Monday, January 16, 2023

Garden, Version [I Forgot What Number I Was On]

I guess I'm going to give up versioning my attempts at gardening.

The last version was not a complete failure: I successfully harvested radishes, carrots, and corn.

The corn, frankly, wasn't very good. I don't know if it's the variety I chose (can't remember -- it was a white sweet corn from a variety pack of seeds I purchased), the soil characteristics, or what. I grilled it, and the family consensus was ... meh. That's my third attempt at corn and, I think, my last.

The carrots were good, and a few of them got used in various things. I may come back to those.

Ditto the radishes. Tamara uses them in her salads. Although anything more than a handful is really more than she wants.

I failed to sufficiently protect the peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant from our first freeze and they were lost.

The zucchini got eaten. Just not by us. Every time I'd see a squash starting to develop, within a day or two I'd come out one morning and see it gone, with a nice precise bite right where it had been joined to the plant. So I guess the rabbits or whatever enjoy zucchini. No biggie.

The next garden -- going in around the 1st of February -- will likely consist of one raised bed with:

  1. red potatoes; and
  2. yellow onions
I've already purchased seed taters and onion bulbs.

Potatoes and onions are things we use. A lot.

And they're pretty forgiving as to harvest times, so I don't have to dig/pull everything all at once and store it. In fact, I'm looking forward to "graveling" some new potatoes at first and harvesting more mature ones latter. Some fried taters with onions are ... well, a meal! And both can be used in other dishes, or the occasional "how about a bowl of hot, fresh potato chips?" kind of thing.

Also, they're just not a whole lot of trouble. I won't say I'm tired of messing around with a garden, but this will feel like a bit of a break.

To put it a different way, I'm transitioning from "how much of our food could I grow?" to "what could I grow that would make a nice occasional addition to, or substitute for, stuff we buy on a 'just in time' basis right before preparing it?"


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