Watermelons!

Easily my best crop I got four big ol’ sweet watermelons this year. Growing them vertically worked a treat and the little hammocks I DIY’d out of an old shirt only failed once.

My biggest watermelon was almost as big as baby Ladybug!

Here they both are in my laundry basket (i.e. the poor man’s Moses basket).

This one got picked a wee bit earlier than I’d have liked, but Beansprout was adamant, and that boy sure loves watermelons.

He could barely carry this one!

Not that it stopped him, I have had more than one watermelon dropped on the floor and split open this year.

And Then, Watermelon Tragedy

After my first four healthy melons, the weather started shifting and the temperature sky-rocketed.

First, the melons started to shrivel up which I thought might be blossom end-rot but then the vines started yellowing too.

And I thought it might be a plant-sunburn kind of thing…

Except then I noticed that the vines were also unnaturally fuzzy.

Like, weirdly fuzzy?

So at that point, I decided to guess that it was either some sort of disease or fungus and I tore them all out.

Still – four was pretty good!

(and if I’m being honest more than I expected).

Other Victories

My tomatoes did well this year.

The trellising worked better than tomato cages by themselves but the tomatoes still ended up on the ground. Next year I’ll try pruning them aggressively to see if that works out better.

I had some issues with the blossom end-rot so I’ll be adding extra calcium going forward but given that the soil was new I’m not too surprised it’s gonna need some amendments.

The okra at least was thriving with the heat and my neglectful watering style and while I didn’t get enough to pickle (bummer) I did get enough to make a curry.

That’s good enough for a first try!

I’ll be planting these again next year for sure.

The last thing that just really took off this year was my loofah.

I was not super optimistic about these because I had heard they could be finicky and hard to propagate but hot-diggity-damn they sure worked well for me.

I’ll have more to say about them a bit later on.

It Did Grow… Kinda?

Okay, so maybe I’m being a little harsh on the beans. I got two good hauls of beans they just didn’t start producing until real late.

I haven’t grown vining beans before and I think I staggered the planting wrong because they’re all producing at the same time.

I also had the issue that because of my trellis placement, they’re really hard to reach. That would be okay except I’m trying to balance a wee babe on one hip and monitor a toddler while I pick ’em.

I’ll try again next year, but this year? A little bit disappointed.

Also one of my best producers though, so, mixed feelings.

In the same vein – cucumbers.

I planted about six of these guys in the spring and none of the plants grew more than 3-4″ tall total, and none produced fruit.

This one is a late July re-do with a more acclimatized variety and I got… one. So, again, I mean it did grow but it’s not exactly enough to make pickles.

I’d like to say it was crisp and delicious on a salad but alas – it got carefully placed in the trunk of Beansprouts tricycle (by Beansprout) and left to rot.

C’est la vie.

As much as my tomatoes, okra, and loofah thrived in the weather my peppers weren’t feeling it.

I’ve gotten a handful of 1″ jalapenos (not quite the 6″ described on the package, but who’s surprised by that anymore?) and three very petite bell peppers.

My best guess is I didn’t give them enough water but I’ve never had much luck with peppers so it’s hard to be sure.

Plant Status: You Tried

The three sisters’ garden I attempted this year did not work at all but this one at least I’m sure was a user error.

The bed was too wet, too cramped, and got too much shade. Plus I had some very persistent marigolds that managed to take over.

The pumpkins were looking good but then the squash vine borers came in and ate everything. One pumpkin vine was toughing it out and managed to produce a very very small pumpkin start… but then it fell victim to the lawn mower.

Bleh.

I think next year I’ll try again in a different bed and see if I can’t draft Beansprout into bug hunting once or twice a day. Toddlers like bugs, right?

Since my initial attempt at corn didn’t work I tried planting in some of my other beds later in the season. I don’t know what I did wrong but I certainly did something wrong.

Because that’s my corn.

My gut instinct is that I put the seeds too close together and they sort of… merged.

Who knows!

Scientific process means I’ll have to try again and see if the same thing happens. See you next year corn.

Honorable Mention

Shout out to the buttercup nasturtium that is THE ONLY FLOWER that I planted this year that grew.

I’m so mad about it.

I planted so many flowers!!

That’s the price I pay for not watering and weeding regularly.

The Dearly Departed

A comprehensive list of things that never grew

• peas
• thyme
• sage
• rosemary
• chamomille
• sweet potatoes
• carrots
• chives
• calendula
• spinach
• swiss chard
• nasturtiums
• zinnias
• radish
• leek
• lettuce
• beets
• cilantro
• black eyed susans
• drumstick flower
• black eyed susan vines
• sunflowers
• blue star creeper
• azalea
• hydrangea
• astilbe
• alyssium
• forget me nots
• dahlias

Some expected, some unexpected, some devastating (like the dahlias).

I’ll do some more reading and try again next year.

Surprise Addition to the Flower Bed

This (I think) is a yellow tickseed flower otherwise known as coreopsis and it’s a volunteer. It has happily taken over my entire back bed, my compost, and recently one of my raised beds.

It’s 4-5′ tall, sprawling, and resistant as hell to heat and drought AND the pollinators love it.

I know a good thing when it sprouts up in my face (at least when it’s at eye level) so I’m harvesting the seeds and inundating my border beds with it for next year.

It doesn’t need a lot of maintenance, it’s pretty, and the bees like it.

I’m not going to argue with that!

(Also my first two years of trying to grow big flowers around the edges of my yard have been a bust so this seems like an obvious next step. Fingers crossed.)

Mystery Plant Revealed

Back in May when things first started sprouting up I had a mystery plant pop up between two of my raised beds and it turns out it was a cantaloupe.

I have no clue how a cantaloupe ended up in my yard much less growing up through my weed cloth but it did better this year than my pumpkins!

Unfortunately, it didn’t do as well as my watermelons, it got split open and the ants had a field day with it. You know what they say though, happy ants happy plants.

( I don’t know if anyone says that but it seems like they should).

About That Weed Cloth…

Awful. Horrible. Don’t recommend it.

I put in a lot of work this spring laying weed cloth around all of my raised beds and getting help to cover everything with mulch and it was a big ol’ waste of time.

The grass is thick enough that you can barely tell there’s mulch in there but since it’s plastic-fiber cloth it’s not going away anytime soon either.

At this point, I’d have had the same effect by just throwing my plastic recycling all over my garden.

If I want to stop mowing the garden I’m going to have to kill all the grass, pull out all the weed cloth, and cover the whole thing with cardboard – not an easy thing to do with a toddler and a baby!

So. Much. Grass.

Besides that utter failure, I liked my set-up this year quite a lot.

I am going to go through and reinforce the corners of the beds and shimmy the arches around a bit.

Currently, the trellis arches are along the insides of the beds but that makes it difficult to weed-eat and harvest.

So for next year, I’m going to try and shift everything to the center of the beds so that I can grow on them from both sides. It’s gonna be a bit of a pain to do but I think it’ll be worthwhile for next year’s ease of maintenance.

My other big change for next year bed-wise is changing the purpose of these beds around the porch. I had tried to use them for herbs and florals but that didn’t quite work out.

I thought it was a soil/water issue but it turns out I had a saboteur.

Toddler Botany

Beansprout got really into planting seeds by the end of spring which was a definite win…. overall.

Unbeknownst to me he claimed this bed as his own at some point and hijacked all my seed packets to re-plant to his specifications.

Nothing came of that either so maybe it is a soil/water issue. I’ll have to do some more digging (literally and figuratively) to figure it out.

And there you have it! The conclusion of our first summer of starting our urban homestead. It was both more and less successful than I expected.

What do you think?

Have you tried starting a garden for food production in your yard? Or have any tips you swear by for gardening with kids?

Comment below and let me know!

Want to go back to the beginning? Then check out my post about starting our urban homestead or to go back just a little bit check out what we did in June.