🌽🥒🌶 My 1st Year Gardening

It’s getting colder now and I’m wrapping up the outside space at my home. This year my aunt and I finished a garden area where I live. Partially decorative, however, the main feature is a raised bed we created to grow vegetables. Autumn is setting in now, the garden has produced its final yield.

I learned a lot about gardening in this first year by helping my uncle with his backyard plots. They are considerably larger collectively than mine. That allows him to grow a more diverse set of plants. He also has years more experience than I do. This first year, I’ve been taking every tip on gardening I can get. As a note, that little cage is where I kept my seed starts as they matured and hardened off enough to plant into soil.

For next season, I'm looking at installing a few more beds next to a wall to expand my active growing space. Looking to move peppers and climbing beans over there. Maybe corn too. Still thinking about the logistics of how to manage the water supply issues because my deck will between the two areas. Also, my spigot is located in a corner, so I may need to get a splitter and just leave a spare hose running under it to water the other beds next year.

I’m really happy having done my first year. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. My grandmother would garden in the summer when I visited. It reminds me of her.

I made a lot of tomato sauce from scratch and gave some of it away. 3 different batches in fact. The first was a very rustic finish that was spicy as hell. Definitely the hottest batch by a mile. The second run was pureed into a finer sauce that poured smooth, no chunks.

The idea was to make it more flavorful and less hot to the tongue. My favorite version of the sauces. People asked that I make a high flavor low heat sauce that was well pureed. So, the third and final batch was in that stye. It took the longest to make but the taste was good.

Also, there are still pickles that are in jars, both dill as well as bread and butter. My aunt pickled and canned all of this for us to have. Growing vegetables has been a worthwhile endeavor. Yes, I had some failures. A lot of plants died or produced very little because I travelled quite a lot through the summer and the received irregular care through some stretches. Expanding for next year also means attempting to make it easy to care for the plants in the event that I leave for adventures again. Though some cucumbers I grew did make it onto Isle Royale with Andrew and me.

It would be great to hear from other gardeners about what they do to breakdown for winter or how they might prepare during the winter for the next growing season.