We have a very small garden this year as an experiment. We wanted to see what worked well and what didn’t so we can make a bigger garden next year. What we learned is that deer like our garden, so we’ll have to either fence in our yard or put a fence around the garden next year.
FYI, my husband tried his best to garden in Arizona, but most of the time it felt like a losing battle. He was good at growing kale, collard greens and some bok choy. The high heat killed everything else. We also tried our hand at gardening in Chicago, but we didn’t have room on our rental, so we had to use a community garden. Unfortunately, most everything we grew a neighbor stole.
The Current State of Our Garden
Here’s what we have growing now:
We have three planters of tomatoes. One Black Beauty and two Mountain Magic. We’ve already gotten about 20 tomatoes so far, and they’re sweet and delicious.
Next, in the long containers, we had a variety of lettuce, green onions, and radishes. However, most of the crops, except the green onions have been harvested.
In another part of the yard, we had to pull up the sugar snap peas and will wait a few more weeks before we plant fall crops there, so no pictures.
We harvested our beets that the deer loved, and now we’ve planted a zucchini in the back box. In the front box, we still have a lot of lettuce growing.
Finally, we have two more round containers. Even though the deer have been enjoying the pepper plants, we have some peppers that are ready to harvest.
And, in the other round container, the tomatoes are coming along nicely.
Even though we didn’t have a large garden this year, we’ve enjoyed the lettuce, tomatoes, green onions, and the few beets the deer didn’t get.
Are you growing a garden? If so, what did you plant and how does your garden look?
Are the veggies on your patio safe? We’ve seen a couple of deer make their way into the wood/lawn line here, but they’re content to stay in the surrounding fields about 99% of the time. Last year something was nibbling on everything, and with a trail cam we discovered it was a rabbit.
This year we bought two little dog fences during the summer sales after our chickens ate all the kale! We placed the fences around the raised beds and it has kept the chickens out. We have tomatoes in all stages of growth, kale (they recovered nicely), pulled the cucumber plants out yesterday, sugar snap peas that I’m fairly sure we harvested the last of yesterday, 3 zucchini/summer squash plants that have produced abundantly, and a bed of peppers-green peppers, jalapenos, and ghost peppers that are all in various stages of growth as well. It’s been getting very cold at night, so I’m hoping our plants will all finish growing before the frosts hit.
We garden in zone 5b, and while I have never planted a fall garden, I’ll plan to do some this year.
The veggies are safe on our deck. We’ll need to put a lot more containers on the deck next year!
It sounds like your garden is doing good. What area do you live in?
We’re going to try a fall garden too, but my husband planted beets again, so we should make the deer happy.