kinderGARDEN Thursday: season wrap-up

Well, it's been an long, interesting, journey this summer. We had small plans for a container garden in zone 8.

We'd even read up on it!

Life threw us a loop and we ended up in zone 5, right at the beginning of planting season. We changed gears again and planted a garden, in the ground. We started with heavy construction...

and ended up with a great garden space.

At first, we struggled to get seeds to sprout, probably because it was a cool spring.

Then right after we ordered more seeds, some of the seeds sprouted! Some of the garden was a month behind because of that. The garden further suffered, because as soon as it warmed up, it went straight into intense summer heat and drought.

Matthew and I struggled to keep the garden watered, but we managed to have some fun with it.

The beginning and end of the summer, found my Dad hospitalized with a very serious blood infection and gallbladder that should have come out 2 years before. That caused us to lose focus, as we had bigger things to do. Then, at the end, when most of the garden had burned up, I was blessed to get a full time job and we didn't have time to baby it along. I don't think the winter crop ever came up!

But we kept at it as we had time. Our first real problem with pests came with the radishes having aphids overrun them. We burned the leaves and plants totally infected and let the good bugs take over.

Next rabbits ate ALL the green beans for themselves. Nothing detered them, we tried it all, except human hair.

Then when my squash plants started to bloom, they became a magnet for squash bugs. Matthew and I spent a week picking them off by hand and drowning them, but the damage was done. We only got a baby pumpkin out of the deal!

Matthew did another photo tour of the garden this summer. My favorite photo was the coneflower closeup.

Although we had the joy of planting, we didn't reap many yummy rewards. We ended up with about 30 cherry tomatoes,

sunflowers,

marigolds and nasturisums,

10 strawberries,

some herbs, 15 peppers,

15 purple green beans and lots of rat tailed radishes,

as well as 3 Chinese red noodle beans.

All I can say is, I'm glad we didn't have to survive on what we planted, because it would be a very long hungry winter this year! It probably would have gone a little better if we hadn't gone into a severe drought. Thanks so much Kim, for once again hosting the kinderGARDENERS! I doubt Matthew and I would have made it as far as we did this year without it. Here's looking forward to a better growing season next year. :)

*edited to mention that as Matthew looked at this post with me, he turned to me and asked, "Can we go plant something?" Clearly planting seeds is his FAVORITE part!