This is a very long-overdue post that will include some of my thoughts regarding Meadowwood Garden’s 2008 season. It will probably be a very long post and might put you to sleep, so be forewarned!
First the good news — the inaugural season of Meadowwood Garden was an outstanding success! From a bare patch of lawn to a bountiful 1000 sq. ft. garden it was a pleasure to see my lifelong dream of having a vegetable garden come true. Check out the final harvest results:
2008 Final Totals:
98 Zucchini
98 Cucumber
84 Yellow Squash
22 Cherry Tomato
132 Tomato
1049 Green Bean
1013 Yellow Bean
17 Sweet Pepper
23 Eggplant
23 Spaghetti Squash
21 Honeydew Melon
Some notes: I may be the only gardener in the world that counted my harvest instead of weighing it!! Just goes to show how my mind works, or doesn’t as the case may be. These totals do not include the huge numbers that were disposed of at the end of the year right after the hurricane winds wrecked the garden. Easily 50+ tomatoes and 50+ peppers were destroyed, so the actual yield would have been much much higher.
2008 was a rough year weather wise. June was so incredibly wet it felt more like May, July was hot like August usually is, and August was nice and cool like September! It was almost like we skipped a month along the way — it went from one extreme to the other with no middle ground. From what I read other gardeners across the country experienced the same issues — difficult conditions and low yields. The newspaper reported the Ohio soybean harvest was the worst in decades so even commercial farmers struggled in 2008.
In spite of the adverse conditions Meadowwood Garden produced WAY more than I could personally use. WAY more might be the understatement of the year… At one point I was giving away bags of veggies to anyone who stopped by the house. Now that I think about it in July people stopped coming by to visit, so I wonder if there is a connection there? Hmmm…
The Super Sturdy Trellis I came up with was a resounding success (and additionally is by far the #1-visited page on this website). It easily withstood the hurricane force winds in September. The Hillbilly Garden Sprinkler was another success — it made watering very easy during the dry months we had.
The challenges faced throughout the season were many. My inexperience as a gardener led to some poor choices in plant spacing and the number of each variety planted. Pests were more of a problem than anticipated. In particular the Japanese Beetles and then later the Squash Bugs and Cucumber Beetles caused a lot of problems. One of my goals is to garden in a responsible and organic manner, but faced with possible decimation of my crops I panicked a little and used a chemical control twice.
So how did I fare against the goals I had set at the beginning of the season? Lets take a look:
Veggie Garden 1.0 goals were to:
* Start seeds for garden
* Design and build garden
* Set up decent watering system
* Keep everything alive!
* Supply at least 50% of my summer nutritional needs from the garden
* Eliminate all grass from fenced area
* Build cold frames using scavenged windows
* Extend harvest into Fall
* Compost
* Vermiculture possibly
* Evaluate and identify successful varieties
Overall not a bad job. The nutritional goal may have been met at times during the season, but not as regularly as I’d have liked. The rest of the goals were put on hold after Hurricane Ike tore up the garden and I decided to end the season early.
Meadowwood Garden 2008 was in my opinion a fantastic success. So much was learned that will carry over in the future. Tons of ideas are in development for next year.
Stay tuned for reviews of all of the varieties that were grown in 2008!
