We haven't done much on the house this summer. However, Pat got to plant his first garden. We planted onions, carrots, lettuce, corn, tomatoes, peas, pole beans, asparagus, potatoes and watermelon. We let the strawberry bed go back to grass. That was too big a project for this year.
The spring crops did really well. We had a lot of rain this year, even some flooding around the Oklahoma line near Coffeyville. That translated into a lot of rain where we live. At one point the corn laid over nearly flat. Pat was heartsick. I thought it might stand itself back up, but didn't say anything because I wasn't sure. After three or four days, as the ground dried out, the corn pulled itself back upright. Pat was amazed. Unfortunately, all of the rain and problems at all the wrong times meant the corn didn't "make" very well. If Pat got two ears to eat, he may have been lucky.
Our best crop, hands down, was the tomatoes. We were able to can about 50 pints of tomatoes and a dozen quarts of juice. Except for a few onions, we didn't have enough to preserve for anything else. We picked one watermelon. The beans flooded out. The weeds took the asparagus. We had two or three meals of new potatoes but I wasn't ready to harvest the potatoes when Pat was. I could have sworn my folks harvested potatoes in the fall, not the spring. So we left them in the ground too long and they rotted.
But for all of that, the garden was a success. Pat had fun "farming" and we know we want to do it again. His home-based business has taken off and he's added two part-time jobs to his workload as well. I'm really busy with my job, so I don't see us putting in a big garden next year, but Pat wants to try corn again and I sure want fresh tomatoes and onions. We will be planting again next spring.
Guess we'll spend the winter pouring over seed catalogs. :)
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