Here we go again.

I've been playing a game of lost and found with this blog.  It gets lost in the cyberverse and, every so often, I find a link that brings me back.

Last summer was pretty successful.  My last harvest was the day before Thanksgiving.  I dug up the last of the Parisian carrots and roasted them for our family feast with some local creamer potatoes.  I cut large chops, tossed them in a little olive oil, sea salt, ground pepper, and an herb mix from the "uptown" garden I had made earlier in the season.

It felt wonderful serving that to my family.

the new squash box

This year, I decided to rip up the internal fencing... you know, the stuff I rolled through last year when I hurt myself... and reconfigure things a bit so moving around the place would be easier.  I managed to get things ripped up, weeded (the ongoing battle between me and the wild mint and mugwort is a never ending one) and reconfigured.

The important thing I learned this year?

Moving raised beds are a pain in the tuchis!  I got it done, but boy was it exhausting! I did manage to build a box just for squash, reconfigure and realign things and was quite happy with the 60 square feet of growing space.  I had a box just for tomatoes, a box just for squash, and a U shaped area for everything else.  I had plans and sketches and seeds and...   well you know what comes next.  If you want to make the Divine laugh, just speak your plans.

Mid May rolls around and I get a call from the person in charge of the garden plots: the person with the plot next to mine moved.  Did I want to add to my space?

"Why not?"  I thought.  So I added a 14' x 16' weed plot to my plot and got to work. 

So much green stuff that was just wrong.

I was up to my thighs in wild mint, mugwort, and who knows what else and spent a weekend digging up weeds and hauling them to the scrub pile behind the garden area wondering the whole time what to do with the space.

That was when I got the news my 3 year niecey-niece was moving to a new home about a couple of miles from me and I got really, really happy.  I asked her mom what kind of veggies did she want to grow and the response was so 3 year old, it was awesome: french fries.

The decision was made: it was time to grow potatoes!  And what's a garden for a pre-school aged kid without a bean teepee?  Painted Lady and Scarlet runner beans were now on the order list.  My husband casually mentioned he was a little bummed I wasn't going to grow corn this year, but now there was all this space, so I ordered some corn seeds. 

So, not the greatest use of space but enough so I can get things rolling for this year. 

The one thing I discovered was that a previous gardener past had used whatever they could get their hands on for fencing.  So the plan going forward is to replace the catch as catch can poles and fencing with something more uniform.  I hung a gate over the entrance and this weekend fighting the ongoing weed battle.

By the way, whoever had "heatwave in New England late spring/early summer" on the apocalypso bingo card.  Congrats.  Whoever heard of a 90*+ week in mid-June around here?????  Heatwave it is.  My broccoli has all bolted, the peppers dried up and a chipmunk ate almost all my squash plants.

But something wonderful happened that kept me from breaking completely.   My blue Adirondak potatoes began to grow in their box.  I didn't expect that lovely purple center to the leaves.  In that moment of joy, I knew I had to keep going.  So I did a lot of new seeding this week.  I planted radishes, Parisian carrots, Rouge d'Hiver lettuce, and some winter squash.  Yes, it's late, but I figure it's worth a shot. 

My corn, again which went in late, is all growing, the painted lady beans are starting to grow enough to be trained toward the teepee posts, and I start to believe that maybe, just maybe, this will all work this year. 


Now if I can figure out how to keep the squirrels from digging up the uptown garden on my deck, I'll really be cooking with gas!

I'm not going to let this season break me.