Summer Garden Recap: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

As far as gardening goes, I’ve never had anything more than what I call a little “kitchen garden”–some herbs and a few veggies and melons, at most. So, I’m still very much a beginner. I haven’t even had a garden for the last few years (other than herbs), and I was ready to get back to it, but I also remembered how my gardens usually play out. The season always seems to start out strong and lovely and makes me feel like I really have a green thumb, ha, and then it starts going downhill about mid-summer with the onset of heat, bugs, and disease.

So, here it is– the good, the bad, and the ugly of this year’s summer garden!

The Good!

Late spring and the first half of summer were a lot of fun! Lots of blooms, growth, and bringing in baskets of veggies and flowers in the evenings. Here are a few pics our little harvests.

We had no shortage of salad ingredients! And we made pickles a couple of times which is always nice. The lemon cumbers were fun and very easy to grow but I’m not sure I’ll do them again next year. They took over the green cucumbers! The squash and zucchini did great for half the season and the bell peppers were great until something got them late summer. The cherry tomatoes were the champs as always, but my big tomatoes were total wimps.

It was also just so nice to get out in the sunshine and dirt and work in the garden. My daughter and I are both outdoorsy and a garden definitely gets you outside in the fresh air.

And the herbs and flowers made looking out my kitchen window so much prettier!

Another “good” of the garden was all the helpful bugs who were like coworkers with me! Butterflies, ladybugs, bees, and earthworms all doing their jobs.

The Bad

We love seeing lots of birds, deer, and rabbits around our property except during gardening season! All other seasons we think they’re so sweet, but when they start munching on our garden, they’re kinda bad.

The deer ate our melons and blueberries and stripped our peach trees of their leaves. The birds pecked at our tomatoes and strawberries.

The Ugly

And then there were the bugs! They’re not even cute other times of year like deer, bunnies, and birds, so they’re just in the ugly category. We had some ants, some beetles, and lots of leaf-footed bugs. Boy, I can’t stand those leaf-footed bugs. They’re ugly and just evil! And they’re bossy too.

Besides bugs, I fought some really stubborn blight and now I better understand why that was such a dreaded thing in the Old Testament.

My attack strategy consisted of Nature’s Orange for ants, Liquid Copper for blight and black spot, and Spinosad for leaf-footed bugs. These kept each problem at bay for most of the summer with weekly sprayings. It was late summer when they didn’t seem to work as well but also, I might not have been as diligent by then since it was so hot. I also just got to where I would pull the leaf-footed bugs off with my hands and quickly smoosh them in the ground with my shoe. They lay eggs so quickly you’ve got to stay on top of those.

After seeing how this year went, I already have some ideas of what I’ll do differently next year. I have some planning to do over the winter and I’ll give it a go again next spring! I don’t mind trying to figure things out and troubleshooting. And I have some good friends who have great advice when I encounter problems. My friend Beth from church (the kombucha lady) is going to help me with my tomatoes next year. My friend Lisa and her husband maintain a huge garden every summer and they have the real green thumbs! You can find them on Instagram at The Reluctant Gardeners (thereluctantgardeners) where they share tips for home gardens, so go check them out! They are transitioning now from summer garden to fall garden which I’ve never done so I’m anxious to see what they do.

If I do anything in my boxes for fall, I’ll report back but right now I’m still cleaning up from the summer garden!