Good day dear mates! In this post I'd like to dive deep to my summer garden memories or if to be more concrete I'd like to tell in this post about last gardening season of friend's garden. Earlier in 2023 I've already told you about his garden as example in this post of garden journal challenge. But in 2024 I also visited this garden several times. And now I think it's good time to refresh memories and to tell how is it was in 2024. Let's go!
Beginning of the season
In last spring my friend decided to plant in his garden as usual all possible vegetable plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, carrot, potato, cabbage, watermelons, pumpkins and others.
Of course he choose to plant new trees like pear and plums.
Also as always a lot of flowers was in his mind tulips, roses, lavender a.s.o.
Summer time
Summer season became most intensive and active time in garden. Here we should remember about hot weather and there weren't any rain at summer time on 2024 season so that's why there was a lot of work during summer months and also September. It was needed not only to water the plants, but also to keep the garden clean, weeding it of weeds and wild herbs whose seeds were carried by wind and birds. Also at this area was continued experiment with covering soil around plants with special material to protect them from weeds. As example it was done with strawberry plants.
So as you can see area around them was almost clean and besides it this material protected the soil from drying out, as my friend said.
Thanks to the dry and hot weather my friend got his first harvest earlier than usual. First of all he got a lot of berries from his garden. Among them were strawberries, raspberry, blackberry, honeysuckle and currant .
Also good harvest of onion and dill we saw on garden beds.
Sometimes to my friend's garden came unwaited guests like snake which was caught on picture bellow.
But let's return to plants and harvest. As so in August my friend went to vacation with his family he leave his garden for a week. And when he came back he found out that cucumber plants feel not good. On some of the plants' leaves withered and yellowed. Fortunately, after abundant watering and treatment, the plants recovered and bore fruit until the fall.
Also he found that sorrel leaves have been damaged by pests.
And here, with the help of ashes and other tricks, the plants were saved.
Harvest time
Since the middle of August besides other chores my friend got another one - it's came harvest time and he need to spend more time to pick up it.
Here I should mention potatoes which were quiete big due new varieties were planted in 2024.
Watermelons and melons which were very sweet and tasty. Of course they were not big by itself but their amount gave possibility to enjoy them a lot. Here you can see couple photos of melons.
And couple varieties of watermelons for example
Also juicy and fresh tomatoes was in last season even in the open soil.
Since the beginning of September matured cabbage, peppers, carrot and beet.
So all this plants my friend could harvesting till the lately autumn. But even at September he could pick up late green tomatoes and cabbage from open soil.
And of course in September I visited him to help to collect pumpkins which he use not only for food but also to feed them his pigs and cows at the cold winter time.
End of the season
So closer to the 20th of October my friend finished his gardening season. To this date he picked up all possible harvest, removed all annual plants that had finished fruiting and their haulm. He also pruned bushes and some fruit trees. He put manure, humus and fertilizer into the soil where necessary. And now he enjoys reminiscing about the past season, the harvest and is happy to share stories about it with his guests during long winter evenings.
Final thoughts
Of course last gardening season was not easy but good enough. It was reach for hot sunny days and harvest and we all hope that 2025 season will be not worse even considering this snowless winter and it's unpredictable weather.
