Gardening in a busy family, from the child's perspective

Waking up, walking out, and filling a basket full of homegrown food is rewarding, however gardening is often times romanticized by instagram. Summer days are long, but the growing season is often times competes with lake days, summer hikes, and bbq's. Having a great plan, can help anyone have a successful and low-stress summer garden. 

I don't claim to be a professional, yet even prolific food gardener. I do have a few tips that we have collected over decades of gardening fails and THOUSANDS of dead plants. 

Thornless Raspberries - The King of Short Season Fruit

If you grow one thing, this is it. In a highly opinionated family, it's the one thing all of us enjoy eating. In the peak of summer we harvest and consume so many raspberries. About 15 years ago, my dad had a patient who gifted us about 20 canes, and it's been game over since then. They thrive in our climate, are extremely low maintenance, and as strange as it sounds, in peak raspberry season, it's something we do with our friends. 

The strain we grow and cultivate winter very easily here, and have flourished for us. In the spring, once the snow is gone and the plants are starting to have some leaves on the stems, I spend a weekend straightening the hedge. I dig up all of the extra plants and usually end up giving away 100 to 250 plants every spring. They bear the majority of their fruit on the second year, so I transplant a few of the seedlings into the hedge for the future years. One of my friends last year harvested about 25 berries off of each of their first year canes I sent her home with. 

After growing season is finished up in the fall, we spend a weekend to chop the canes down to about 12-18" from the ground, and scatter some straw over the bare soil to set the berries to sleep and prevent weeds. We do have a simple clothesline-style trellis to help support the canes as they easily get very tall in good condition. The only drawback is that especially, since they're thornless, they need a fence to keep the deer out. I recommend watering 3-4 times a week the first year, but now that ours are established, we water them once or twice a week depending on the season. 

It's a great activity we still do with our friends, and now do with their kids. Whether I'm catching up with college friends, or meeting the kids of my childhood friends, everyone can come to the raspberry patch and pick. Since berries grow up and down the canes and theres no thorns, I love when the kids are here to grab all the berries I didn't see. Additionally, all the berries you miss, say you're on vacation, they simply mature and multiply. 

Yes, fencing them is a commitment, but we've never looked back. The fence doesn't have to be industrial as round-pen panels. We sound some affordably it keeps the deer out, and doubles as a climbing toy when the little kids eat their fill of berries. 

Our family has gone so raspberry crazy we have a hedge thats roughly 25 feet long, and as you can see, grow abundantly. We harvest at least 2 large bowls everyday, and most never make it to the kitchen. They definitely are our berry of choice when baking in the summer, and we make seedless jam with a simple sieve. 

If you commit to a fenced area, these are my top must-have. 

Lavender - Deer Proof, Periennal Visiual Interest

We're far too busy to spend the hours of a standard gardener. But we struck gold with lavender. Lavender is low maintenance, beautiful, hardy, fragrant, pollinator friendly, and have survived the deer. This bed was the first (and only) family gardening project we took on. About 20 years ago, we dug up the bed, laid down weed mat, and planted about 20 years ago. We cut it back in the fall... or the spring when the fall gets busy. We'll hit it with some water in the summer when it's smoky and hot, but it thrives on our laissez-faire gardening style. 

We use it as a backdrop for nearly every family photo, cut and dry the flowers when we remember, or sit out there to read. They are quite humble the first year, but have really been an easy show stopper with some time. 

A Few Other Tid-Bits

I've spend my college summers as the head flower and residential landscaper at Rebecca Farm. Having any resource at my finger tips truly spoiled me. Finding a balance between feeling like a gardener while having something I can leave for a weekend adventure, has been challenging. Especially as we have deer pressure, and a really short growing season without a greenhouse. 

To me, a large garden has always been daunting, but I really do enjoy spending 30 min in the morning or evening watering the plants. In the spring of 2020, I built this simple 4' x 8' raised bed with scrap materials around the house with a cage. 

I've found it really enjoyable to bring gardening off the ground, and under full protection from deer and birds. Lilly and I planted six strawberry plants in the top, and plant anything and everything else in with them. 

The straw berries have taken off like wildfire. I feel we have to hack back the plants time and time again. They taste amazing, but take up quite a bit of space for the yield (especially when compared to the thornless raspberries). 

In our raised bed, we usually will plant some onions, lettuce, or spinach, that we started inside. Alternatively, we have directly sown snap peas, and radishes for some quick and easy wins. I find it easiest to manage that size of raised bed. It's very little weeding, and watering. 

I'm kind of surprised I don't have pictures of them, but we also grow herbs and hot peppers in pots. We usually go to the nurseries and pick up started basil, jalapeños, and other little things we cook with or want to try. The pots are next to a sliding glass door so we can bring them in if there's an unforeseen cold snap. We tend to splurge and invest in lightweight, heavy duty plastic pots. However, most that are sold commercially don't have adequate drainage. We combat that by simply drilling extra holes before potting them up. 

As kids, it was fun because our parents each gave us a single pot and we could grow whatever we wanted. It was their attempt to reduce the absolute disaster of children loose in a garden. 

Lilly and I have really opted for growing quick and short-season crops. Anything to get a quick win in the garden. Our dad has planted a small orchard as his midlife crisis was buying fruit trees. So we really use the other little growing wins to ease the frustrations of fruit tree growing. 

We've found the easiest, no mess up garden veggies are radish, lettuce, and arugula. I'm not sure if any of this is use-able, yet alone practical. However this is what we have found to work here for us.