Gardening Success!

Ok, I admit that my gardening successes have been mixed. But this year the harvest is bountiful!

So, what is the difference? I have a community garden plot, and one of the best things about it - compost and scheduled drip watering. 

The other great thing about a community plot is knowledgeable neighbors. I've learned this year that keeping tomatoes on the vine when you harvest, rather than plucking them, keeps them fresh longer. I also learned that you should harvest green beans at night so they have the cooler overnight weather to recover. Japaese beetles, I discovered, are the bane of the garden and hard to control organically. 

This was my first gardening year in Colorado. I was a little nervous about organic gardening, which I've never done, and being in a new locale. I was worried I'd have the worst plot in the garden.

At the beginning of the season, we had a load of compost we could put on our raised garden beds. My husband and I found some straw on Facebook Marketplace from an owner of an urban chicken coop. We put the straw on heavily to keep weeds at bay.

Here's the result - a  bountiful harvest!