Sometimes my posts will have nothing to do with genealogy, so I think, but it ends up that anything that you do is genealogy. You might not consider it genealogy, but if you are living it, then someday maybe a family member will document it.
In my case, I am going to beat my family to the punch and record things that are meaningful to me, so there is no doubt when several generations later, they will say x-great Grandma Nancy did it for us and she even blogged about it! I am super granny! I just love talking about getting back to my roots or gardening.
Pickle Patch
So, as I have written in a previous post I got back to my roots, literally and not with a small garden with just a few plants – I am talking 25 feet by 100 feet, which is almost as large as my entire backyard! This plot of land is free as long as you are a resident of the county. We named our plot ‘Pickle Patch’ as canning dill pickles was our goal for this garden and a whole lot more!
Gardening Problems
If you are a gardener, have you ever had any of these problems? Your plans look really good on paper, but when you execute it, you find you have problems. We had this in spades! I just had to work that in, haha.
Almost everything didn’t seem to go right. When the planting calendar said to plant, it rained and rained. Then we encountered unusually hot weather for over a month that was above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and, of course, we also had critter problems.
Also, since this plot was not used for several years, it seems like our soil wasn’t as fertile as some of the neighboring plots that have been here for years and they have amended their soils. Our soil has too much clay which can cause root rot or stunt the plants. Well, for Christmas I received two soil test kits in hopes it at least tells us what is wrong.
Another problem that we had was planting things too close. Not having plenty of space causes disease and that is what happened to our tomatoes: they got a blight. The garden plan looked so spaced out on paper. Next year, only plant half the tomatoes. I think we planted over 30 this time.
With all these problems, did anything do well?
Did we harvest?
Well tomatoes, green beans, first cucumber crop and corn did not do too well. It wasn’t our fault – the rabbits just loved our green beans. They chewed through the plastic fence in a couple of spots and proceeded to eat the entire row day by day. We decided we didn’t want green beans anyway. Then the racoons started on the little bit of corn that was producing. To stop the racoons we used a deterrent that we sprayed around the perimeter of our fence. As you can see from the photos, our corn was stunted and did not do well.
I was able to salvage what we did get and freeze corn for later. It tastes really good when you fry in a little butter and add some sugar and then, when done, you season to taste. As you can see, I packaged it up for just my husband and I. We do this a lot with all our cooking. Our freezer is packed full of the ready-made meals. When we didn’t plan a meal or our plans changed, we just go to our freezer and pull out a ready-made meal, which most times is soup.
We did get some tomatoes, but not a lot for the 30 plants we planted. We enjoyed what we did get for our favorite BLT’s – Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches – and some were used with another recipe called “Tomatoes and Okra”.
Some plants that thrived in this hot weather were the okra, bell peppers, jalapeños, sweet basil for pesto and the second crop of pickles. We have learned timing is everything.
Pickle Patch 2023
Garden Season 2022 has finally come to a close with the cold freeze killing the last turnip, broccoli and cabbage plants just before Christmas.
Now we need to start focusing on Garden Season 2023. We are already working on improving our soil, where I have brought at least 5 truck bed loads of leaves to help this year. I kid my husband that his blue truck is now my farm truck. He now drives my car which is an all-electric car; he had a little fender bender at Starbucks, and I tell him that he did that to “his” car. Haha!
A good friend gave me a huge tumbling composter and I also have a small-batched tumbling twin chamber composter in my backyard. So, we are doing better, but it will still take us time to get the soil loose where you can just scoop it up in your hand.
So, with the new year, we have to get our plants and seeds started as our spring greens like cool weather and while those are growing, we start focusing on mid-May plantings. I can’t wait to start! I would love to hear from my readers about gardening strategies that they use.
Remember Anything is Genelogy
This post was mainly me talking about my love of gardening, but as the family genealogist, I realized that anything is genealogy. If you would like to record your current memories Ancestry® makes it easy with a photo or story forms. Remember, it is up to you to add the current genealogy to your tree.
It's Not a Mystery
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