[Jen Young] 2022-10-13T07:00:00Z
Comparing my garden to my neighbor’s… don’t do this!
This year’s gardening projects kinda felt like a failure. I looked two houses down and my friend’s sunflowers were taller than her house. Mine never grew. Her pepper plants were as wide and tall as I am tall, full of peppers. Ours are paltry in comparison. Her other gardening space was overflowing with luscious looking gourds, peas, greens… so many things.
And my yard… well my tomato project is relatively successful. I planted numerous varieties, and have about a dozen clear varieties growing. About half of which are tasty, produced well, didn’t get demolished by all the Japanese beetles, and weren’t overcome with blossom end rot or egregious cracking. One variety is incredibly prolific, Red Currant Cherry, but is so annoying to harvest because they’re all the size of peas. (If anyone wants some of this seed, tell me. Otherwise, it’s not getting saved.) My black cherry tomatoes were also prolific, taste better, and look better. Win.
I had about 5 corn plants out of… maybe 50? actually grow and produce something. Mind you, I’m not the kind of gardener who prepares the beds and does all the nice things for the plants. There’s a sunny, west hillside by my house that I planted a bunch of it in between old, patchy grass, ragweed, and pokeberry. Trimmed down around it a few times, but it had to get tall enough for me to see amidst its grassy friends before I hacked away. Of the five corn plants, maybe 2 got bigger than two feet tall. Sad. I look over at the corn my friend planted in the garden area next to my yard and hers are over 8ft tall. /sigh. Was feeling pretty meh about it all.
But then on the call yesterday when Joseph mentioned that it took him years to get viable seed from a project… well, dang. That was actually encouraging. My corn looks deformed and not very palatable, but it actually made seed in the first year with so few inputs - I soaked it, I planted it, I chopped down the weeds once or twice… a different neighbor “mowed it for me” when it was all first starting growing… - but otherwise, it struggled itself into existence.
My neighbor down the street? She piles on lots of compost, manure, tends it daily, traps bugs, fights off wood chucks, waters it regularly… lots of inputs. And she has a beautiful garden for it! But it’s comparing two completely different styles of gardening (and intentions for the result) and expecting the same outcome, which isn’t realistic and sets myself up for disappointment in the now. I have to remind myself I’m growing for the long term - years from now when I can plant seeds and let them do their thing without me fussing over them. I may not have reached my #lifegoal of producing 90% of my own produce this year, but there’s still a lot of life left to achieve that one. 
Our Bloody Butcher harvest…
Our bean harvest can feed the whole village all winter! 
Your little cutie cobs have gorgeous colors on them! Glass gems?