Better gardeners

I think I've been moaning enough about my poor poor garden. Endless rains and hot and dry weather  both sucks when you have clay as soil. This soil is blue clay, so you can't even make bricks out of it, bah.

But it's not all misery. I've been improving soil in my veggie plot for 7 or 8 years now, and I see so much changes! There's plenty of worms, weeds have changed from thistles to nettles and chickweed, and after even this summer of floods and drought my soil is still workable, I can dig it easily. Of course it would be much much better if I could use mulching to cover everything, but right now I can't get enough mulch to to that (a lot of little things like a new mower which shreddes grass into atoms so I can't use that anymore). 

Another thing is that water was an issue this summer. We have our own groud water well, and when groundwater levels are low,  we have only little water. And due to several little things, again, I didn't save water for watering (like breaking tap in my huge watertank, it's about 20 years old and the tap was plastic...).

Weather is something I can't change, but I can prepare for it. Next summer I will be better prepared, that's ok.

But. There are bunch of much better gardeners around. 

I was at 'Sumawalk and dug some potatoes from my parents potatofield. Their potatoes have grown nicely,  sandy soil that keeps moisture is ideal for potatoes. Well, it's ideal for everything but beets. But those cucumbers?

Our neighbour ( half a kilometer away from our house) was fetching his dinner ingredients from his garden/field and greeted us with "Would you like to have some cucumbers? I don't want to toss them to compost and I already have my share at my root cellar." It was very fortunate indeed that I had my potatoe bags with me. I picked 10kg of cucumbers- some of which were way too big - that was all I was able to carry home. I had those potatoes already...

I've made a test batch of relish, in next batch I need to reduce amount of sugar and use just a bit more vinegar.

Another walk in the woods. Yellowfoots are there. Mother Nature is so much better gardener. 

That's about it

Last night was 1,5C. Haven't checked pumpkins yet, but if they have survived this, next cold night will kill them. I tried to close polytunnel door, but zippers broke, or rather the plastic around zippers. I need to order another cover before spring. And I need to relocate anything worth saving from polytunnel before we'll have anothet cold night.

Gardening wasn't very productive this summer. Too hot, too dry and then too cold, whole August has been around or below 15C,  and nights have been cold. My damson was eaten by hare,  so I got like 5 fruits. Oh well, if hares were so hungry they needed my damson to survive, I let them eat it.

But I'm lucky my family will survive without my gardening skills 😁 It's just it would be nice to be able to feed my family myself, you know?