HollyHedge Keeps Growing

We started this growing season with good planning and pretty good luck. The spring rains were plentiful, often teetering on excessive. Despite some loss to wetness, we still managed a good harvest.

The spring garden was planted with leeks, peas... turnips & cabbages... & fennel... all ending up in the kitchen & on plates. In addition, this year we also experimented with onion sets, spinach & arugula.

Crowns of asparagus planted 2 years prior, offered their first delicious spears in May (asparagus requires a year or two to get established before harvesting). Our summer plantings, however, encountered quite the set back. Although fending off the critters is an annual struggle, this year was a particularly disheartening one. Cat birds feasted on blueberries despite our netting. Groundhogs & rabbits devoured our peas despite our fences & row cover. Pumpkins, squash, beans, broccoli raab, broccoli & parsley fell victim. Even hot pepper plants felt the sharp tooth of the hungry rodent. This certainly reinforced the idea that a diverse garden improves the chances of a successful garden.
While blueberries were eaten, our raspberry crop was beautiful. Though we haven't a single pumpkin plant left, the tomatoes have once again yielded more than the chefs could imagine. Even the cucumbers managed to inundate out baskets for a few weeks. Garlic continues to prove to be unpalatable to our garden fauna. Many herbs also seem to harbor those essential oils that rabbits just don't care for. And as of now, we have a promising apple crop hanging in the orchard.
Much of our summer successes also heavily relied upon our watering system; the rains didn't seem to frequent us as much as they did in the spring. Saying it was dry is an understatement. Each year, we seek to manage & refine our watering system, striving for efficiency and resourcefulness. Negotiating an irrigation system is plenty of work, and involves maintaining a balance between what is coming out of the ground and what is going back into the ground.

Ben finds himself watering each bed as it is needed & having the sustainable resource at hand to do so. We like to keep in mind that, in a way, the water the garden demands is the same water that offers showers at the inn, washes dishes after a wedding, or simply quenches our thirst.
Though on hot dry days, dragging water lines around is nothing short of hard work, we rejoice in what the sun offers. This July, our solar panels have provided our biggest solar output to date & we've just harvested grapes that thrive under abundant sun.