Thinking about the Vegetable Garden

With the mercury hitting the high 40s yesterday it got me thinking about our garden. This will be our third year of vegetable gardening and each year we get a little bit better at it. Last year was our first foray into Square Foot Gardening
. Instead of having crazy mounds like we did our first year we put in raised beds.  It worked out really well and our early harvest was great we had lettuce, chard, kale and even some beans but as the season went on we didn’t get down to it often enough to weed regularly. We garden organically so we don’t use pesticides to control weeds. As the garden got more and more overgrown it got harder to control and in a couple of the beds the weeds just took over.

Despite it being completely overgrown, for most of the season, we still were able to harvest things like cucumbers and we got a huge bumper crop of tomatoes. Our chard, kale, basil and mint continued to produce but all of our cabbage and brussel sprouts were attacked by some sort of bug that destroyed the entire plant.

This year we hope it will be different and we can finally get a handle on the weeds. To prepare for this season, at the end of last season, we weeded the garden and covered each raised bed with Weed Block fabric. Our hope is that this year we can just measure off our squares, poke a hole in the fabric, plant our starts and have few issues with weeds. The next step is for me to plan out the garden and get my starts going!

What are your plans for your vegetable garden this year?