Heirloom

The best of the season! Delicious sliced warm from the sun and eaten simply on bread with veganaise, salt and pepper. No, I didn't grow it -- I bought it and ate it. It was great.

This year my garden is atrocious. I didn't even take a new photo of it for you because it is even worse now than it was before. Why is it so bad this year, you ask?  Well, I was a bit lazy in my prep, and I was gone for much of the summer so the garden was largely overtaken by nature. Amongst those items I planted on purpose, "survival of the fittest" was well illustrated. Each gardening season is a gift of wisdom, and this year is a learning experience extraordinaire!

My best 2013 gardening lessons:

• Do not use soil with embedded fertilizer ("leggy" doesn't begin to describe my tomato plants this year -- yards-long in every direction, forming a crazy web that prevents me from entering the space at all, with nary a blossom -- my first ever sterile tomato year).
• Start planning now for weed eradication for next year -- I'm thinking thick sheets of cardboard covering the surface through early spring.
• Plant more radishes -- I loved them and used every one.
• Repeat spring onion gauntlet -- It was the most effective tactic yet for deterring furry critters, I had plenty to eat and there is still enough of a gauntlet to protect the long beans.
• Always plant plenty of Chinese long beans. These are remarkably persistent, despite the kind of neglect I can dish out.
• Wait much, much longer to pull carrots.
• Finally make plans to use homespun compost -- it's getting too heavy to spin.
• Provide more drainage next year for the herb pot. Herbs don't like soggy toes.
• Buy fresh nasturtium seeds. My 5 year old seeds did remarkably well considering their advanced age, but their oomph was lacking. They normally thrive on my brand of neglect as well as the long beans.

As in all things, we live and we learn!