This is our second year gardening. If you had told me last summer that I’d be writing a gardening update this thrilled, I’d have laughed you all the way to the compost pile. One of the reflection questions asked was: “What was one challenge you faced in your garden, and what did it teach you for next season?” Last year was … humbling. I’ll also add disappointing and frustrating. We planted our first ever garden with hope in our hearts. We cultivated it. We loved it. We were doing, what we thought, was all the right things BUT unfortunately we planted with zero fencing around our perimeter. In hindsight, this was our first rookie mistake. The bunnies and deer treated our garden like an all-you-can-eat buffet. By this time last summer, we didn’t have a single tomato to show for it. Not one. The weeds were out of control and the garden was a jungle. It became overwhelming and what felt like a losing battle. BUT we stuck with it. And despite our huge losses early in the summer and our poorly tended garden throughout the rest of the summer, it did produce for us. Through the weeds, it gave us peppers and potatoes – tons of them. It wasn’t the harvest we dreamed of, but hey, we had a whole winter of homemade french fries and jalapeno poppers, so it wasn’t a complete bust.They were delicious!
This year, we said “lettuce” try again, but smarter! Lesson learned. This spring, we built an eight-foot fence around the garden. Our goal this year was to fortify! Putting up the fence wasn’t the easiest task. My husband using a post pounder to drill in 10 foot T posts while straddling a 12 foot ladder ontop of uneven garden soil was a bit dodgy – to say the least – but he did it! And I’m so glad he did. The gardening Gods & Goddesses have thanked us for the extra security by going absolutely wild. This year, we are successfully growing tomatoes, beans, peppers, onions, potatoes, corn, lettuce, cabbage – you name it, we’ve got it, and its doing well! We have also done a pretty decent job with keeping up with the weeds this year (or we’re at least better than last year!) We are so proud of what our little garden is growing and even more excited that our fence has done its job. Last week we bit into our very first ripe, red tomato of the season, and the fence is worth it! After a full year of pepper-and-potato purgatory, our first tomato tasted like victory. We can already tell the coming weeks are going to have us swimming in tomatoes. We are so here for it. It’s also about time to harvest our potatoes to replenish our french fry stock. I won’t lie, I’m not looking forward to digging up the entire potato patch this weekend, but a freezer stocked with another year’s worth of fries makes the labor more than worth it.
But if I’m honest, the real harvest here isn’t the vegetables — it’s everything growing alongside them. This garden has become a gathering place for our family and friends, a spot for muddy hands, sunburned shoulders, and a whole lot of trial and error turned into inside jokes. Our two-year-old insists on suiting up in his “farmer clothes” (a beloved pair of overalls) before every single trip outside, fully embracing his role as “Farmer Baby,” and there is nothing sweeter than watching him pluck blackberries straight off the bush and pop them right into his mouth. Meanwhile, our five-year-old has taken on the very serious job of “best chef in the house,” proudly collecting cherry tomatoes and pruning tomato leaves like he’s been doing it his whole life.
So while last year taught us some hard lessons about fences (and about counting your tomatoes before they’re grown), this year is teaching us just how sweet the payoff can be when you learn from your mistakes and try again. This garden is feeding our stomachs with organic, homegrown food, but even more than that, it’s feeding our souls with memories we’ll be replanting in our hearts for years to come. Here’s to the rest of our summer being filled with overflowing peck buckets, sticky blackberry fingers, tiny farmers in overalls, and a whole lot of family ‘thyme’ well spent in the garden!
Next year’s glow up is already taking root: weed suppression here we come!!!
