Garden living; how to battle the elements

Garden Living

The Vegetable Garden vs. the Elements 

It was a shocker for me when Justin first said he wanted the garden... it wasn’t the garden itself, but that he wanted to devote the entire front lawn to the purpose.  He can see things in his mind and for the future where I need to physically see it to know that his ideas will work.  We transformed our rocky lawn into a beautiful and productive, well as he calls it “edible garden”.  This produce is enjoyed all year as we have been canning, freezing, and storing it all in our extra refrigerator.  

The Strategy for the Battle

 Veggies Vs. The Elements

To win the season long battle against the elements, it is important to start from the beginning and get a good watering system in place.  We’ve always used a sprinkler for the early weeks of the garden, but Justin only engineered this elevated sprinkler last season and it has worked so well, reaching even the furthest corners.  Bonus: we have the compost right there to keep our soil rich in minerals.

Plant your seeds in spaced out rows.  This makes it easier to hoe or rototill large sections of the garden.  It leaves hand picking only to right beside your plants.

You can see there is also plenty of room to scoot your bench or kneel along the space between the rows for hand picking those weeds.  We’ve got peas here on the left and beets on the right; usually we pick these early and enjoy beet greens.

Here is a close up of the peas; they do best with a wire fence to “climb” as they grow. I have been working on this section getting those weeds out while they are still little.  As the weeds grow and you pull them, they are more likely to disturb your plants.  Right now, we’ve been pulling out as many rocks as weeds, reminding me of when we first started. Due to a plumbing issue, we had to dig out a whole section last summer, causing a significant disruption to the soil.

The tomato plants also do better with some support.  The tomatoes get heavy and pull down on the branches so having the metal tomato cages helps.  Sometimes we also put hay down under them to cushion the growing tomatoes that reach the ground.

Cucumbers and Marigolds.  We plant our garden with some strategies to win against the elements and that includes the insects.  It’s no fun to spend months caring for your cucumber plants to find they’ve been ravaged by squash bugs.  Marigolds help repel these bad little bugs.  We’ve also found that squash plants attract them (obvious, right?), so by planting our squash in a separate patch, we are limiting the exposure of our more fragile cucumber plants.

Potato plants need a little mounding of more dirt every few weeks to keep them well covered.  This is an ongoing battle against erosion, but easily won with the right amount of effort.