For some context, I live with my parents still and we have two bigger raised garden beds, a medium sized garden bed, four square garden beds and four grow bags. We also chose to do companion planting this year – courtesy of me.
This was my first time actually planning out the garden and helping to contribute to the garden and I thought it’d be fun to look back and reflect on what worked and what didn’t. This way too I can also come back to this post next year when we’re getting ready to start planting again.
Garden Bed #1
Everything that we planted in garden bed #1 was tomatoes, bell peppers, beets and parsnips. We have yet to harvest any bell peppers as they’re still growing but we’ve gotten a few tomatoes thus far.
First off, the tomatoes? Thriving. The tomatoes are living their very bestest lives and I love that for them. Yes we do get some sucker leaves that make their way back but we’re usually pretty good at keeping on top of those. Other than that though, we have an abundance of tomatoes still growing. Lots of green ones but we’ve managed to pick the few red ones so far. I’m not a huge tomato lover though so I can’t speak on the flavour but the size of them are pretty good.
Secondly, the bell peppers. Again, these are still growing but like the tomatoes they’re living their bestest lives that a bell pepper could ever have. We don’t have that many currently growing compared to the amount of tomatoes we have growing, but my family and I aren’t huge bell pepper enjoyers – we still eat them from time to time, but nothing too crazy.
The beets are doing okay. We had one massive beet thus far but the others are looking kind of smaller in comparison. Now, I personally don’t like beets, that’s more of my dad’s thing and I’m not sure if he really cares how big the beets are so long as he has beets.
The main issue we had with this garden bed was that a shit ton of grass somehow made it’s way into this bed and completely took over the area where we planted our parsnip seeds. So we also have yet to harvest any parsnips (I’m not sure if this is “normal” given how late it is in the season) on top of the bell peppers. Like the parsnips aren’t even sprouting yet and we have about a month left in our growing season because of the zone that I’m in (for safety reasons, I’m not going to say what zone but just know that it is pretty short compared to others).
Overall, I’d give this garden bed a 6 star rating out of 10. Because of the grass, it didn’t do amazing and because we haven’t seen at least one of everything that we planted in this garden bed.
Garden Bed #2
The things we planted in this garden bed were peas, beans, cucumbers, carrots and lettuce.
I’m going to start with the peas. These did amazing. The flavour of the peas was amazing. I would’ve liked to have more peas to harvest – y’all know I love me a good snap pea – but I think if we had planted the seedlings more sporadically then we would’ve gotten a continuous harvest instead of everything all at once.
The beans were pretty good too. We had a lot of beans that came from our bean plants this year. Surprisingly we only had beans for a few dinners and didn’t eat them as much as I was previously expecting but that’s okay.
Our lettuce plants did really good too however, we planted two rows of lettuce and only the one really took off so I’m a bit disappointed in that but we still ended up with some lettuce in the end. I think next time we do lettuce, I want to try iceberg lettuce as well as romaine – we just did romaine. It’s not that I don’t like romaine lettuce, I just sometimes prefer a bit crunchier lettuce from time to time and I think a mix of the two would make for a great salad.
We have yet to harvest any carrots and if I’m being honest I’m kind of terrified to harvest them. I love carrots and love putting them in my rice bowls but I’m so scared that when I go to harvest these, they’re going to be tiny. I want my carrots to be a decent size and I don’t want to get in the way of them living their best life. I will eventually harvest them but it’s going to take a lot of encouragement.
The problem we had with this garden bed was that the cucumbers absolutely took over everything and it literally killed our pea and bean plants. So I’m making a note for next year that the cucumber is going in its own area just like we did with the zucchini. The cucumbers showed up and showed out, they wanted to be the stars of this garden bed and my god were they ever. Our cucumbers were huge – bigger than the ones you’d find at the grocery store – but at what cost? They killed my beloved snap peas and for that I will forever be eating these cucumbers in honour of my lost snap peas.
I think I’d give this garden bed also a 6/10 just because of what happened with the cucumbers.
Medium Garden Bed
In this garden bed we had strawberries, onions, potatoes and a bunch of herbs.
The strawberries were fantastic. We had a lot of berries produced from these plants this year but we weren’t always on top of harvesting them so unfortunately a lot of them starting rotting while still on the stem. But that’s partially our fault.
The onions did okay – we had planted a few in each garden bed but instead of reflecting on them in each garden bed, I’m putting them in one section so I’m not repeating myself. I say they did okay only because I totally should’ve left them for longer so that we’d have bigger onions, but again, that’s our fault and not the plant itself. We now know for next year that we need to leave them for longer.
Sadly the foliage on these potatoes haven’t started to die yet (which means that they’re still absorbing energy) so we haven’t been able to harvest these potatoes yet.
And the herbs. These didn’t take off whatsoever. I also planted spinach seeds in this garden bed and we didn’t get any this year. I have no clue what happened but I’m thinking that they might’ve gotten washed out from the rain.
I’d give this garden bed an 8/10 because of our strawberry plants doing as well as they did. I couldn’t care less about the herbs not taking because we did herbs in our indoor hydroponic countertop garden so we didn’t really need these ones.
The Square Garden Beds
The only thing we put in the square garden beds was zucchini and zucchini alone. And these didn’t take off either. I believe this is due to the placement of said garden beds and in turn, the zucchini didn’t get enough sun exposure. We had eight zucchini plants total (two in each bed) and only two out of eight actually took off. I think we harvested 3-5 from our plants this year. They did absolutely horrible. However, as I mentioned before, there’s still about a month left in our growing season and I’m still hopeful that we’ll get at least a few more.
I’d give the squares a 4/10. I’m not a huge zucchini lover myself but I’m still disappointed and frustrated that they didn’t do as well as they did in previous years.
The Grow Bags
The only thing we planted in the grow bags was potatoes and thank god for that. We put 3 seed potatoes in each bag then put the leftover seed potatoes in the medium sized garden bed. I found it interesting that the potatoes in the grow bags were ready for harvest sooner than the leftover ones, not sure if the placement of the grow bags had anything to do with that but that’s something to worry about for next year.
We were very abundant in our potato harvest – I think we had around 15-20 from just one grow bag which is amazing. They weren’t anything huge but a potato is a potato. They were still lovely and the taste was roughly the same as your typical store bought potato.
The grow bags worked pretty good, I’d give them a solid 9/10.
Overall Thoughts
I think the garden did pretty good this year, wasn’t too bad but also could’ve been a lot better, overall I’m not complaining.
I’m definitely going to try and put the cucumbers in their own area next year, so far I’m thinking of putting everything that should be on a trellis into one garden bed and all the root veggies into the other. When the time comes, I will have probably already changed my mind a million times but this is what we’re rocking with right now.
I really want to try growing some other vegetables but I’m just not sure exactly which ones I want to try that either me or my family will eat. At some point I really want to try corn just to attempt it – I’m not expecting to get a lot of cobs/ears of corn but I want to attempt the corn just to try it.
I think I also want to get more pea seedlings and also more seed potatoes for next year too – those have been my two favourites of the year – and I’m ending the growing season wanting more and more. You can never have enough peas or potatoes.
If you read this far, thank you so much, I appreciate it and let me know if you’re currently or are thinking of starting to garden in the comments! What are some things you want to grow?
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julzy 
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