June 28th – July 4th, Week 14
RuthAnn’s Weekly Garden Diary
Documenting Progress and Reflections in the Garden
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
JUNE 28th to July 4th, WEEK 14
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!’
What we harvested this week:
- Red raspberries, by the handful for snacking and for smoothies
- Early red potatoes for fresh eating
- Cucumbers, as many as we can possibly eat, as snacks with dip, making cucumber salads and fermented 3 quarts of pickle spears.
- Broccoli for fresh eating.
Other Garden Tasks:
- Peroxide spray on my tomatoes to prevent blight from spreading.
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.
- Fertilized my tomato and pepper plants to continue to help them recover from the herbicide damage we received a few weeks ago. I use a fish emulsion fertilizer from the Spray and Grow brand. The tomatoes are responding well, loaded with blossoms and I am watching to see if those blossoms will set fruit or if they will be aborted by the plant because of the herbicide damage.
- Tended to my new strawberry bed. Adding more new plants from the old bed to fill in empty spots or replace weak plants in the new bed. My grandma taught me that how your strawberry bed looks in the fall indicates what kind of harvest you will get in the spring. Because we have a short growing season you will find me fussing over this new strawberry patch most evenings, lots of fertilizer, watering when needed and keeping weed pressure at bay!
Reflections
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!”
19 Responses
Thank you Ruth Ann for the walk down memory lane! When my girls were little playing in the garden while I worked were the best days though it never felt like work! It was so fun showing them things and giggling over little bugs and how the plants tickled their legs! I am glad I had that opportunity and now I get to share it with the “grands” as well! Never waste a minute! Thanks for the blight tip too! We are surrounded by corn here in Michigan!
Thank you for sharing your garden work for the week, so very helpful. I saved the blight spray and fertilizer info.
Thank you even more for sharing encouraging words to those in busy seasons that don’t allow for perfect gardening, but doing what we can will provide superior nourishment over what we can buy and teach others this nearly extinct skill.
Thank you for the time you give to share and teach. You are a gifted teacher and encourager and a bright spot in our social media feed and email inbox. Love these posts and your emails!
Huh! I did not know this about blight. Thank you. Tammy Combes (Eastern Oregon) will be representing my household at the Dufur, OR Festival the end of August. She is very excited to attend and hopes to meet you. We both have your book and are anxiously awaiting your next one due out soon…the cookbook.
I love your ministrations to the young parents. It is so important to speak words of encouragement wherever we can. Beautiful tone to this week.
Oh Ruth-Ann, you are very sensitive and in tune with your garden, animals and family. Your words here are blessing to all reading them. I hope you yourself are nourished and soothed too in your day, week and year and that you remain fortified. Xo
Thank you for uplifting us, and sharing so much of your heart. You are a wealth of knowledge.
Love you, too,
Kathy Dean
I love watching and listening to you share your family and life with us. Thank you for raising such responsible children.
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
Peggy
I praise our Lord and Savior for leading me to you with your wealth of knowledge right when I needed purpose again in my life. I am not well enough to have a beautiful garden because I cannot be in any heat, but I am a Canning and cooking fool right now. Praise God for He is Good EVERY DAY!
I love how encouraging you always are! Letting young moms (or it could apply to people without children, who’re working full time & trying to grow a garden) know that even a neglected garden can still produce food for them.
I love this. You have a way of gently reminding us of what is truly important.
Congratulations to Mitchel on his engagement and congratulations to you and your family on the up coming new member to your family. God bless you all.
Great post! The rust colored fungus on hollyhocks is called rust. It also loves beans, especially pole beans or beans planted too densely. I cut off affected leaves and the bottom leaves to allow for air circulation, then spread dry granulated garlic (like from the spice shelf) all around the base of the plants out past the drip line. You can also spread horticultural cornmeal (the coarse stuff from the feed store, not the stuff you cook with) to treat rust. You can make cornmeal tea and spray it as a foliar spray or use it as a drench on your soil as well to treat or stave off soil borne diseases and fungus.
Words of wisdom! There is always more to do in the garden for those of us who love plants and the natural world.
thank you Ruth Ann, such great information. I love your childhood stories. The corn story is fascinating.
Congratulations to Mitchell and the whole family ♡ a blessing indeed. I love your gardening tips for for the plant’s and the soul. Very good reminders for young moms and others who have limited time to tend to their gardens they way would like to.
I am excited your cookbook!♡
Have a blessed day,
Nancy
I enjoy watching your practical approach to gardening and cooking. It keeps me inspired! Thank you for sharing your beautiful family with us and encouraging us to put faith and family top priority. I can’t wait for the cookbook. Have already preordered.
Love this article and the positivity. Though my littles are long gone these are still encouraging words. It has left me wondering what ‘spoon your onions’ means though. 😉😂
Beautifully said ! Thank you for sharing and encouraging ! Blessings to you and your family !
So happy that I can follow your journey. You help grow my knowledge and love for gardens. Love your first book also!