Garden update

I’ll update the post later with some pictures, but I thought I would do a quick update on the garden. What can I say other than its been a great year. Almost everything has worked and I’ve had to water very little with all the rain. Even the squash bugs came on so late this year that the zucchini are still putting off a few blooms and some produce. It never really got all that warm so the tomatoes haven’t been great, but I only planted 4 plants and have had plenty of tomatoes (have some Roma’s “sun-drying” in the oven as I type this). The eggplant got shaded out by the tomatillos, which have gone nuts, so I will only get one or two. The melons seemed to fade, not sure what gets them, but even so I got at least one melon off of each plant. The potatoes came through without a single beetle, and the cukes came in great (plenty of pickles for later – including a jar of pickled mouse melons). The peppers all came in well and the carrots did also (I probably need to pick and can those soon). There are still beets in the ground from the spring – those need to get canned as well. I’ve got lots of basil plants, although I wish I had some more cilantro.
I tried a really diverse polyculture approach this year – if you looked at my garden, it would seem a mess – and it worked great. Tough to keep weeds out of though. I also mulched the garden this year with about 4″ of wood waste mulch (that I got for free!) and between that and the rain, the plants never really looked stressed. I also started most of my own seeds this year too, and have some winter crops starting in the greenhouse now. I hope to get a bed put in the south side of the greenhouse so I can grow greens all through the winter.
I’d guess that we got about 10-15% of our calories from the garden year – but probably 25% of our nutrients. I hope to add a few beds over the fall and winter to up production a little bit next year. But for now the focus is on getting a few things out of the ground and getting a few things started. I hope your gardens went well this year!