This year my garden goals are pretty lofty. I’m working on several raised beds and containers to grow the most amount of food I can.
Of course, along the way I’m learning as I grow, literally.
So far, it looks like my potatoes, strawberries and garlic crops are looking to be a huge success. I’m hoping I can replicate that process with my tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, bush beans, squashes, and a few other things.
As I’ve been learning, mostly through YouTube videos, I starting thinking about the best way to organize the information I glean, especially when I won’t be able to put some of the tips to use until next gardening season. A light bulb moment occurred when I decided to start a Gardening Diaries series here on my blog. That way the information is organized in one place where I can find it later this winter when I plan my 2024 garden, and anyone else can find it too, this year and beyond.
For entry 1, I’m dishing up the details I discovered when I watched a video on tips for growing bush beans by gardener Huw Richards. I found the video after searching for tips for succession planting bush varieties of green beans and learned some helpful hints from Huw, including how he starts his bush beans from seed in small seed starting containers. The reason for doing this, according to Huw, is so that as you succession plant the beans throughout the season they’re easy to pop into the natural gaps that you find in your planting spaces.
This year I’ve planted bush beans and am succession planting them throughout the summer, but I’m direct sowing them into my garden beds. It’s only been a few weeks and my first round of beans have sprouted and are taking off. For the remainder of the summer I’ll continue to direct sow into the garden, but next year I’m implementing Huw’s method.
He explained some of the reasoning behind planting this way, which include not just filling those gaps in your garden beds, but to also use the bush beans as shade for plants that can be more prone to bolting in the heat, like lettuce. By utilizing just a bit of shade cover from the bush beans, Huw says you can extend the growing season for those heat intolerant plants by a few weeks. And I’m all about hacks that will help me extend growing seasons, by a little or a lot, so I can get the most food possible.
Last summer was my first gardening adventure and at that time I only had access to a small patio, so I did grew everything in containers. That was a learning process of its own, and so far my 2023 garden is making me fall even more in love with the entire gardening process. Okay, I’m not in love with the weeding process. But everything else? The planting, tending, watching things grow, and hopefully, harvesting? Love it!
I’m getting ready to pull my first harvest of the season in the coming weeks, which will be my garlic. I’ve already pulled and enjoyed a few garlic scapes, (the curly center of the plant) and I’m really looking forward to digging up the garlic bulbs soon.
If you enjoyed this post, stay tuned for another entry in the Gardening Diaries, so we can all learn (and grow) together!
Amanda Bretz 