Looking Back on our 2023 Journey

2023, our first year pursuing a more self-sufficient lifestyle. A year full of successes and failures and lots of learning and growing. We started small as to not overwhelm ourselves or our finances. For the growing season we had an indoor green house for seed starts, tilled a small strip in the sunniest part of our yard for sunflowers, built two 8×4 raised beds for square-foot gardening, and had an existing strawberry patch.

Our sunflowers had a rocky start. Since they were planted in the yard and there was no fencing in the area they kept being taken out by rabbits and we had to replant them many times. We purchased some covers that could be placed over top of them and staked down to still allow sunlight to get to them but keep them protected until they were big enough to be less vulnerable and then they were able to flourish. The bees and other insects loved them, as did the Golden Finches (can you spot the finch?). We left the seeds to the birds and just enjoyed the beauty they added to our property.

In the first bed we grew onions, and cabbage in the front half, and tomatoes, basil, peppers, and pickling cucumbers in the back half. The onions turned out small but they were delicious, so I call that a success. Two of the cabbages came out great but the other two were lost to the cabbage worm so that was a failure. I attempted to use fermentation to make sauerkraut with the cabbage but did not get the salt ratio right so it came out overly salty which was a fail, but lesson learned, next time I will purchase a kitchen scale and weigh the cabbage to get the ratio right. The tomatoes went crazy and pretty well overtook, but luckily the cabbage and most of the onions were already harvested by then. The peppers didn’t do well because the tomatoes shaded them out unfortunately. The pickling cucumbers did moderately well, and we were able to get one jar of pickles which were delicious (I used the vinegar pickling method and kept them in the refrigerator).

In the second garden bed we grew carrots, lettuce, summer squash, zucchini, slicing cucumbers, and corn. The carrots did pretty well. We got a few good squash, zucchini and cucumbers so they did okay. Two of the lettuce bolted early but the rest did well, I let the bolted lettuce flower and was able to save seeds from those and then pulled them out and planted more lettuce so I would still call that a success, though in the future I may use a shade cloth to try and prevent them from bolting so early. The corn failed completely, the garden beds only just fall in to the “full sun” category at 6 hours of sun which just was not enough for the corn to flourish, if we plant corn again we will have to do it around where we planted our sunflowers.

We bought a compost bin so we could compost and keep it covered as to not cause issues with our neighbors. Unfortunately this turned in to a fail as wasps moved in. I didn’t know the wasps were there until I was stung while putting scraps into the bin. By winter the wasps had moved out and hopefully they don’t come back. For now we have been keeping the lid off hoping that will make the bin less attractive to them.

Overall, even though we had a fair share of failures, I feel like the year was a success and I’m proud of the work my family did. Even our daughters got their hands dirty and helped harvest carrots and tomatoes, and of course their favorite the strawberries. I look forward to our 2024 garden.