Sweet Potato Homestead

This post from August got caught in the gears.

With autumn weather looming ever closer, my garden in the woods is starting to wind down for the year. An August drought paired with night time temperatures hovering in the low 50s has made it abundantly clear that my grow season is over. Now is the best time to start reflecting on how the season went, what worked and didn’t, and what to consider for next year. 🍃

How it went🐝

Better than last year? Yes!
As with most things, it’s hard to tell if and when things have improved. Your brain can only keep track of so much and memories become more and more unreliable~ I know for sure my garden this year is better than last year thanks to all the notes I made in my garden journal, pictures I’ve taken and what I’ve been able to harvest from it.

Did I meet my goal of 100lbs of produce grown at home? Not even close!
My soil sucks. really and truly. Along side yards of annoyingly sharp, stubborn, and invasive gravel and boulders that laugh at our attempts to unearth them, the clay soil of Maine has made any gardening difficult and disappointing. My attempts to increase my soil health were not enough to get me to my 100lb food goal and it’s clear that I need to increase my efforts next year. What I was able to harvest included wild blackberries, pole beans that were either eaten by me or the dogs, and medicinal herbs and flowers.

Garden Losses👎

Let’s get the annoying stuff out of the way since it’s at the front of my mind~

As previously mentioned, my soil is not very supportive of most plants. My squash and luffas stood no chance to grow and start making fruit. My hot and sweet peppers never got taller than knee height and I harvested 1 entire tomato. My broccoli plants are just kale plants at this point and any chard or lettuce that wasn’t eaten by grasshoppers was roasted by an unforgiving drought. White, yellow and red clovers were very sparce and weren’t able to spread much or provide a lot of pollen for insects. Even my mint is doing poorly!

In late Spring, I was flush with baby potatoes and russets, all green and leafy and ready to make me tubers! Because my soil isn’t very tuber friendly at the moment, I wanted to try growing them in cages. These chicken wire and zip tie containers were easy to make and filled with lawn debris (pulled grasses, lamb’s quarter, etc.), sawdust from the woodshop and leaves and pine needles from the surrounding woods. I carefully planted the tubers between these layers and watered them religiously. A mix of hot and dry easily cooked them and what soil they had started with had washed out and all that remained were dead leaves and acorn saplings. All the potatoes died. Then I came into some Sweet Potato slips and tried again, this time trying to add more soil with what I had on hand. These are actually doing really well! Though the soil level has noticeably gone down, the leaves are dark green and it’s vining up the chicken wire cages, so I may get a harvest after all.

In the front yard, the teepee my husband mostly built was set to be a great climbable thing for my luffas and squash. Surrounded by forsythia, red raspberry and some sunchokes, chamomile and mint I planted, I was excited to make a fun little shady spot. Despite my efforts in gravel removal, these plants never stood a chance. I accidently weed-wacked one, I pulled another up as I was trying to make it grow up the teepee, and the dogs were indiscriminate in what they stepped on while trying to get chipmunks. Now at the end of August, there’s one plant that still trying and failing, a stunted sunchoke and rough grasses and perennial spinach taking the place over. I’m really thrilled with the teepee itself as it’s made the space more interesting but seeing it naked surrounded by dead grass is not inspiring.

Garden Wins👍

While I have my grievances, some great things did come out of the garden this year.

I am absolutely swimming in evening primrose, St Johns wort, comfrey, sweetfern, goldenrod, spearmint, red raspberry and other medicinal herbs. The abundance of medicinal plants has fleshed out my apothecary so much that I had to stop harvesting them. There’s still some I’m leaving to harvest sometime next month but for now I’m well stocked for winter.

My experiment in transplanting wild plants into the garden beds worked really well. There’s quite a few Allegheny blackberries along our driveway that get nice and leafy but aren’t getting enough sun to make a lot of fruit. I moved a plant into each bed and after a week of more sun and a watering schedule, their growth was vigorous. Most of the canes made flowers but few grew into dark berries. The ones that did were tart, seed heavy and few. My experiment worked though and got me very excited to do the same with blueberries and other plants i have my eye on. Along with the garden as a whole, some fertilizer next year should help the berry production~

This year I gave up and bought some plants I was having trouble starting myself and I’m really glad I did. These included: beach plum, flowering raspberry, sunchokes, rose, hibiscus, butterfly weed, echinacea and Mexican sunflower. While only the sunflower and hibiscus have flowered, the other plants seem to be happy and have grown a lot since planting. It’s also encouraging to see that some of the plants are unbothered by the clay and gravel and will probably get better once I sort out my soil fertility problem.

My comfrey plants are also the stars in my garden as they clearly do not pay the soil quality any mind and have grown lush. Next week, they’ll be chopped and dropped in the beds and help start my soil health maintenance for the fall. Along side that, a heavy sowing of oats and a green manure mix from Johnny’s, my soil can only get better.

Another big biomass creator is the sunchoke. While only one had sprouted at the beginning of summer, so many have come up since then and seem to get bigger by the day. I know they spread like crazy and can be overwhelming to some spaces, but this space is in need of biomass and compostable material. Plus, they’re edible so once I’m sick of them, they can be enjoyed for dinner~

Last year, my only flower sources were late season golden and silverrod plants, allelopathic weeds and the occasional evening primrose stalk that came up. This year, while not spectacular, was much better than last year and more came up that I was expecting. The star of the garden has been my black eyed susans. They seemed slow to start but started blooming midsummer and haven’t stopped since. I’m excited for these to spread as there’s a lot of room to grow and they’ll be another medicinal plant to add to the apothecary. Other flowers have included sweet williams, cosmos, amaranth (a surprise overwinter-er), morning glorys all stuffed into a pot and left to climb, evening primrose, cinquefoils, delicate bean flowers and the previously mentioned Mexican sunflower. Bees and other pollinators have been prolific and it has been a delight to watch them buzz around with dragonflies, crickets and hummingbirds.

Despite my soil woes, I tried some new ways to grow food and have been pretty happy with the results. To close out the rest of the growing season, I’m going to try and get my hands on some nutrients and biodiversity. Goat and worm poop to provide some broken down and available material, oats and rye for a before frost carpet of greens, and wood chips, perfect for paths and keeping what soil I have moist and loamy.

We’ll see where all these work gets me.