2020 would be the year to expand our garden, and it could not have come at a better time.
There were a sequence of events that led to the decision of the garden expansion:
We doubled the area of our raised beds this spring, requiring nearly a dump truck of dirt to fill them.
1) First the obvious – with our growing family, our food needs were also growing. Two years ago we canned 80 quarts of beans followed by 48 quarts last year and we still ran out of beans this winter. Beets also didn’t make it through the spring (20 quarts). COVID-19 also brought to the limelight the security of having our own food sources. We never once fretted about getting to the grocery store over the past several months.
2) We finally reached the end of our decade-long home remodel. So overhauling the garden now seemed almost trivial…even when you factored in cutting up all the wood, wood chipping all the branches to use as mulch between the new beds, remove and install fencing, and of course the time to plant, maintain, harvest, and can all the extra food. Oh and tack on designing and installing the irrigation system to reduce the 1 ½ hours it now takes to water the garden!
3) The original boards on our raised beds reached the end of their life. My husband had repurposed cedar boards for raised beds a decade ago out of an old deck. With the beds needing to be rebuilt anyways, this is the perfect time for…
My daughter often yells to me “Mom come quick!” to show me a ripe tomato, cluster of beans, large squash, or ready-to-eat cucumber she discovered. The enthusiasm doesn’t get old.
4) A large tree to fall in the garden. Rather than waiting for the 100+ year old maple tree to fall on the garden, we opted to cut the tree down before it fell during a storm and took out most of our garden. After the tree was laying in the garden, we confirmed the degree of rot made this a wise decision. We had taken down the fence surrounding the garden and with the nearby fruit trees, we decided to fence in the entire yard. Now we could make the garden as big as the yard!
We didn’t quite do that, but doubled the garden. So far, we have broken our old canning record of beans (so far at 114 quarts). And with my husband and I rarely leaving the house, we have the flexibility this summer to weed, water, harvest, and pick off the Japanese beetles daily so we aren’t overwhelmed with all the time a garden requires. Although gardening and canning is a huge time investment, we found this is a great family activity in the summer of COVID-19.
I smile every day when my daughters ask (almost beg) to pick a pepper or my son yells “Big one” as he points out the bean I missed.
Garden color wheel!
You can barely make your way between the beds!
The Biblical phrase “you reap what you sow” is now paying off during a plentiful harvest!