My attempt to document the planting, growth, harvesting, and preserving of our family’s 8000 square feet of garden.
Northeast Iowa Gardening in growing zone 4
Last frost date May15, First frost date September 15
And so, my busiest month of the year (so far) draws to a close with the busiest week of the year! I arrived home from my 3rd speaking engagement on Sunday afternoon, and on Tuesday the team from my Publisher arrived for a 3 day, 3 book, photo shoot. In 2 days, yes, they were able to go home early, we finished up close to 100 recipe shots plus some lifestyle shots and a family photo session. The Garden performed well and played an important role in the photo shoot, and I was happy to tell the photographers, ‘Pick whatever you need, we have an abundance!’
½ cup 3% peroxide (in the brown bottle from the grocery store) to a gallon of water. Sprayed as a mist, once every 5-7 days on plants that are visually blighting. This will stop the blight from spreading but won’t heal the blighted leaves.
Peroxide will kill the pathogen/fungus spores that cause blight but will also kill good bacteria. I like to be careful to spray peroxide minimally and not spray so much that it drips down onto the soil because it will also kill the good bacteria that I need in the soil.
I remove all blighted leaves then spray with peroxide and if I don’t see any new blighted leaves I don’t spray again.
10-year-old me, followed my grandma around the garden, my interest in the garden having long since waned for that day. It seemed to me that we had been in the garden for many hours. We had pulled weeds, hilled the corn, pruned the rose bushes and still grandma was looking for more things to do in the garden.
Now more than 30 years later, I chuckled as I crawled around on my hands and knees, spooning the onions. In my mind, I remembered my grandma walking around her beautiful garden looking for things to do simply because she loved working in the garden!
Then I pictured myself just 10 years ago, toddlers playing nearby and a baby resting on a blanket at the edge of the garden. In those busy days I knew I had only ten minutes or so before my gardening would be interrupted, just enough time to get the bare minimum of garden work done!
If I did have the time to open a social media app in those days and seen things like: “You need to spoon your onions!” or “You better prune and sucker your tomatoes!” or “It’s time to hill those potatoes!” I would have been extremely discouraged at my lack of time for gardening.
Thankfully no one was telling me those things, and I simply did the bare minimum because that’s all I had time for. And guess what, I still filled many, many jars of food for winter and blanched and froze many meals worth of fruits and veggies. I remember the years that the weeds in the garden were taller than me and we had to take the weedwhacker to mow them down so we could dig the potatoes in the fall. We still got buckets and buckets of potatoes!
I remember the years I never even supported my tomatoes with cages or trellises of any kind, let alone suckered or pruned them and we still got enough tomatoes to fill our own larder and share with neighbors!
Now I know that the chances of not getting a harvest are greater with a neglected garden but I’m writing this to encourage the mamas that are in the toddler and infant season of their life!
The fruits of your labor are in human form and will be visible in 18 years. Don’t judge your fruit by jars neatly lined on larder shelves or a freezer full of colorful fruits and veggies!
I promise you, when your 18-year-old, in graduation cap and gown, stands tall and proud before you, you are not for even a second going to think, “I wish I had spent more time creating a beautiful, bountiful, and Instagram-worthy Garden and less time meeting his/her needs.”
In conclusion, I want you to remember that people that love gardening, those folks that are passionate about their gardens will make up things to do in the garden!
I know this because I am one of those people!
I reward myself for finishing less pleasant tasks with working in the garden, and I often think to myself, “What can I find to do in the garden today?”
Do these made-up things, like spooning the onions or hilling the potatoes or pruning the tomatoes help increase your harvest? Yes, they do!
Will you still get a harvest if you don’t do these things? Yes!! Yes, you will!
To the young mother gardener with toddlers and babies around her knees and on her back, when you see a new garden video or reel telling you one more thing to do to increase your harvest tell yourself this.
“Some people love gardening so much that they are actively looking for more garden work. I will still get a harvest if I don’t do those extra things!”
