2012 Gardening Wrap Up (well, summer garden anyway)

Well ... the gardening season for 2012 is kind of coming to a close around here. What did we learn this year???? A whole lot to say the least.

First, looking back over the gardening posts, I had so many fond memories :) One in particular was of Brian's diagram of our proposed garden in the country (see it here in this post about drip irrigation). He left ONE THING out of his diagram: GRASSHOPPERS. We had a huge plague of grasshoppers. We did all we knew how to take care of them, however nothing seemed to work. David said he'd never seen anything like it. We are guessing it was so bad because there was no hard frost last winter. That theory only goes so far though because not everyone had such a problem ... our spot was just particularly bad (or good if you are a hopper). First they went for the green beans. We ordered Nolo bait hoping that would take care of them. The directions on the bag were for approximately "8 grasshoppers per square yard." Hmmm. We about died laughing. Well, not really, but we did laugh till some of us cried. We had thousands of grasshoppers per square yard. We figure two things we could have done differently to help. 1) Turkeys or guinea hens. I heard they eat a lot of hoppers but pretty much stay away from the garden (with a few exceptions). Since this was not our land and we did not live near it, that option was not really an option. 2) Row covers. We thought of this too late and it would have been quite expensive so late in the year.

So anyway, the beans were gone. None to speak of. Next they headed for the potato leaves. The boys dug the potatoes quite early but we still got a few hundred pounds. I wonder how many we would have gotten had we been able to let them grow?!?! A ton or more? We are still using what we dug up; working on canning them and eating them as we go. So, after the potatoes were gone, they headed for the squash. The boys took the hubbard squash early too once the hoppers ate up all the green vines. I made close to 30 quarts of 'pumpkin' butter with that and it turned out very delicious. Tomatoes and peanuts were left. A tiny peanut harvest that was laughable but tasty. Not very many tomatoes to speak of. That was the end of our garden in the country. Lots of hard work, lots of learning and experience gained, and a little bit of organic, fresh produce. Praise the Lord!

Oh yes, the corn. Our little corn patch in the country was enjoyed by some cows that took advantage of a gate that was left open.

A few weeks ago a family at church let us come pick the green beans they could not use. I canned over a hundred quarts and also froze some. They also had us come pick the left-over corn. They helped us process that and we froze 16 quarts. This same family gave us a LOT of melons! A LOT. We are beyond thankful for their generosity! Here are a few pictures to share of that ...

Brianna and green beans

The work buggy hauling our corn :) This made me laugh.

At the melon patch taking a walk and enjoying the sunset.

Our city garden did well all summer except the tomatoes. We're not quite sure what happened there but we assume it was the excessive heat. Next year we hope to have some sort of green house for the tomatoes so we can start them earlier and have them growing and ripening in the cooler part of the summer. Lots of beets, spinach, kale, onions, etc. Also, the sweet potato experiment went very well. Corban started those from store-bought sweet potatoes. He only did a few this year just to see how they worked out here in SW MO ... and now we think it would have been nice if we had planted more! We are very thankful for what we got and will try again next year. Here is a picture of Corban with one of the larger ones:

Corban saved several different seeds as well, including kale, beets, lettuce and spinach. We have even sold some!

Who knows what next year will bring? Plans are already in the works ... and of course there is a fall garden still going. I know I slacked a bit on updates. We were extremely busy this summer!! We'll try again next year.