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
The last week of May brings us right to the cusp of my favorite Month of the year! By
this time the bulk of the crops are planted, and we slide into maintenance mode!
The ‘What I planted’ section will now be replaced with ‘What we harvested’, although I
will continue to plant a bit here and there for fall crops or to fill in spaces.
What we harvested this week:
There is no such thing as a weed free garden. If someone tells you they have a weed free garden they are lying. But here are some truths about weed control:
At the very top of my list is this Japanese weeding tool! I wrapped a couple stripes of
neon duct tape around the handle to help me easily locate it because this tool is like an
extension of my arm whenever I am in the garden. With its short handle and angled blade, it helps me weed around plants. Its pointed tip helps me lift weeds with a tap root
right out of the ground.https://amzn.to/3PNWThJ
Next is this stirrup hoe. Longer handled to weed larger areas, this is the tool I reach for whenever I see a carpet of tiny weeds encroaching an area in my garden. With its dual sharp edges, it cuts weeds going both ways saving me so much time and effort. https://amzn.to/4uJ5jpB
The next item that I use almost every time I enter that garden is a vintage high wheel
cultivator. This one is perfect for cultivating the top layer of soil in the garden and
disturbing and diminishing tiny weeds before they grow big and need to be hand weeded. I found my favorite cultivator at an auction for $5.00. Agri Supply has one that has different attachments that I also use because the vintage one I bought doesn’t have attachments! If you purchase the one from Agri-Supply, tell them RuthAnn Zimmerman
sent you! We have worked together on Collaborations before! https://www.agrisupply.com/24-high-wheel-cultivator-push/p/12567A/
I could write this week’s garden reflections about spiritual weeds in our lives but instead I want to encourage you in your gardening season! A garden with weeds still grows food! Your primary goal is to grow food! Make ‘growing food’ your mindset instead of the aesthetics of the garden! Especially if you’re in the season where you have infants and toddlers! Your time for a beautiful garden will come! For right now focus on growing food! Guard your though life while you’re in the garden! Instead of noticing all the weeds and scolding yourself for not getting to them look at what crops are doing well and speak OUTLOUD your thankfulness about that crop! Don’t leave the garden until your spirit is one of gratefulness and thanksgiving! Feeling overwhelmed and disappointed when you’re in the garden makes it much harder to go back to the garden the next day and is the fastest way to assure that you give up on the garden! Noone likes to go to a place that makes them feel like a failure! Make your garden a place of joy and worship regardless how many weeds are within your sight! Ask yourself why you feel like your garden has failed? If it is because you are comparing it to gardens you see on social media? Then let me be the first to tell you that back when I had littles and a garden, I sure wasn’t posting my garden on social media and there were many years that giant rag weeds were taller than me when we dug potatoes in September! The point was, we grew potatoes! It wasn’t a pretty garden, and it probably wasn’t as productive as it could’ve been, but we grew food!
17 Responses
Hi, Ruth Anne. I am an avid gardener as much as I can be with a full time job. I love watching your videos!!! I grew up in rural WI and love the farm and garden lifestyle. You are an amazing lady and I wish I could live as you do and have all your knowledge. I’m always learning watching your videos and reading your blogs. Thank you for sharing your life with us, your fans. 💝
Always grateful for your wisdom. Your reflections are so powerful! Thank you for this reminder. I have a toddler and 2 young boys who take chaos very seriously. 🤪 Going to look past the weeds today (and the many other things I haven’t been able to get to) and be grateful for my first year raspberries, thyme, one rhubarb and a few squash plants. Something is better than nothing!
Thank you for your thoughts and words of encouragement as well as all the tips you have learned over the years. I always look forward to your posts. I am excited for your cookbook coming out! My children are all grown and have their own families now. I still have a garden and my children that are able do also. We share our love and joy of gardening, growing our own food and sharing plants, food, recipes and lots of conversations 😊
God Bless
Nancy ♡
Ruthann, thank you for these kind words, you’re like the garden buddy next door who doesn’t live next door. My garden was al set 2 years ago than illness stepped in the way. I’ve caught myself many many times feeling discouraged because the grass keeps taking over and I seem to get nowhere.
Then I think of your bright smile and just keep on plugging away.
Thank you and God for your kind Spirit and for sharing with all of us.
Now, back to my garden!
Love your shows, love your keeping the old ways. My friend Michelle and drove from Stone county Arkansas to Perry County AR to meet you. We arrived early and had a nice chat. I asked you to talk me into a family cow. You talked me out of it.( it’s just my husband and I). About 1 week later, a small farmstead opened up in my town. Raw Guernsey milk. Pineapple Zuchinni upside down cake, spaghetti pie, fermented beet juice!! Those are my favorites. Even though I could practically be your mother I learn so much from you.
God Bless you,
Madolyn
Your garden is beautiful! It says “God is good” and hard work pays off. Have a blessed day!
Ruthann, thank you for your advice on weeds. We have been giving our chickens all our grass clippings. But we definitely be putting the next mowing clippings around the tomatoes with compost. The cardboard is also such a great idea. Appreciate your links to your favorite tools as well. You feed my soul today in several ways. I’m grateful for you. Thank you! Cherri Norton
Ruth Ann you inspire me to the moon and back. I love your inspirational emails. I have followed you on YouTube for several years and we could be sisters, as I share so much of what you love. I have made your spaghetti sauce for a few years and my family raves about it. I even label it Ruth Ann’s Spaghetti Sauce. I hope you never stop sharing your recipes and your life experience as your energy and your faith is so refreshing in this world that can be heavy and non believing .
I have just had to skip a year of gardening in Zone 3 Saskatchewan Canada as I had back surgery a year ago that ended up having some bad complications. But the good Lord brought me through it all and I am getting my strength back. All I have been doing for the last 2 weeks is cleaning up last years weeds. So I have a 7 year weed fight ahead of me according to your Grandma. But I live on a farm so weeds are always bad here. But I am growing a garden this year even though it will be smaller than usual, I’m not stopping. I love my own food too much and it is getting me back in shape albeit with mains and groans. My grandsons always come and spend a few weeks with me every summer and they asked if I was planting peas as we sing songs while we pick peas and while we are shelling them we all sit and talk just like I did with my Grandma. It is I life changing for our littles to learn to see how food is grown and preserved.
Anyways never said hi before but I love that you share your life experiences. Don’t stop my dear!
You are just so encouraging!!! Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom!
Thanks so much Ruth for the encouragement! I’m also one of those people who likes hand weeding. I spent 3 hours in the garden weeding and picking yesterday and 2 1/2 hours today. The humidity was low and it was so nice working around the garden. The garden is not so pretty this time of year as so much has already been harvested here in Florida. I’m trying to keep the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra and watermelon growing a little longer, but the squashes, cucumbers, and corn are done so the garden is messy around those. And yes, the potatoes are done growing and full of weeds but I can still find them and dig them for about another month. Thank you for the weed control ideas and for your reflections on being in the garden! God bless.
Thank you!
Thank you for all the tips RuthAnn! So helpful. I will be looking into purchasing some of those tools.
Thank you for your encouragement! This year my gardening is very limited due to surgery recovery through July. I have some herbs growing and we’re preparing a new garden bed for next year. We scattered squash and pumpkin seeds and will plant some beans too. Whatever grows we’ll rejoice in, and we’ll know that the ground will be enriched. I’ll miss the cherry tomatoes, but we’ll buy some at the farm market when they start coming in. I’m thankful for the abundant harvest God gave us last year. Thanks again for the reminder to be thankful.
I absolutely love your words of encouragement at the end and that shift of focus from a perfectly weed free garden to focus on growing food and being grateful so your garden is a place of peace where you want to go! Thank you.
Love your garden diaries, thank you!
Thank you for this today. You’re such an encouragement!! 🤎
Thank you for this today. You’re such an encouragement!! I’m looking forward to your cookbook as I read your homesteading book 🤎