Preparing my garden for this year didn’t break my back or my spirit, even though it tried. I have been slowly bringing life back to the property I bought in 2022. The property had a lot of trash to clean up, along with other neglect.
Because of the slow restoration of the outdoor space and the early blight that took over my tomatoes last year, I decided to use all of my knowledge I have been collecting to optimize my garden more.
2024 issues
Last year I had a lot of very successful gardening season! Especially considering I had little-to-no motivation to work on my garden and I was trying my hand at growing new vegetables and using new methods of growing.
Overall, I would consider it to be a great growing year; however, my blight caused a lot of issues in my tomato yield, which was the majority of my garden potential.
Also, my garden soil needed more added nutrients and I wasn’t giving it to them.
2025 changes
There are a couple big changes I made to my garden:
- Adding organic liquid fertilizer to my seedlings (while growing inside) and will continue adding it 1-2x a month over the growing season. I didn’t know much about the needed nutrients, so I never dabbled in it before.
- Enlarging my front garden beds into 1 large garden bed to grow my tomatoes in a dedicated tomato patch. This will give my tomatoes enough airflow, full sun, and they won’t be growing in the same bed that has early blight in the soil from last year.
- Growing my pumpkins in the garden patch out back. This is a great growing plot; however, it is right next to the septic tank so I don’t want to grow any edible vegetables near it.
garden layout
The layout I sketched out ended up being fairly similar to how I planted. It turns out you can plant a lot more veggies when you have 4 fairly large planting areas! Who would’ve thunk?
Squash arch: My vertical gardening venture worked great last year. I added more soil and planted more vining plants on it this year. I plan to use the middle section to plant leafy greens once the vines create a sun-barrier.
Tomato patch: My string-and-clip vertical trellis method is still working strong. I have increased the size so I have used some cut trees from the property as extra support. The method works great no matter what lumber you use!
Pumpkin patch: The pumpkin patch is pretty self-explanatory. I was planning to plants beans all around this patch; however, I am not interested in planting edible plants near the septic tank so that will not be happening now.
Main “OG” patch: I have my corn, beans, squash growing in a 3-sisters configuration and I am growing my potatoes in the ground. Also, this patch has my peppers, garlic, melons, and cold-weather crops.
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