Enjoying fresh vegetables from a garden is a highlight of my summertime. Living in northern Minnesota, our growing season is on the shorter side, so we all enjoy it while we can. One of my most vivid childhood memories is walking to my grandparents’ house to visit, Grandpa handing out metal Folgers coffee cans with turpentine in the bottom and telling us to pick 20 potato bugs each, then we could eat whatever we wanted from the garden. I always went straight for the carrots and onions – the smell of garden carrots fresh from the dirt, rinsed by a hose, then the satisfying crunch – what a snack! 

As an adult I have dabbled off and on with gardening in different forms…none of which were successful. while living in our first house in town I tried some planters with tomatoes, lettuce, and onions. I tried a “gardening with toddlers” pallet garden idea from Pinterest; oh, boy, did that not work. Nothing grew and that pallet sat on our deck, full of dirt, for the next two years. I decided to give up after that; I felt that I didn’t have the time or money to put into a decent, productive garden while working and raising our three young kids.  

Lucky for me, a retired couple moved in across the street who loved to garden – and share! Our kids would go across the street to visit them often, and we would always end up chatting. They asked if we had any interest in their excess veggies since they were growing way more than they could eat. Of course, I said I would take anything they wouldn’t use, and bags of fresh produce would show up on our fence post a couple times a week. This is when I started to learn how to preserve and use different types of produce: squash, zucchini, and tomatoes, mostly.  

Fast forward a few years, and here we are, living on an old farm with 40 acres of land to use however we see fit. I knew I wanted a garden, but I wasn’t sure where or how to start planning. I started hitting Pinterest hard and following Zone 3 gardeners on Instagram. My husband and I studied the property a bit and could see where there must have been gardens in the past. I consulted my mom’s husband, who is a pretty prolific gardener. We picked a spot, and I planned to have a few raised garden beds to start with so as not to get overwhelmed. About a week later, I came home to find my husband with a new tiller attachment for his tractor and a HUGE in-ground garden tilled up (at least it was in the right spot!). My plans went out the window, and I was looking at a large garden to prepare and plant…and we were leaving on vacation out of state in less than two weeks.  

Here is where the mistakes and bumbling began. My husband was very insistent that we get everything planted before leaving on vacation – the snow had just finally melted, and the frost seemed to be done for the spring. I didn’t really want to rush that much but decided to just go with it. Mistake #1: Not planning a specific layout ahead of time. With a garden that big, having a vague planting plan didn’t work out so well. I had to make adjustments on the fly, which caused a bit of chaos and forgetting what I planted where. Mistake #2: This was actually the first mistake, it just wasn’t realized right away – just tilling up a grassy area without doing any other prep, weed killing, fertilizing, or soil amendment was not a good choice. By the time we returned home from vacation, the weeds had taken over and it was difficult to discern what we planted and what was invasive. Mistake #3: I let myself get so overwhelmed by the whole situation and amount of work that needed to be put into the garden that I just didn’t really do anything. I eventually bought a weed rake and put down some weed barrier fabric and cardboard, but it really was a losing battle at that point. I waited much too long to start dealing with the issue. It was a jungle out there! 

All of that being said, we were able to get a decent harvest from the garden. I had a raised bed of herbs that did well, a bed with strawberries that my toddler ate faster than I could pick, a decent amount of snap peas and green beans, and even a couple of bell peppers. In the main, big garden, our corn grew way better than I expected, I was able to munch on cherry tomatoes fresh and also sun-dried a jar, I froze about a dozen cups of carrots even after picking them as needed throughout the end of summer, and we are still eating potatoes picked in September. We had a few pumpkins, but they didn’t get big enough to do anything with. None of the melons or cucumbers grew. No other berries even germinated. We moved three rhubarb plants that were in random places on the property to the garden edge – that is a plant that just keeps giving up here.  

By fall time, I was very surprised and quite pleased at the amount of produce we were able to harvest from that mess of a garden. It also drove me to do even more research and planning for this coming season in hopes of an even more abundant harvest. I hope this can be encouraging to anyone just starting out their gardening adventure, or maybe has hit some bumps along the way – just keep going, do what you can, and learn from what goes wrong for the next growing season.