This summer I have been experimenting in my garden. We did a soil sample which was very helpful, so the garden grew better than last year (which was really unsuccessful). How well? Depends on the plant.

The potatoes did way better than last year, but not as good as in some previous years. We haven’t dug many of them up yet, so it remains to be seen what the total will be, but I know there are more than there were last year, by probably at least double because I’ve dug up 5 plants so far. I will take the double this year and hope for another increase next year.

The peas have done well, but they were late getting blooms, probably because of the hot early summer we had. But they are producing now. The broccoli was the same, slow getting going but we have eaten more than last year in the last month, so that’s been good. I think it is about typical of what we usually used to get. Zucchini haven’t done well at all. I think I will end the season on 2, maybe 3 zucchini for the whole summer.

The cabbages have set nice, tight heads and I have picked 4 heads already with 2 left to go. I will be pickling cabbage tomorrow. It is the first time I’ve ever tried it, so we’ll see how it goes. Carrots have been a flop. We replanted carrots at the end June because they weren’t growing, but I don’t think they will have time to mature now. So, we probably won’t get very many carrots out of our own garden this year. That’s pretty unusual as we usually get quite a lot of carrots. I think it was the seed.

Onions have grown fantastic this year, along with the leafy greens that I planted. The only leafy green that bolted was the spinach, but I still got a lot of spinach out of it. We’ve been eating home grown greens for a couple of months and I love that.

Now to the garden discovery: I planted strawberries. I have planted them before but not had much luck. I planted them in a more permanent bed this year though, and they started off alright. Then a man from the Farmer’s Market gave me a bag of worm castings. I had never heard of this. But I decided to try it on my strawberries.

The bag was about 10 pounds or so, and I was able to spread it around on about 2/3 of my strawberry bed. That was the first part of July. The other day I was out picking strawberries, and I suddenly noticed the plants. The ones that had gotten the worm castings spread on them are almost 2 times the size of the others. The strawberries are also nice big strawberries unlike the other plants that are about 1/2 the size. I was shocked that those worm castings could make that dramatic of a difference in so short a space of time. I think next year I will get more bags for at least my berry plants.

This year has been a great learning year. I hope that next year I can improve upon what I learned and be more successful in our garden. Either way, it has been good enough to have fresh veggies and save on the grocery bill in a lot of ways.