It’s finally here! After months of tilling, planting, transplanting, weeding, watering, and caring for our plants, the fruits of our labor are finally ripe and ready to pick!
There is no better feeling as a gardener than walking outside and picking a perfectly red tomato to bring inside and share with your family. All of those evenings spent watering, pulling weeds, checking plants, and wondering whether everything is actually going to grow finally start to feel worth it when you walk back into the house with a tote full of food that you grew yourself.
This is only my second year growing my own garden, and with the help of my beautiful wife, we are bringing in totes of fresh food each and every week. Potatoes, corn, jalapeños, cayenne peppers, bell peppers, and tomatoes are all making their way inside for us and our family to enjoy.
And we aren’t done yet!
What We Picked From Our First Garden Harvest
There is something different about eating food that you just picked out of your own backyard. You spend months watching these plants grow from seeds and then one day you’re standing in the garden deciding what you’re going to make for dinner based on what is ready to pick.
That’s hard to beat!
Some crops have surprised me more than others this year. We’ve had fresh corn, peppers, tomatoes, and plenty of other vegetables coming in, but my favorite thing to grow so far this year has been, by far, our Yukon Gold potatoes.
I had never grown potatoes before, but if there is one thing I can tell you, it’s that there will never be another year when I don’t grow potatoes!
I Will Never Have a Garden Without Potatoes Again
There is something incredibly satisfying about growing potatoes because you really don’t know exactly what you’ve got until you start digging.
With tomatoes and peppers, you get to watch the fruit develop on the plant. Potatoes are completely different. You know the plants have been growing all summer, but the real harvest is hidden underneath the soil.
Pulling that first plant and digging through the dirt to find those little golden potatoes felt like digging for treasure. Every time you think you’ve found them all, you move another handful of dirt and find another potato hiding underneath.
Growing them also made me appreciate just how simple some of the best garden foods can be. Fresh Yukon Gold potatoes don’t need much. A little butter, salt, and pepper is enough to make something that we grew ourselves feel like one of the best things on the dinner table.
Next year, potatoes will absolutely be going back into the garden—and I might have to give them a little more room!
What I Learned from Last Year’s Garden
My garden has gotten so much better since last year, too.
Last year, I grew a lot of different vegetables and had about double the number of rows packed into the same amount of space. At planting time, it seemed like a great idea. More rows meant more vegetables, right?
Well, technically, yes. But it also made it incredibly difficult to get into the garden and maintain everything.
One of the biggest lessons I learned this year was that sometimes less is more.
Giving everything a little more room has made it easier to walk through the garden, pull weeds, water, harvest, and just enjoy being out there. Instead of trying to grow absolutely everything I could fit into the ground, I focused more on crops that we knew our family would actually be excited to eat.
That has made the harvest even more rewarding.
When you bring a basket of vegetables into the house and everyone is excited about what you grew, it adds another level to that feeling of accomplishment.
Our First Garden Harvest Isn’t The Last
Even with totes of vegetables coming inside, we still have crops growing toward their first harvest.
We’ve got a huge pumpkin growing along with other gourds that we’re hoping to use for fall decorations. Watching those develop has been another fun part of the garden because they almost feel like the transition from our summer garden into fall.
I’ve also been thinking about keeping the garden going even longer this year with a late-season garden.
I’ve already started cabbage, broccoli, collard greens, beets, and lettuce indoors that I hope to transplant into the garden in about a month.
The hard part is going to be making room for them!
If my current crops are still producing, I’ll have to make the difficult decision of when it is finally time to pull some of them. It’s hard to take out a healthy plant that’s still giving you food, especially after spending an entire summer caring for it.
But that’s part of gardening, too. One season starts winding down while the next one is getting ready to begin.
If everything works out, I’m hoping we can keep harvesting well into the cooler weather before the ground eventually freezes here in Central Ohio.
Our First Garden Harvest Led Me to Another New Hobby
One thing I didn’t expect from the garden this year was for it to give me the motivation to finally start another hobby I’ve wanted to try for a long time: woodworking!
The wooden garden harvesting tote pictured with our vegetables was actually built by me using one 1x12x8-foot pine board and a 1-inch dowel rod.
You can find my Garden Harvesting Tote post here: [Garden Harvesting Tote Build Plans].
It was a great first project, and my wife helped me finish it. There is something really satisfying about carrying vegetables that you grew yourself in a tote that you also built yourself.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not.
I messed up in a few places, but like my wife says, “that’s just character.”
And I think she’s right.
Every little mistake reminds me that I actually made it instead of buying it from a store. That project definitely gave me the woodworking bug, and now I can’t wait to tackle more projects in the near future.
Growing More Than Just Vegetables
That’s probably my favorite part about this gardening season.
Of course, we’re growing food, but it feels like we’re getting a lot more out of the garden than tomatoes and potatoes.
We’re learning what works and what doesn’t, spending time outside together, and finding new ways to use the food we grow. I’m learning new skills and even discovering other hobbies because of it.
Last year’s garden taught me plenty of lessons that made this year’s garden better, and I’m sure this year’s garden will give me plenty of ideas for next year.
That’s part of the fun.
I don’t think you ever completely figure gardening out. Every year is a little different, and every season gives you another chance to try something new.
Here’s to the Rest of Harvest Season
This has already been such a fun gardening season, and we’re not finished yet.
There are still tomatoes to ripen, peppers to pick, pumpkins to grow, and hopefully an entire fall garden waiting for its turn.
Eventually, I’ll have to start pulling some of these plants to make room for the next round, and I’m not sure I’m quite ready to do that yet. After spending months watching them grow, it’s surprisingly hard to decide when their season is over.
For now, though, I’m going to enjoy every tote we carry into the house.
Harvest season is finally here, and after all the work it took to get here, I’m going to enjoy every bit of it.
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