It is getting to be time to wrap another gardening season here along the Front Range in Colorado.  The nights are dipping into the 40s, even though we are still seeing days well into the 80s.  Production in the garden has dropped off considerably.  I’m on my third round of bean plants, the second round having finally stopped producing.  I was probably pushing it to put in another batch of seed in late August, but I hope to get more beans before the first frost in early October.  I may not make it, but I can always hope.

As I look through this past growing season, I take away a few lessons and start to make plans for next year.  After three good years of seeing how things grow in Colorado, I have a sense for where I am wasting my time, and where I should invest my efforts.  When it’s a bad year, or a nonproductive year, or things we were counting on didn’t do well after all, we like to say, “There’s always next year.”

Some clear decisions have already been made:  I am giving up the big community garden patch I’ve had for the last three years.  This year was the worst for that patch for me.  The pests were awful – I lost most of my squash and pumpkin plants to borer.  My kale refused to grow until July, and then only when I’d over-seeded four times to do so.  I got one pot of peas out of the whole 20-foot row I planted.  The beets looked good, and the beans, when they finally started, produced well.  But beans are kind of foolproof.  I do have a basket set up for growing potatoes, but it is too early to dig them up, so I don’t know how they did.  I’m not hopeful about them either, as the plants are huge, almost grotesquely so, which means all the energy went into the plants, and not the potatoes.  We’ll see.  Last year that garden was crammed full, so full you could barely walk in there.  This year?  I could have a family over for a picnic lunch, and none of the plants would get stepped on.  I’ve had to pull up squash after squash plant.

What do I think is wrong?  Well, for one, the area is low, and next to the Oligarchy Ditch, a major water provider canal through town.  The ground is cold, even in the middle of summer.  At night, when the rest of town has a 60-degree low, that area has a 50-degree low.  There are the pests that keep being shared around – potato beetles, flea beetles, squash bugs, squash borers, squirrels, voles, mice, and other pests.  I had a couple of good years, but this year, I seemed to get all of the pests.  Squirrels decimated half my corn crop. A bumper crop of wild morning glory and purslane has layered my plot for the entire summer, despite the hours I’ve spent weeding.

There were other things that went wrong – things out of my control in most ways.  There was a decision by the board for the garden to replace one of the main paths along my plot.  The construction was supposed to be finished in early April, but instead drug on through mid-May.  I couldn’t plant until Memorial Day.  My plot was unreachable, and I lost 18 inches of ground on the east side of the plot – the ground that was the most stable and productive.  And there are the social problems involved with shared space – mostly petty politics and plenty of egos that can’t seem to keep themselves in check.  I’ve been scolded for taking on various projects for my 10 hours of workshare – most notably I was told never to prune the grapevines again because I “didn’t know what I was doing.” Last year, my pruning of the grapevines brought in a bumper crop of grapes, something they hadn’t seen for years.  But I didn’t know what I was doing.  I was also told not to work in the perennial shade garden because, again, I “didn’t know what I was doing.”  The board wasn’t happy unless all we peons were getting our workshare hours in weeding common paths and dragging the dumpsters across the street for pickup days. I’ve pretty much had enough of that nonsense.  It’s not worth it to stay there, when it doesn’t bring me joy.  Add in the poor production, and I have lost my will to do the work involved in keeping that plot going.

Besides, right now, I have great garden space where we are renting.  There was already a good garden bed along the south side of the house, and last fall I added a 16 x 3 foot raised bed along the fence.  Between these two beds, I’ve gotten a bumper crop of tomatoes, beans, squash, and eggplant, and more kohlrabi than I could eat.  When they needed to be watered, I could set up the sprinklers to run while I was fixing dinner or doing laundry or working on my novel.  Weeding took ten minutes a week.  I could pick fresh veggies for dinner just by walking out the door.  No gathering tools and driving over to the big garden to spend an hour or more doing everything at once.  This fall I am adding another raised bed.  There is room for a nice-sized one (about 5 foot by 12 foot) in the driveway, where there is nothing but mulch and the flattened stump of a buckeye tree.  It is south/west facing and gets good hot sun.  It’s perfect.  With that additional space, I should be able to go gangbusters next summer.

What grew well this year at home:  eggplant.  I planted two, and both reached a height of more than three feet.  THREE FEET.  I’ve never seen eggplant get so big.  I harvested nearly daily.  We were eating eggplant twice a week, and I made a huge batch of baba ganoush for the freezer.  It’s going to be mighty tasty come winter.  I also have some of the biggest beefsteak tomatoes I’ve ever grown, even compared to my river dirt back in St. Louis.  Every tomato is bigger than my fist.  I picked four or five a day, every day, once August came.  I’ve canned several pints of them – their meaty nature makes them great for canning.  I had great lettuce early in the season, and have replanted for fall.  The one zucchini plant was a good producer, and I had one “surprise” pumpkin that grew on its own from seed that was in the compost that I used to fill that bed.  I got a good harvest of cucumbers before they got mold and I had to pull them.  I also have gotten my herb bed up and running, using one square of the garden alongside the house.  There are perennials – thyme, oregano, chives.  I let the parsley reseed.  Yes, it’s messy, but I have all the herbs I want.  I planted basil this year, and harvested enough a month ago to dry and fill two pint jars.  There is more to be harvested, and I’ll probably grab those once we have an upcoming frost.  Same for the parsley.

So this fall will be busy.  First, I’ll be getting all of my things out of the community garden – the fences, stakes, hoses, sprinklers, etc., and getting them home.  Second, I need to get that raised bed built.  My future son-in-law will be helping me with that.  I’ve already picked up 7 bales of rotten hay that will the base for that garden.  I’m also negotiating for the delivery of some rabbit manure.  I intend to add edging to the garden alongside the house, then fill with a nice layer of hay and rabbit manure to build it up and rehab that space.  The raised bed from last year has composted well, which means it needs another 8 inches of soil to fill it up.  I’ll use hay and rabbit manure for that too.  And then there is the new raised bed – it will get a layer of leaves and seed pods from our locust trees, then hay, and rabbit poop.  We will toss compost in there all winter as well.  I’ll probably still have to buy some soil – I did this year – but at least everything will have a good start.

For next year, I’m going to continue to work on “growing up.”  When you run out of flat space, you start growing up.  This  can increase productive space.  I have some fencing to use to run up the cucumbers (this will prevent the mold, too), some winter squash (delicata and butternut), and of course pole beans.  I’ll plant the summer squash on the ends of the raised beds, so they can grow outwardly and pile on the ground if they need to.  As long as the base of the squash is stable, the rest of it can grow outside the bed, giving me more space in the center of the bed for bush beans, eggplant, lettuces, kohlrabi, kale, etc.

It’s going to be awesome.  That’s how we gardeners look at it – there is always next year.  And next year is going to be better than ever!

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