Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Expectations and other random thoughts.

I have been woman down since Sunday with a nasty head cold. It has forced me to be in bed for the better part of the last two days. Drifting in an out of sleep, in between copious reading of books to the kids I have been thinking about some things.

Broad Beans

This year I had things so well planned and my expectations were waaaay up there w.r.t. how much yield I was going to get from my 5 basic vegetables I planted - corn, pumpkin, beans, tomatoes and potatoes. Well, our potatoes were eaten in the first 2 months, our corn has been a complete dissappointment, our beans did well but we didn't plant enough and our pumpkin plants were attacked by milddew, but we still got 4 stunners. Our tomatoes were hit with the December heat and red spider mite.

First Lemon of the season

There is the old adage about not counting your eggs before they hatch, and I am afraid I did just that. I could see my freezer filled to the bring with frozen beans, pumpkin and corn and a nice dark cool cupboard full of potatoes. But this was not to be.

Eggs 5 - 6 a day

For a few reasons, I have decided! Expectations...I will never be able to sustain our family on basics like potatoes purely due to space constraints. Not planting enough....I should have planted double the beans. Not planting earlier enough...mildew (and mites) seems to be a bigger problem later in summer. Not recording planting and harvesting dates....my corn could have been picked earlier but the cobs that I took off through estimating were either undeveloped or had already turned starchy. I did start off with recording how much of what and when it was planted but the busyness of my days caught up with me and I didn't continue.

Turnips needing to be thinned

Superman calls me the "eternal optimist" because while these thoughts are introspective I have throughoughly enjoyed my garden season this spring and summer and as the weather turns to welcome autumn I know that I have learnt a few more things that I haven't known before.

Sweet Potatoes

So onward I go...

1 comment:

Tanya Murray said...

What is it with broadbeans? Every year I ruminate that I haven't planted enough...and every year I fail to plant enough! You are very sensible resting in bed, you'll be better in no time.