Last summer, Brian built a six by four foot garden, using the plan from The Square Foot Gardner. Initially he planted tomatoes, squash and peppers, but since we moved to the area in June, we were really too late and none of the plants produced. In the fall, we tried carrots, lettuce and broccoli, which fared better, but not great. So this spring, we were very excited to try again.
Our spring planting included 6 kinds of heirloom tomatoes (Mr. Stripey and Green Zebra had the best names), sweet peas, peppers, and more lettuce. The peas and lettuce did well and the tomatoes and peppers had a good start, then the temperatures climbed over 100 degrees and no rain appeared. Sigh. We've harvested 3 tomatoes that were edible, and another 4 that either split or had a gross tomato worm. We had 1 very lovely sweet pepper. That is it. There are 2 green tomatoes on the vine now and one red one that is deformed, but probably edible.
So, why am I talking about the vegetable garden? Well, our vegetable garden is reinforcing the title of this blog. Every day I water, pull weeds, look out for bugs, and generally ensure the garden is well cared for. What do I get for it? Very little, I assure you. There is a rogue plant that looks like some sort of squash, which has come up in an area of the bed where no squash has gone before, so that is a pleasant surprise, but otherwise, blah!
We're about to plant lettuce and carrots again and I can only hope they do well. Perhaps we'll add a layer of compost from our gorgeous compost pile to help encourage food production. Sort of a... if you do well, you won't end up here... kind of thing. Although, the seeds could see it as threatening and simply refuse to grow... like everything else in our vegetable garden!
On the plus side, the 20 strawberry plants we put out this spring have more than doubled. They are still putting out a few berries now and then. So that is pretty exciting. My blueberry bushes did very well this spring, so the food production hasn't been a total wash.
Ah well. Wish us luck as we plant our fall crop. We will certainly need it!
Aaaah. I totally relate!!! I put so much love (insert: blood, sweat, and tears - literally) into the garden this year with so little to show for it. The peas were decimated by slugs and we got about 5. The summer squash and winter squash were wiped out by squash vine borer - the summer squash yielding one strange pale zucchini before it bit the big one and the winter squash yielding nothing at all. 90% of the carrots never germinated because I didn't have time to water them everyday - I kept hoping I could rely on mother nature for that. The beans fared barely better then the peas thanks to intense herbivory..... and the list just goes on. Sigh. I'd say maybe next year, but according to a recent NY times article, this might just be par for the course thanks to global warming. So depressing on so many levels. Sigh.
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