Kelly Morrison, Writer: Confessions of a Backyard Farmer: Year 1

Once upon a time there was a wannabe farmer...

...and I was browsing through online seed catalogues in March. (Which is already a bit late in the season any competent veggie grower will tell you.) And between The Cottage Gardener and West Coast Seeds I was able to find all the heirloom fruit and vegetable seeds I thought I could realistically fit into my 465 sq ft of garden beds.

In April I started my first bunch of tomato seeds in an egg carton, which worked surprisingly well. Followed by leeks, bunching onions, and carrots in an actual seed germinating tray... which didn't work at all. They didn't sprout. And so began a long summer of trial and error.

The last frost date here in Port Elgin, Ontario is May 11th, but come that date we were still working on building the garden beds. By the beginning of June I had planted:

June 2015

Heirloom Tomatoes

Orange Banana
Indigo Rose
Savignac
Black Plum
Cheeseman's

Corn (Bloody Butcher)

Potatoes (Black Russian)

Peas

British Wonder Peas
Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas

Vegetable Spaghetti Squash

Zucchini

Evergreen Bunching Onions

Cucumber (English Telegraph)

Parsley (Italian Large Leaf)

Oregano (Greek)

Carrots (Scarlet Nantes)

Beans (Golden of Bacau)

Not all of them succeeded. There was a period of aphid attacks (at least that's my best guess). I lost the cucumbers, many squash, and the Cheeseman's tomatoes. The bunching onions and carrots sprouted, but didn't grow very much beyond that. The parsley didn't sprout at all.

Everything else was well on it's way.

July 2015

I added compost around the plants then I watered and weeded and waited.

August 2015

The corn started to shoot up like magic bean stalks. It was reaching the second story of the house by the end of August.

September 2015

And then it grew tassels on the tops. And cobs on the stalks.
The potatoes grew into small trees and then collapsed into a jungle of vines.
The tomatoes became massive viney bushes.
For much of August, the spaghetti squash vines grew 5+ feet per week, stretching out over the entire garden.

And then it was harvest time. The last frost date here is officially October 1st, but it is now the 16th and still no sign of frost. We have an amazingly long season here compared to the rest of our agricultural zone.