My Love - Hate Relationship With My Garden

It's true.  Sometimes I love my garden and sometimes I hate it.  It's not that I really hate the garden itself, it's just all the work that a garden requires.  I have a lazy streak that entices me to sit in an air-conditioned house and read a good book.  This is why I didn't plant my fall vegetables this year.   I was just tuckered out.  If this had been a good gardening year, I might have felt differently about it all, but honest to goodness, I fought the good fight, and lost.  Miserably.  So for weeks, I haven't stepped foot in my garden.

But today, well it was so beautiful and a perfect day to work outside.  I cleaned out the weeds from all of my raised beds and planted my garlic.  I love growing garlic. This is my third year and it seems to just get better and better.  You can go here to see how I planted my garlic last year, with detailed explanations.  This year I used some of the garlic I grew myself for planting and I'm excited to see how it grows, compared to the seed garlic I bought.  I have half a bed of soft neck Silver White Silverskin and half of hard neck Kallarney Red.  

It feels so good, knowing I have it tucked in the dirt, covered with straw and ready for winter.  I can basically forget about it now.  This is my kind of gardening, extremely low maintenance.  I have lots of garlic stored for use this winter and will see how long I can make it without having to buy any in the store.  I do use a lot of garlic.

I have other chores that need to be done before cold weather sets in.   I plan to cut back and clean out my strawberry bed and take some of the new shoots and plant them in another spot.  According to my gardening books, I can do this through November, and then cover them with mulch.  I'm new to strawberries, so we'll see how this goes.  My asparagus bed needs to be weeded and as soon as we have a heavy frost, I'll cut the plants down to the ground and lay a heavy layer of mulch on them.  Then, I can hunker down and wait for spring.  

What will I do differently next year in my garden?  

* I will plant more fingerling potatoes.  They were awesome, but I didn't have nearly enough.

* I will plant more beets.  Turns out, I love beets!

* I will plant a different variety of carrots.

* I will plant more Cherokee Purple tomatoes and not be tempted by every variety I see at the gardening show. (Tara, please tie my hands behind my back when I'm shopping for tomatoes.)  I will not feel badly when the leaves on my plants start to turn brown and die.  After all the research I did this year on how to fight blight, the thing I remember most was this comment by a seasoned gardener.  "In western NC, the question is not, 'Will my plants get blight, but when will my plants get blight?  It seems its almost a guarantee that tomatoes in this area will suffer from blight.  Just fight it the best you can and don't stress about it."   This makes me feel so much better.   All this time I thought I was doing something wrong.  Tomatoes are the reason I garden,  and I was beginning to feel extremely frustrated with my "ugly" tomatoes.

* I will grow an entire bed of cucumbers.   We need pickles !

* I won't bother growing cabbage and cole vegetables to feed the wild turkeys.  They can go somewhere else for dinner.

* I will hire a teenager to help me at least one day a week with the weeding and gardening chores.

I think that last bullet point is my best idea yet.  When summer hits and everything needs to be done at once, and I can't possibly keep up with all the weeding, well, that's when I start to hate my garden. I resent the hot hours spent pulling weeds, never. catching. up! 

But, I must garden.... because I love good food.  I love knowing that I grew the food on my dinner plate (well, me and God).  I love walking with friends through my gardens and showing them what I've grown, stopping to pick and cut food for them to take home and enjoy.  I love knowing that I can provide good food for my family and put that food in canning jars.  This winter, I will smile whenever I pop a lid and say to myself... "I grew this.  I'm a gardener."