Reflections on the first farming season

It's below zero here today - but don't worry, the girls are fine - and the time seems right for some reflections on what I learned in my first year as a gardener/farmer/chicken handler.  The seed catalogs are coming out, and very soon it will be time for us to decide what we want to plant next year.  We had some great successes in the garden this past year, and some things that I certainly won't be doing again.

1.  Planting cold weather plants in cold weather is probably a good idea.  Because we had a pretty hectic spring and the garden wasn't constructed until May, and because the spring weather was so weird with lots of cold and rain, I got a very late start on my spring planting.  I think this hurt my yields for cold weather crops, and so this year I fully intend to get some good planting done in May.

2.  Don't plant a full bed of lettuce!  We had so much lettuce that all was ready to harvest at the same time.  This year, I'm going to interplant my lettuce in other beds (like with the tomatoes).  By the time the lettuce is ready to eat, the other plants will still be small enough to not be crowded, and then I hope I'll have less wasted lettuce.

3.  Morning sickness and the fall harvest are not a good combination.  I realize that a newborn and the spring planting are probably also not a great combination.  What can you do?  At least this year I should be able to eat anything that I'm able to plant.

4.  Twenty tomato plants was a little excessive - this year, I'm going to pare down considerably, and instead of doing a scattershot heirloom mix, I plan on growing a few paste tomatoes, and a few cherry tomatoes.  Then I should have a good harvest to preserve, and plenty of little cherry tomatoes for salads, snacking, and roasting.

5.  Squash growing was not as easy as all of the books said it would be.  Between the cucumber beetles, rambunctious dogs and wacky weather, I lost over half of my squash plants.  The amount of space and time that they took up has made me seriously reconsider dedicating another field to squash next year.  Instead, I think I'll choose one variety (I know, though, how do you pick a favorite squash???) to grow in the garden, and buy the rest from the squash lady down the street.  Maybe in the future, when Mike is living the dream with a tractor, I'll try another squash field, but for next year, it's out.

6.  Eggplant, which was supposed to be very challenging, was not.  So I'm growing eggplant again next year.

7.  My cats don't like home grown catnip, and catnip takes over everything.  Not growing catnip again.

8.  We really, really love fresh snap peas and green beans.  Next year, I'm planting more of both and will try to pay better attention to when I'm actually supposed to plant and harvest them.

9.  Same with potatoes and chioggia beets.  Even though we get beets and potatoes through our winter CSA, I'm still planning on growing our own so that we can enjoy them in the late summer and fall.  And beet greens were delicious.

10.  Chard is amazing - definitely doing chard again instead of spinach or another green, but next year, I may stagger my plantings.  Or not.  That was such an easy, indestructible crop.

11.  I probably should have cleaned up the garden before the ground froze.  I didn't.  But I'll have plenty of time to do it this spring, right?  You know, this spring when I have the baby?  Big oops.

12.  Related to 11, next year I really need to actually complete the fall harvest in the fall.  I have an embarrassingly large number of carrots, beets, and leeks that remain abandoned in the garden.  I really have no excuse for this, which is troubling.

13.  If I have a gut feeling that the chickens are in trouble, they are.  Also, if I have a gut feeling that something with respect to the chicken yard is not going to work out well, it won't.

14.  Having realistic expectations, or even seriously underplaying expectations, is a wonderful thing.  I had such low expectations last year that every time a vegetable appeared in the garden, it felt like a huge success.  I plan to continue this philosophy next year.

15.  The hardening off process for seedlings appears to actually be pretty important.  I'll try harder at this next year (although even as I type this, a part of me is saying that the hardiest plants will still make it, and those are the ones that have the best shot at surviving my gardening attempts anyway).

16.  Starting seedlings inside is really fun.  So even though I'll have a newborn at exactly the same time I need to start seeds, I still plan on starting some.  But I also plan on buying seedlings from the nursery and farmer's market.  It's all about low expectations.

17.  Having chickens makes me feel so much better about garden waste, and means that even if I don't directly eat all of the produce from the garden, I'm still reaping the benefits through eggs.  Thanks girls.  Also, garden waste makes the chickens slightly less expensive to feed.

18.  Growing onions was very challenging for me, but leeks weren't.  So next year, I'll probably only grow a few onions if I can fit them into the garden plan, and keep growing leeks and scallions.

19.  I love having a garden and growing my own food, even though I still have lots to learn about it and still really don't like bugs.  Still worth doing.

In the next couple of weeks, we're going to start coming up with our 2012 garden plan.  My very generous father gave me a gift certificate to Fedco for Christmas, so the bulk of my seed orders will be from there.  I was very happy with our Fedco seeds last year, and like the variety they have.  I'm going to try to choose as many vegetables that I can directly seed into the garden as possible to cut down on work in the spring.  We also now have a chest freezer, so I hope that will help preserve the harvest this year.  Now I'm all excited to pick out my seeds!