Over the last few years we've been trying our hand at gardening; experimenting with different techniques and vegetables. We typically have good success with tomatoes and green beans, everything else has been hit or miss. Last year we barely had anything, even our tomatoes weren't very productive. In talking to others it seems that even long-time gardeners in our area had a tough time due to the abundant amount of rain last summer.
We tried growing melons last year, and while we had several blossoms, we never had any fruit. I'm hoping to try melons again, maybe next year as we're planning to extend the garden some, which will allow for more sunny areas.
We've tried growing from seeds but haven't had much success. We've also bought plants from the "big box" stores and had very mixed success. This year we bought all of our starter plants from the local garden centers. This year, we also used weed barrier in the garden. So far it seems that these changes have made a big difference.
Our garden only gets 4-5 hours of direct sunlight each day but the weed barrier seems to be helping to hold some of that warmth in the soil. Almost everything we planted is producing; in fact we have already enjoyed some Romaine lettuce.
One fun thing we did this year was to try growing potatoes. This was a last minute "nothing to lose" experiment. We had two potatoes left in a bag I had bought. The potatoes were a little too far gone but had several good groups of eyes. I chopped them up into 5 pieces (the amount of blank holes in the weed barrier we had since the corn we planted didn't survive) and Hailey went out and planted them. We didn't mound up the ground but she just dug a bit deeper. When I went out today I noticed 4 out of 5 spots had good looking potato plants. We're looking forward to seeing what they produce.
Plants in our garden this year are: Tomatoes (a few varieties), Peppers (a few varieties), Zucchini, Cucumbers, Romaine Lettuce, Kohlrabi, Celery, Cheddar Cauliflower, Broccoli, and potatoes. Here are a few pictures I took today.
Potato Plant (left) Kohlrabi (right)
Zucchini
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