Summer Garden Recap
Well hello there!
It has been a crazy few months since our last blog post, and I wanted to take a moment to catch you up on what’s been going on here at the Crocker Cottage. What follows is an overview of the Crocker Cottage Garden, what worked and what didn’t and some of the lessons we have learned.
As a gardener, you have your ups and downs, and you are constantly experimenting with new methods of soil composition, location, and plant varieties. And you are often at the mercy of the Mother Nature-although much less so today than a few centuries ago. But even today with all our new technology, mother nature still dominates and she has many lessons to teach.
As I write this Blog post, the hummingbirds are humming, the roosters are crowing, and most of our garden is dried up and withering. We experienced a drought with highs in the 90’s for most of June with a respite of rainfall for much of July, which saved our tomatoes plants. But now it is August and the drought and high temperatures are back. This has proved to be the main struggle for our garden this year.
If you have been following our YouTube page, then you know this season began with a big front garden overhaul, in which we pulled apart the front garden and converted it into a cottage garden. We added a big trellis for our climbing roses in the center of the garden and created paver paths throughout. Kim’s goal this year was to create a traditional cottage style garden with pretty flowers that fill the air with their pleasant aroma. That goal proved to be more of a struggle than we had hoped (more to come).
First Some Bad News
In May, I discovered that I had four bulging discs in my neck, and I had to take time off from work, which included any form of gardening work. That definitely had a major impact on our garden as I was unable to tend to the multitude of weeds that have infested everything this year. And that is a great segway into our first topic.
Weeds Weeds and more Weeds
Ever since we began our gardening journey way back in 2015, weeding has been on the list of gardening maintenance. But as we have continued through the years, it seems as though the weeds have become more and more of an issue. And as of 2024, I would say that the majority of our summer garden laboring mainly involves pulling weeds. It has become overwhelming to say the least and time consuming. In fact, it really does steal any joy that I have being in my garden, and that is a recipe for disaster. Now, add to that the fact that I was on the DL for the majority of the summer, and what you get is basically, as my neighbor Dan put it, “a lovely grass garden.”
This was the case for our lovely Cottage Garden plans for the front garden. Most of our flowers did not sprout, or they were pulled up when we weeded, or they were choked out by the weeds. We can’t really tell why many did not come up, but we suspect that this is the culprit. Although we know that the weeds did choke out many plants in the back garden.
We tackled this weed issue head on when we built our vertical trellis system for our tomatoes in the back quad garden(check out that video on our YouTube channel). We wanted a more organized way of growing our tomatoes and preventing them from falling to the ground without using a million vertical stakes that starts to resemble Superman’s fortress of solitude…you know, all those vertical shards of glass shooting up in every direction(original 1977 movie). My point is that we laid out four rows in the two front quads and covered the walking paths with mulch to prevent weeds. This dramatically reduced the amount of weeding necessary to maintain this section and it proved successful.
So, the question is, how can we transfer this method to the rest of the garden? This method works well for our in-ground quad garden, but is less conducive to raised beds. One solution is to simply use mulch on the raised beds. But I have avoided this method due to the fact that it can be and costly with as much gardening space we have, but with the amount of time weeding we have spent this year, it is starting to look better and better.
Rain Rain Don’t Go Away!
This Summer, Mother Nature was brutal. We were without rain for much of this time period and the temperature stayed in the 90’s for most of this time; this proved fatal for our garden. Many of our plants withered under the intense Georgia heat and as much as we tried to go out and water the garden, it proved useless. This was an issue across the Southeast. I travel to Asheville North Carolina often for work and it is always lush and green in that mountain valley. But this year, the lawns were drying up and much was brown and pale.
We have discussed building an irrigation system for our garden, but have avoided it due the logistical nightmare that would entail. But this may prove to be a worthwhile investment.
What Worked
Our tomato trellis system proved to be the single best project of the year. It kept our 20 plants organized and upright as they grew and we produced more tomatoes this year then we could handle, many of which we traded with our neighbor for organic eggs.
Our lavender plants are always reliable producers. They have outlasted winter freezes and summer droughts. And this year is no exception. We had a full harvest from our plants and the house smells of lavender! In fact, we are contemplating adding more lavender plants to the back quad garden and turning it into a lavender garden. But we still have some time before we make a decision on that.
Ah! Autumn!
Here we are in mid August and this is the time I begin to get excited for Autumn, and it’s when we begin planning for our Fall garden. Here in Georgia we have a much longer growing season than up north, and we basically have a second growing season. It’s basically a second chance for us this year. Already Kim is laying out the seeds for beets, kale, cabbage, carrots, and more. I am really excited for a second go with our garden this year! Lessons have been learned.
So, that’s about it! I hope we have caught you up on all the happenings of this season here at The Crocker Cottage. What are you planning to grow in your garden this fall. What worked for you this season and what were some struggles you had? Leave a comment below!
And be sure to check out our videos on instagram and YouTube! Bye for now!