Reflecting on Oglesby Gardens in 2023
If I had to pick one thing that takes a garden from good to great, it’s planning. A key to success in the garden is to evaluate your current garden, reflect on the most recent season, and then use that information to plan for your next season.
I follow this process every fall as my garden season comes to an end. I focus on successes, failures, and how I can continue to use my garden abundance to support my health goals. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to look back and reminisce about everything we accomplished at Oglesby Gardens in 2023.
Go ahead, try out my garden evaluation and planning process and see if it gives you an extra boost next season!
How to Reflect on Your Garden Season
I figured, the best way to explain is just to show you what I do. So below, you’ll find my process for reflecting on the garden season and setting goals for the next season. Pick up whatever tips and techniques serve you, or use this as inspiration for finding your own reflection process.
Oglesby Gardens Goals 2023
Production and aesthetics are always my top two priorities in the garden. My goal is to grow as much of my own nutritionally-dense food as possible each season, while still creating a space that is pleasing to the eye and allows me to fully enjoy the beauty of nature.
Stay out of the grocery store until November. It’s December now, and I reached my goal this year! Thanksgiving was kind of like the cherry on top of this goal; I made so many garden-to-table recipes with freshly harvested Brussels sprouts, kale, carrots, onions, herbs, and more. It’s important to me to honor the earth's natural cycles and eat with the seasons, focusing on what I have available in my kitchen garden. Sure, I’ll pop into my local sustainable grocer or farmers market to pick up some of those staples I can’t grow (avocados, bananas, lemons, etc.), but for the most part, everything we eat is grown steps from our backdoor.
Preserve more garden goodness to enjoy all year long. Last year, I could have done with a few more jars of fresh tomato sauce, so I made a note of that in my guidebook. Then, when I pulled out my list to plan out my preservation process for this year, I saw my note and doubled the amount of bolognese I canned for winter. I’m happy to report my dry cellar is currently stocked to the brim with preserved and dried garden goodies that are sure to fight off those winter blues!
Tip: It’s easy to get overwhelmed in the garden, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Take a moment to think about your past garden goals, and focus on just 2-3 that will be top priorities for next year.
Oglesby Gardens Successes 2023
When thinking about what success means in the garden, I focus on how well I utilized my kitchen garden harvest. Honestly, one could argue my garden is bigger than Matt and I need; we’re just cooking for two people most nights. But one of the biggest joys we get from gardening is sharing our harvests with neighbors, friends, and family. And sure, sometimes the amount of tomatoes we have on hand can get a little out of control, but it’s worth it for the community we have created.
Does anyone remember my biggest loss last year? I lost all my pepper plants to a disease. This year, I had a much better crop that lasted especially late into the year.
I grew ginger for the first time this year. I was a little behind in the “pre germinating” stage in the basement this past spring, but I quickly recalibrated my moisture levels, and guess what - we now have fresh ginger. If a problem crops in the garden, like your ginger isn’t sprouting, don’t be afraid to trust yourself and see if you can fix it. Matt is sure glad I didn’t give up on the ginger – he loves his morning cup of fresh ginger tea!
We added what I'd like to call a "mini orchard." It consisted of 7 fruit trees and was designed in a meadow style with a walking path on the corner of our property. The goal was to create more of an experience than a tree line and to incorporate natives and pollinators into the area and support the health of the orchard.
So, we added a greenhouse. Adding a greenhouse to Olgesby Gardens has been on my mind for a while, but it just wasn’t in the cards. Then life threw me a last-minute opportunity, and I wasn’t gonna say no! You can read all about the saga of the greenhouse here.
We canned: 50 quarts of bolognese sauce, 32 pints of San Marzano sauce, 30 quarts of plain tomato sauce. We froze: pesto, berries, and herbs. We dried: Herbs for cooking, herbal tea blends, eucalyptus (and we’re also making eucalyptus oil!) We made: compound butter, shrubs, and all sorts of pickled veggies, plus a DIY all-purpose rosemary cleaning solution.
While my garden might look picture perfect on Instagram, I have learning curves and challenges like everyone else. Ready to hear a few garden trials and tribulations I had this past season? Let’s dig in.
Oglesby Gardens Struggles in 2023
My mushrooms did come in, but they were late. I learned that I should have “force flushed” them (no, I had never heard that term before either). Every year I have a failure that results in comments like, “Maybe we should stop growing that.”…Well, you see, that’s not really my style. (I am a first-born, if that gives you any idea of my capacity for stubbornness…) But I’m determined to have mushrooms. so I hired a mushroom expert to advise me. Soon Oglesby Gardens will be full of fungi!
Our squash crop was nonexistent. We moved our squash plants to a new area this year, and there was an ant hill that took out several plants. The rest were lackluster, looked vaguely diseased, and didn’t produce much fruit.
One struggle we sort of averted this year was watering issues. We recently added drip irrigation to our in-ground veggie patch and I am so glad we did. This summer would have been disastrous with how little rainfall we had. It isn’t a fancy system, but providing consistent waterings to the base of your plants is key to a healthy and productive garden.
Potato bugs are still a menace. We even moved the potato patch, adding a separate raised bed with all fresh soil. But somehow, the potato bugs found us and ate most of the eggplant in my garden. Then after the potato bugs were done with the eggplant, the flea beetles settled in. Mother Nature was really testing me with the pests this year.
One belief I have kept with me since starting out as a complete beginner in the garden: hands-on learning is the best learning.
I learned how to garden through experimentation and observation. Looking back, some fundamentals would have been helpful… However, my hands-on approach has turned me into a proficient grower. Any bounty from the garden is a gift. Even when something goes completely haywire, it can be a gift in the form of a lesson.
At least, that’s my approach to growing. I don’t toss in the towel just because a variety didn’t do well for a year or two, or Mother Nature is throwing curveballs. Being a gardener requires resiliency and if there is one thing I want you to take from this, it’s to BE that resilient gardener. My trick is to approach the garden with optimism, not expectations. (Yes, that is much easier said than done.)
There are SO many variables unique to each garden (soil, temperature, location, etc.) that no YouTube tutorial can correctly diagnose what you need in your garden. Get out there, experiment, evaluate, recalibrate, and keep on growing!
Looking to recap your seasons and walk through any questions? Want someone to give you personalized feedback and tips on your garden growth? Book a coaching session with me and I’ll make sure you’re on the right track. The right advice at the right time can be a total gamechanger, if you’re willing to put in the work. So let’s set up a call – who knows how much we can grow together next season?
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