With leaves falling, cooler temperatures sneaking in and Halloween just around the corner, that means one thing: garden season (at least in northeast Ohio) is coming to an end.
This is only my second year trying to develop a green thumb, but I feel like I’ve already learned a lot from my little backyard garden. Although with nature’s unpredictability, sometimes just when you think you have something figured out, it throws you a curve ball.
So I wanted to do a round-up of some of the highs and lows that popped up this year.
Life Lesson Learned: Garden cages are an absolute must
I’ve shared before how lucky I am to have a number of regular wildlife visitors that show up at my house. This can quickly go from a blessing to a nightmare though when they discover you are growing fruits and veggies in your backyard. Let’s face it, a fence can only do so much to keep them out. Last year I had to work with some makeshift protection using garden netting and poles to try and keep birds and other critters away from my bounty. It wasn’t a great situation.
So my dad offered to build me a gorgeous cage last October using wood and chicken wire to surround my now two raised beds. It’s perfect, because it lets me and pollinators in, and keeps hungry animals out. This year I’ve watched raccoons, red squirrels and groundhogs have hilarious tantrums when they discovered a plant they wanted to get their paws on only to realize their access was denied. Success! Guess you have to settle for the bird feeder, huh?
Life Lesson Learned: Potatoes might as well come from trees
I’ve always had an appreciation for nature, but I’m not ashamed to admit that until I started my own garden, I was quite ignorant about what it takes to grow most vegetables or what the plants themselves look like before the harvest ends up on your table.
It’s been eye opening, to say the least. One gardening shocker? Potatoes! I used to think, “Potatoes grow in the ground, what else is there to know?” While that is, in fact, true, it’s a bit more involved than that.
I planted the seed potatoes back in April (seed potatoes are small pieces of potatoes with sprouts in them) and before long, lush green stalks were poking out of the soil. Those potato plants became huge so fast that I was convinced they were going to outgrow the garden cage. They also took up so much space in the garden bed that it was basically like having a bunch of giant maple trees sticking out of the soil.
I ended up with a beautiful batch of delicious Yukon gold potatoes that I harvested in July, so I guess I can’t complain too much. But next year, I’ll definitely be growing spuds in their own containers so my other plants don’t feel like they’re being overshadowed (literally!).
Life Lesson Learned: Gardening can be full of surprises
I grew two Roma tomato plants from seed myself (a proud accomplishment!) and I was particularly eager to watch them both really thrive once they were transplanted outside in late spring.
Naturally, I was also excited once the plants began to grow fruit, but I was expecting things to go wrong after last year‘s tomatoes (from two store-bought plants) resulted in empty or moldy tomatoes for most of the summer. Yuck!
Luckily, that wasn’t the case this time around, but I did encounter a different issue. As the weather warmed up, I noticed some rather odd looking tomatoes appearing on one of the plants. Roma tomatoes are supposed to be long and oval shaped, but these cuties were plump and round.
When I brought up the oddity in a Facebook group, I learned I wasn’t alone. Many other people were starting to notice their tomato plants (also grown from seed) were producing fruit that in no way matched what (they assumed) was planted. Considering 2023 was the year of Pepper-Gate (pepper plants around the country being mislabeled), I guess this isn’t overly surprising.
Somehow the same tomato plant continued to produce both regular roma tomatoes and the mystery fruit throughout the season. I was never able to determine what exactly they were (perhaps a form of heirloom tomato), but they were still just as delicious.
Life Lesson Learned: Carrots grow so slow, you’ll almost forget about them
Last year when I planted carrots, the end result was nothing more than some fast growing weeds. Bummer! This season, I had so many sprouts that I actually had to thin out the seedlings. (And boy, did I feel bad about it!)
Like the potatoes, the green carrot tops quickly became lush and massive. Another similarity? I had no idea what was waiting for me below the soil. The seed packets for carrots suggest it only takes 100 days for them to reach their full size, but I’ve learned from online gardening groups that the timeline is often severely underestimated. People will eagerly pull up carrots only to find they’re no thicker than a pencil. (Or their carrots have grown into some questionable and often R-rated shapes….but that’s another story)
In September, I decided to harvest one of my carrots to see if I was going to be pleased with the results or laughing at what I found. It was actually of a decent size, and my bunny certainly appreciated the “fresh from the garden” flavor.
I gave it a little more time before harvesting any other carrots, or at least those that looked like they were probably ready to be plucked. My bunny Dobby enjoyed the goodies, and I was able to incorporate them into a couple of different dinners for myself (much to his dismay I’m sure). Weeks later I went back out…in a rainstorm…to harvest what remained.
Should it really have taken six months to get some decent sized carrots? Who knows. But hey, at least I can brag that I got something other than weeds this time.
Life Lesson Learned: Plants are going to do what they want
You can follow things by the book and give your plants some extra TLC, but at the end of the day, it appears they’re either going to thrive or they’re not. I’m also starting to think that some plants have a rebellious streak. When are they going to do some research on that?
For example, I started off with two zucchini plants, and one was struggling so bad I had to pull it up in late summer. My second is somehow still hanging in there, but it’s had a rough season for actual fruit production. To make matters worse, the plants completely overtook the nearby onions I had high hopes for, severely stunting their growth. I gave up on those for the second year in a row, and pulled out about 99% of the stunted bulbs.
Yet here we are with less than two weeks until November, and I have a couple of onions that have sprouted some green tops like they have an entire summer left to grow. Who wants to tell them?
My beloved tomato plants have been just as rebellious. Those lush beauties are a determinate tomato variety, which means they are supposed to produce a lot of tomatoes in a short amount of time before dying off. Again, here we are in October and they not only have a number of tomatoes still on the vine (that will likely never ripen because it’s so cold out) but actual flower blossoms too. Crazy!
At this point, it’s looking like my mom and I will be having lots of fried green tomatoes to enjoy soon!
Life Lesson Learned: Appreciate those farmers markets!
When one thinks of New York City, I’m sure farmers markets don’t exactly come to mind. It certainly never used to for me!
Yet I was surprised to find that there were a number of them popping up in Manhattan every weekend, and boy, were they popular. The one that I remember the most was the market at Union Square. I can’t tell you how many summer Saturdays I weaved my way through the crowd of shoppers as I was leaving or heading to the subway station.
I was certainly always intrigued by all of the booths there, but was in a bit of a tricky situation with shopping. Since I didn’t actually live in NYC, I couldn’t buy anything perishable, or if I did, it would have to be right before I was planning on catching a bus back to New Jersey.
Needless to say, I never did any actual shopping there, other than buying a loaf of sourdough bread once. (And later realizing there’s not much one can do with sourdough bread…)
But that’s not the worst of it; it seems I don’t have a single photo of the actual farmers market despite passing through it countless weekends. Here we go again…
I can still picture the sights and sounds of the market like it was yesterday, but unfortunately I’ll never have any actual photo memories to look back on. I guess I was too focused on getting around people to get to the Union Square Petco, running to the station to catch a subway train or making my way to The Container Store on the next block. (The same can be said for the smaller market that was held on the Upper West Side near the Natural History Museum. I was too busy running off to do other things to really pay attention or photograph the booths).
While I wasn’t able to truly appreciate the NYC farmers markets or do any shopping, I did eventually take advantage of the one held in Hoboken every weekend. Sure, it was a lot smaller, but I couldn’t pass it up.
(Okay, so it took me like four years before I actually stopped at that one too. But better late than never!) I decided to buy myself a cinnamon roll and some sweet pickle chips, both of which were delicious.
After moving back to Ohio, I quickly discovered that the “farmers market” (if you can even call it that) near our town was incredibly disappointing. This is ironic to say the least, since we have countless family farms in town and the surrounding areas. It sounds like they’re most popular in cities, which I guess makes sense because farmers are trying to bring their products out to people who normally can’t enjoy them.
Looks like I’ll be buying any locally grown goodies (that aren’t from my own backyard) from produce stands in town. If you have a farmers market by you – even in NYC – take advantage of it. It’s a win-win for you and the local businesses!
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