2022 Goals vs Reality
Our biggest goals of the summer garden were to increase the total amount of canned tomato sauce, dry beans, and continue to expand our root cellar garden. Here’s how we did.
Goal: 75 Quarts of tomato sauce
Actual: 55 quarts, after buying 25 extra lbs at a farmers market) — we grew more determinate paste tomatoes but fewer over all paste tomatoes compared to 2021 (which also yielded 55 quarts + more ketchup than this summer)
Next year: Increase the number of determinate paste tomatoes from 14 to 20. Increase the number of indeterminate paste tomatoes to 4 (all Speckled Romans)
Goal: More cabbages for the root cellar
Actual: A resounding fail, due to zero germination on my June 10 tray which resulted in a two-week delay. That translated to many fewer head cabbages because those two weeks were critical for their development.
Next year: Start my head cabbages on June 1, which will be a little early but because of summer travel I’m planning to weight the garden more heavily to fall crops.
Goal: Produce enough sesame to give as gifts.
Actual: I planted about 3x as many plants and they all yielded really well, and I think we achieved this goal.
Next year: Grow as many sesame starts as this year (about a dozen plants)
Goal: Grow enough pickling cucumbers to yield about 2 dozen quarts over 2-3 canning sessions.
Actual: Canned 12 quarts due to a lower number of pickling cucumbers (4 plants instead of 8)
Next year: Grow 8 pickling cucumber plants to yield faster canning results so I can turn the space over for fall root crops and leafy greens in mid-August
Goal: Grow our own flour corn for tortillas
Actual: It was a long season variety from Native Seed Search, but I think it worked.
Next year: TBD. I won’t decide until we nixtamalize the corn and make tortillas, but it’s promising
Goal: Plant more flowers on both sides of the main path to add visual interest
Actual: I overcompensated and weighted the right side heavier than the left.
Next year: Keep working on this by adding blocks of flowers and interplanting between large plantings like potatoes, tomatillos, and watermelon.
Goal: Grow enough tomatillos for a year’s worth of salsa
Actual: We canned about 24 pints of salsa. I don’t think it’s quite enough.
Next year: Plant 3 tomatillo plants? This sounds like a very bad idea because as some of you know tomatillos are extremely prolific, but I’ll decide in late March when I assess how many pints remain at seed-starting time.
Goal: Double our dry bean harvest (from 14 to 28 pounds) so we can cook either chili or beans and rice weekly throughout the year.
Actual: We grew at least twice the linear footage (row feet, measured by how many feet of bean rows you planted) as last year, though some with less productive beans. We are still shelling them, but so far it looks like we may top 30 pounds of beans, and that’s a pound of beans a week for more than half the year, which is great.
Next year: I imagine I will grow at least as much square footage in beans next year, in part because of our travel plans. Dry beans are a set it and forget it crop, and I need to be sure our garden is in good shape for summer travel, and dry beans are super simple to manage — I mean, safely ignore.
In summary, we fell short of several of our homesteading type goals this summer — our tomatoes didn’t yield quite enough for what I believe we need to enjoy chili or lasagne weekly in fall, winter, and spring. Those meals consume 2 quarts of tomato sauce, which is roughly 10 pounds of ripe tomatoes weekly, or 500 pounds of ripe tomatoes processed annually. That would be 100 quarts canned, which is not our goal because in summer we don’t crave these warm meals nearly as much.
Our fall brassicas were a sad state of affairs, one of my least successful seasons to date. I know our failed sowing tray drove those dismal results, but it’s no less stinging because this is a huge part of how we extend our harvest season and delay the purchase of greens and brassicas in winter.
On the bright side, there were more flowers, maybe even enough, and I just need to play with placement, like a florist working her landscape-sized vase. I’m delighted to continue that slow study of our garden. I will keep visualizing the garden from my favorite angles and try to imagine tufts of zinnia breaking up long, homogenous green blocks of potatoes and popping up through a bed of rambling melons. Additionally, our increase in bean, tomatillo, potato, and sesame square footage yielded positive results that will feed us well into spring 2023.
Every year will have disappointments, failed crops and unimpressive yields all the while other crops will delight and exceed your expectations. It’s a grounding exercise to depend on what our land produces, and we are grateful for all that we can enjoy and share from our planning and hard work in 2022.
