We planted a garden this year, a
very large garden. It was our first
experience with gardening, so we anticipated that it would be a learning
experience more than anything. And yes,
we were right. We learned a lot! First of all, we knew we’d have deer since we
live right near the woods and see deer all the time. So our first project was putting up a 4 foot
fence of chicken wire. I did this all by
myself, thank you very much! Nate took
care of the tilling with his new power push tiller. Then, the kids and I got to work planting
seeds! We planted sweet corn, lettuce,
spinach, green onions, cantalopes, watermelon, pumpkins, potatoes, carrots,
tomatoes, and strawberries. After we
planted, we had a very long and hot heatwave with no rain. The heat scorched some of our seedlings and
unfortunately our spinach, and root plants like potatoes and carrots, never
came up. I think our dirt is still
clay-like as well which may have played into the problem with the root plants. So we started a compost and will work that
into our dirt for next summer so our dirt is finer and more workable.
The corn came up thriving, which
was so exciting for the kids to see.
Every day we’d go out and it would be taller…eventually taller than them
and they just couldn’t believe it. And
our green beans too were thriving. BUT,
we had thieves. We found hoof prints in
our dirt, our corn had been broken and trampled on, and the tops of our green
been plants had obviously been chomped off.
We couldn’t deny that deer had actually been walking around inside our
fence! So they could hop over 4
feet!? Wow, we didn’t see that one
coming! Nate’s solution? An alarm system. He placed a motion detector on a tall pole in
the middle of the garden facing the “tempting plants.”
It would catch 180 degrees of any
movement for quite a distance. It
started to go off almost every morning around 4 or 5 am when the deer were
out. Sure enough, deer were in our
garden. The first couple times Nate ran
out there with a shovel or tool and chased them away in the dark in his
jammies. It was quite a funny
sight. Pretty soon, they slowed down
coming and the sound of the siren often scared them away too. Problem solved!!! The corn was demolished, but the green beans
grew back, thankfully.
Our tomato plants have been
producing more than enough tomatoes. I
have been skinning them, seeding them, and dicing them and freezing them. I use lots of diced tomatoes in recipes, and
since I don’t have a canner, freezing them in the same amount as a can works
well. We also have been snapping green
beans and freezing them. We got one
yummy salad out of our lettuce, but our lettuce didn’t thrive through the heat. Our strawberries are more delicious and
flavorful than any strawberries I have ever tasted. They make the store bought kind taste like
paper, flavorless.
Our next problem came to the
pumpkins. We were introduced to squash
bugs. They are evil things! They slowly start munching on the leaves of
pumpkin vines and lay eggs on the green leaves.
After a while we started to notice that the pumpkin vine leaves were
turning brown and wilting. Turning them
over we realize there are hundereds of these tiny squash bugs all over the
leaves and vines, destroying them. Every
day more and more of the vine leaves were wilting. One day we tried to catch as many squash bugs
as we could with gloves, scooping them into a big bucket. Cooper went around squishing and destroying
all the little red eggs he could find.
And Jaxton caught a few squash bugs but was too grossed out to keep
catching them. It was an impossible feat
to conquer them at this point. Slowly,
all of our pumpkin vines died off. We
saved 1 beautiful pumpkin that would have grown quite large if allowed to do
so, but we cut it off the vine before it could die. It is a good 10 inches tall and maybe 7
inches diameter. Perfect to carve. We picked it green and it slowly ripened on
our counter and the boys have been asking to carve it! That will be fun! Next year we will spray our pumpkin vines with
some kind of pest control since we won’t be eating the pumpkins, just carving
them. After the pumpkins were gone, the
squash bugs moved on to their second favorite, the cantelopes. And thirdly, the watermelons. We may have a few cantelopes and watermelons
survive, since there were tons of them out there, but unfortunately, those bugs
are taking over our vine plants. Now we
know for next year.
We were going out to pull weeds in
our garden every afternoon, however, with the heat it was nearly impossible to
get the boys to work through their sweat and too tiresome for me. So we decided to change things up a bit and
work before breakfast, just like they did in the old fashioned days. I told the boys that long ago, kids had to
get up super early and go milk cows and take care of the animals. Well, we would do the same, we’d get up and
pull weeds before breakfast. So that is
what we did for the majority of the summertime and in fact, the boys loved
it. They would stay outside longer than
needed, play in the dirt, destroy weeds, and examine bugs and plants of all
kinds. It definitely was refreshing to
be outside and working hard early in the morning air. It got the kids working and being involved in
the garden and was a great learning experience for them to see things grow from
seeds!
