Resetting My Garden

It didn't take very long to yank out all the vines from my two backyard square foot gardens and place the ample organic segments in a plastic bag.  My 32 squares are now entirely bare, covered by pretty much the same mulch as before last spring's planting, with the tomato stakes and plastic ID labels left behind.

Ending the season comes more easily than assessing the season, both for the backyard and the front door pots, which have not yet been closed for the winter.  Both had disappointing yields.  Tomatoes had a lot of green but not a lot of reproduction.  The vines proliferated so well as to outgrow their squares, intimidate the small commercial stakes I obtained for each, and effectively function like weeds.  All this without any exogenous nutrients placed on my part.  I got a little lettuce but didn't harvest it.  Peppers and eggplants bought as starter plants from a nursery all got crowded out.  No beets.  Beans produced but got eaten by pests before harvest.  No cucumbers, something mostly reliable in past seasons.  Pumpkin planted as an afterthought did not take hold.  Effectively a dud of an effort, though also limited by a mediocre input on my part.  This year, I did not plant any herbs in the backyard, reserving it for vegetables with herbs allocated to pots outside the front door.  Basil great.  Everything else, even the spearmint, without meaningful yield.

Since I really want to have a productive source of herbs for cooking and vegetables for supplementing what I get at the supermarket, just like the celebrities of cooking shows have, some learning assessment needs to take place, with a few decision points resolved.  As attractive as a square foot pattern seems, mine never seems to do as well as the fellow on TV.  Perhaps for the next season I should return to rows.  Five tomato plants dominate the planting space.  I need to choose two, one in each bed.  Cages contain lateral growth, stakes do not, and even fall over.  Back to cages.  Cucumbers deserve another go, also with some attempt to have the vines grow vertically. So do beans.  Chard is supposed to be easy to grow, especially with a square foot design, but mine has not.  If I do lettuce again, which I may not as I am not a lettuce enthusiast, rows would be better.  My soil is too shallow for carrots, which are inexpensive from commercial sources at the supermarket.  Beets were disappointing.  If I plant them again, which I might as I like them and they are expensive at the store, they will need more attention than I provided them.

I do not have a good grasp of why my herb pots did so poorly.  Basil is basically a weed.  It should get its own pot.  My indoor basil takes over any container, including the aerogarden.  It needs to be left to itself.  The big pot can contain three herbs.  I don't know why dill did so poorly.  Parsley used to do well in a big pot shared with other things, though overgrown this year by the basil.  And while thyme and oregano spill over the margins of their pots when planted near the edges, I struggle to thin and harvest them as they grow.  Still, a portion at the edged of the big pot seems the way to go.  Some of my pots got waterlogged.  Drainage is essential.  Failure of rosemary and spearmint late in season, two plants I could previously count on, has no easy explanation.

So the gardening goes dormant for the coldest months, perhaps with some planning when too cold to venture outdoors.  Reconsideration for next spring, intent on a better outcome.