I’ve procrastinated long enough to reflect on the 2024 garden. Although, with stuff still growing somewhere either in my garage or outside, I don’t think the 2024 garden was ever over.

One of the goals I had for myself heading into the 2024 garden season was to make meticulous observations and take notes. With so many projects going on by mid-summer and other things going on, I’m not certain I was even tracking anything. I guess this goal will remain for 2025 and I will try my darnedest to commit to it.

Overall Reflection

Overall, the 2024 garden season was a great one. I learned many lessons from the garden and had many great harvests despite all the pest pressures. I think one of the best parts of the garden were the flowers. In many ways, they were the stars of the garden. Without flowers, I don’t think my garden would’ve flourished as much.

Beside flowers, I also conducted a few experiments in the garden as this is only my fourth season of having a garden, I’m still trying to determine what works and what doesn’t. Of course not all the experiments were successes.

Experiments

The first experiment was starting carrots in peat pellets. I live in a low-humidity dry climate and often have trouble getting carrots to germinate because of their long germination times. The soil dries out annoyingly fast here. I’ve seen people on YouTube have success starting carrots in root trainers and soil blocks. Peat pellets are very close to those things.

The carrots germinated okay and I transplanted a few weeks after. It seemed to grow okay but when I went to harvest the carrots, it was the length of the peat pellets. Epic fail.

The second experiment was planting potatoes densely. I put 8 potatoes in a single row in a 8-foot space. It absolutely took over the entire space and sure, I got 2 crops of potatoes but even with 8 seed potatoes, the harvest was quite a bit smaller than what I got in 2023 with half the amount. I think potatoes like its space to produce.

My third garden experiment of 2024 had to do with the exploration of timing. I’ve never been the kind of person who followed so-called “traditions”. I’ve always try to do things outside of ordinary timing (if that makes sense) like people are not supposed to have things growing in November and December. Everything is supposed to be put to bed by then. Also, people don’t usually start gardens until April or May. I started my spring garden in February, so outside of norm.

There were definitely some successes and failures, like sowing cool-season vegetables in August. I don’t think I will have November and December harvests if that wasn’t a successes.

Garden Stressors

The stressors of 2024 were definitely the pests! Mice, earwigs, and grasshoppers were the biggest pests I encountered in 2024.

The mice were cost by my mom discarding cherries on the ground willy-nilly. I told her that if she were to leave the cherries on the ground, they must be buried. Nope, it was either I do it or no one will do it at all. That family of mice ultimately cost me over $300 to rid and it will potentially cost me more in 2025 since I now have to buy box traps and bait, which cost a lot less than hiring a pest control service.

I have a feeling I will be having earwig problem in 2025 since this winter is so far turning out to be another warm one, which means it’s not cold enough to kill any hibernating earwig eggs beneath leaves. Thankfully, I still have the products I used in 2024 to control the problem.

I don’t know whether it’s my area but grasshoppers were everywhere starting in August. They were everywhere and occasionally chewed holes in my peppers and beans. I couldn’t find much solution to deal with them though but overall, they were as much as pests as earwigs and mice.