I tilled and planted my first garden around May 15th. I planted watermelon, carrots, two kinds of cucumbers, two kinds of peppers, corn, zucchini, peas, pumpkin, eggplant, okra, raspberry, blackberry, sunflowers, and three kinds of tomatoes. The garden was kind of haphazardly engineered. My original plan was arrange my vegetables in alphabetical order. In retrospect this seems a little silly. However for a first time gardener, it seemed like as good an idea as any.
These are my observation thus far. I now understand that pumpkins and watermelons need lots of room to roam. Cucumbers need something to climb as soon as possible. Tomatoes need sturdy cages to climb. Next year I will space my garden out a little more. I put about two feet between my rows. It is a little hard to get into some of my bigger plants. I will put sunflowers on the back row, because they block everything behind them from getting water when I use my sprinkler.
My carrots, peppers, and some of the berries didn’t make it. I don’t know if the peppers didn’t sprout or if I picked the pepper sprouts thinking they were weeds. I had some carrots sprout but they were overrun by my cucumbers. My berries have produced mixed results. The raspberries look decent, not great, so I’m hoping they hang around. One blackberry bush is dead and the other appears to be on its last leg, (if bushes had legs). Which is a shame because Ava enjoyed picking red blackberries, I asked her if they were too sour, but she said, “No.”
These are my observation thus far. I now understand that pumpkins and watermelons need lots of room to roam. Cucumbers need something to climb as soon as possible. Tomatoes need sturdy cages to climb. Next year I will space my garden out a little more. I put about two feet between my rows. It is a little hard to get into some of my bigger plants. I will put sunflowers on the back row, because they block everything behind them from getting water when I use my sprinkler.
My carrots, peppers, and some of the berries didn’t make it. I don’t know if the peppers didn’t sprout or if I picked the pepper sprouts thinking they were weeds. I had some carrots sprout but they were overrun by my cucumbers. My berries have produced mixed results. The raspberries look decent, not great, so I’m hoping they hang around. One blackberry bush is dead and the other appears to be on its last leg, (if bushes had legs). Which is a shame because Ava enjoyed picking red blackberries, I asked her if they were too sour, but she said, “No.”
The garden doesn’t look anything like the above picture today.