(DF) SALVAGING THE GARDEN

Back in early spring, I tilled up the garden added compost and tilled again.  It looked great!  I then planted potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, peas and green beans, all in their appropriate time.  Other wonderful veggies were to be planted very soon, as the early root crops began to grow. 

All was well and things were growing nicely, including weeds and grass (as always).  The rows had been tilled and weeded once, and almost ready for the next round, as new rows were laid off to be planted.  Sounds great and productive, doesn't it?  But not so fast!!!

This is about the time it started raining.  It rained, and rained, and rained yet more.  Soon, my lovely garden was standing in water, and remained so for some time.  During this time of standing in water, grass and weeds grew quite well.  By the time the soil was dry enough to walk across, grass was chest high and the green beans were ready to pick (actually, many had gone past their prime and rotted).

Between the rain, work, taking care of animals, trying to get Anna moved and dealing with some health issues (both mine and Anna's), there just wasn't time or energy to get the weeds out and start over.  All that was harvested was a small mess of peas and a couple of mediocre pickings of green beans.

!Now, fast forward to autumn !

A couple of weeks ago, with thoughts of removing the grass and weeds from the garden, I waded through the tangled mess a bit just to see if it would be better to cut it all down first or just wait until it died and burn it.  To my surprise, I found potato plants rising up among the tall grass,  Very nice potato plants, in fact.  With that in mind, I vowed to wait until I had a chance to dig a bit, hoping that there were actually potatoes on the other end of those plants.

Yesterday, 17 October, I took a little time to dig.  YES there are potatoes on the other end.  It is not a record crop of record size potatoes, but there are potatoes.  Now I have my work cut out for me.  It will be difficult working among the grass, or cutting the grass first (that decision is yet to be made), but it will certainly be worth the effort.
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Now there is the question of carrots and such.  They will be a bit harder to locate but I must look.   It would be so nice to have homegrown carrots and potatoes from our garden in the stew.  Wish me luck, and if your garden was also taken over, you might want to check before you till.