What we grew/Lessons Learned: Year in Review

The 2023 season was our best year yet in anticipating the needs of our garden helpers and the food charities we serve. In recent years, the food pantry that shares our parking lot (SBFP - LINK) has had the "high quality problem" (haha) of an amazing surplus of fruits and vegetables being donated from local gardeners in the peak of the harvest season (typically mid-August through early October). There have been weeks when it was hard to find room on the tables for our donations!

At the beginning of the 2023 season, we reviewed the patterns of previous years' donations and shifted our planting strategies accordingly. This post offers highlights of our learnings.

Our crops fall into two main groupings: the crops we grow abundantly enough to share with charities; and the crops we grow primarily for ourselves and the Gardens' supporters.

In 2023 we grew enough of the following summer crops to share with garden supporters and charities: lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, peppers, beets, garlic, kale, chard, collard greens and celery.  

All of these are the kinds of produce that are not typically donated in large quantities to the pantries by other gardeners. They are easy to grow, requiring minimal maintenance once they are established. They are also easy to harvest in large quantities (unlike, for example green beans, which are very labor-intensive to harvest).  (Salad-left is all from the gardens!)

In addition to these crops, there are some summer crops that we are only able to grow enough for our inner circle of participants/supporters. These include (but are not limited to): carrots, broccoli, potatoes and figs.

The Sharing Gardens also grows winter storage crops that can be distributed to our supporters and  food charities* through the fall and early winter (when other local gardeners have stopped donating). These crops we donate to charities include: cabbage*, beets*, celery*, winter squash*.

We typically grow enough of the following winter storage crops, just for our inner circle: lettuce, carrots, potatoes, dried beans, and dried corn and sorghum (for cereal and baking).

Though overall, we were very pleased with the quantities we grew of all our crops, here are a few specific notes we'll keep in mind for 2024.

A cornucopia of Sharing Gardens veggies!

Carrots and beets: Chris did a fantastic job of growing carrots and beets in succession (staggering the plantings so we almost always had some to harvest). We had enough surplus beets to share with the charities but since our sharegivers all love homegrown carrots, it's hard to grow enough to share beyond our inner circle of helpers/supporters. We'll continue to grow as many as we can but it's unlikely we'll ever have a significant surplus. (carrots (left) Imperator variety: To grow this long, they need very deep and loose soil. We grow them in our GH raised beds)

Our beets did phenomenally well this year! This variety is called "Detroit" and typically they have rather small 'greens' (not so in our case). Also, common wisdom says that you must direct sow beets where you want them to grow as they're not supposed to transplant well. We have disproven this 'common wisdom' for two summers in a row. The above beets were sown very closely together in raised, greenhouse beds and, when the greens were about 2" - 3" tall, we very carefully dug them up (being careful not to damage their tap roots). We replanted them 5-6" apart, covered them with a floating row cover (Remay) and kept them moist while they overcame transplant shock and, as you can see, they did very well! (395 pounds over the course of the whole season!)

There's just no comparison between store-bought and home-grown carrots! Our soil is highly mineralized from compost and wood-ash which makes for sweet, crisp (but not 'woody') carrots. Our share-givers and other supporters eat the carrots we grow as fast as we can grow them!

Cabbage: We had two really good green cabbage crops this year. Though cabbages averaged about 8-10 pounds (left), we had one beauty that grew to 13.5 pounds (below)! (That's the biggest one Chris has ever grown!). This fertility all came without using store-bought fertilizer or animal-based amendments (blood/bone meal etc). LINK: Making Your Own "Veganic" Potting Soil in Your Greenhouse Paths - Using Worms   We're sure, had we grown more cabbage and had a good way to store it that food charities would have been happy to distribute more of it for as long as we could have provided it. (Total pounds: green cabbage: 210 pounds, Red cabbage: 108)

Here's the queen cabbage from this year's harvests. She weighed 13.5 pounds!

I know...hard to believe, right?

This cabbage, cut up, served six families at the food pantry! (Thanks Darlene, for these wonderful pics!)

Potatoes: We had several bumper crops of potatoes.  Our big breakthrough with the potatoes was to grow some of them in the raised beds of our greenhouses. We've had problems in the past with our seed potatoes (saved from our fall harvests) breaking dormancy in January or February, when it's too early to safely plant them outside. Last winter, we had some extra space in the Sunship GH and so we planted them there. The potatoes did beautifully and we had many abundant and delicious harvests through the summer and fall (including the potatoes grown outside the greenhouses, we harvested over 400 pounds!).

I think this is the largest potato we've ever grown. I forget how much it weighed (and can't find my notes) but, wow, it was a biggie!

Other staple, storage crops we grew this year included dried blue and yellow corn (Hooker's Blue and Golden Bantam) and Kassaby sorghum.  We dry and grind these grains and use them for cereal and baking. We are now growing enough to share significant amounts with our share-givers too.  (LINKS: Grow Your Own 'Blue Corn', Grow your own Sorghum for grain and flour, ).

We grew a lot more winter-storage crops this year. Here we have Hooker's Blue and Golden Bantam corn. Both can be eaten fresh (as sweet corn), or dried and ground (we use it mainly in hot cereal). To dry, we peel the husks back and lay the cobs in the sun in our greenhouse. As the husks dry, they pulls moisture from the kernels. (Grow Your Own 'Blue Corn' )

Beans: We harvested over 50 pounds of Scarlet and Giant Greek White 'runner' beans which grow on teepees and trellises, and about 20 pounds of kidney beans which are a bush bean. We are now growing enough dried beans for all of Chris' and my personal use (we're vegetarians so that's a lot of beans!) and, for the past two years we have also grown enough dried beans to share a modest amount with our inner circle as well. Grow Your Own Protein - Scarlet Runner Beans

It's comforting to know that, with the low-tech methods we've developed, and by dedicating more of our fields to growing them, we could probably provide a significant amount of these grain and bean staples for the Garden's main participants.

Scarlet runner beans in their shells after harvest. 

Scarlet runner and Giant Greek white runner beans ready for storage. They always remind me of jewels!. Grow Your Own Protein - Scarlet Runner Beans

In 2023 we tried a new variety of winter squash (Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash) that has been very popular at pantries and among our garden helpers. It has a very creamy consistency and is mildly sweet.

This is a new variety of winter squash we grew this year: Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato squash. We only grew this variety as it's in the same family as other squash we love and we wanted to be sure the seed we saved is pure. (It is in the Pepo family which also includes Delicata, zucchini, crook neck and more...). We've saved enough seed to last us for many years and to share with other growers.

In this coming year, the only significant changes to growing the winter storage crops will be to increase the amount and variety of winter squash. 

Typically, we're able to store winter squash at least through till February. So far this year we've had enough to supply our supporters and one of the three food charities we serve (Of the 594 pounds we harvested, we have about 30 pounds still in storage). Next year, we'd love to grow enough winter squash to provide for the needs of our second food pantry and the soup kitchen we serve - at least through till February too. 

We are careful to isolate squash varieties that can cross so we can save pure seed. (Above: Sweet Meat squash and seeds being rinsed; to be dried and saved).

We also had a phenomenal year for fruit. Everyone did in our area. Our apple, pear, plum and fig trees, and grape vines all produced record amounts of fruit. Food pantries were inundated! Our trees were no exception and we had plenty of apples to share with our volunteers as well as enough for our use through the winter and to make apple/quince/pear sauce (49 quarts!). We also canned over 135 quarts of fruit and veggie juice and 36 quarts of stewed tomatoes.

These are some of the canned foods we prepared this past fall: veggie juice and canned, whole tomatoes.

Speaking of tomatoes...In previous years, we've grown way too many (over 200, one year - but averaging about 100 plants)! Since this is such a popular plant for home gardeners to grow, the food charities are typically inundated with donations starting in late summer. So this year we restrained ourselves to just 44 plants. This probably should have been enough except we had a condition called blossom end rot affect about a third of them, radically reducing their productivity and we barely had enough tomatoes to make our delicious canned veggie juice. In the coming year, we're going to try growing some outside our greenhouses (like we used to), try to be more consistent in watering the ones inside, and try pruning a little less radically and see if we can increase production again.

We also will grow fewer sweet peppers (and one or two more jalapenos). We grew 16 red and yellow sweet pepper plants this year and, though we were able to distribute all we grew, the final harvest (to beat the frost) was 90 pounds! That's a lot of peppers! In 2024, we'll grow more jalapenos since the one plant we had didn't seem to fill people's desire for spicy, hot peppers! The five poblano peppers we grew seemed to be just about right. (right: Pimento red  and Gatherer's Gold yellow sweet peppers)

It has been an excellent year overall!

We hope 2023 was  blessed for you and all the circles you touch (including the non-human ones!). May this coming year be one for all of us to embrace life-giving habits and generosity!  Llyn and Chris