The 2022 Garden – Our 1st Year Having Raised Rows

The 2022 Garden was our first year using raised-row gardening. I wanted to share our growing plan including what I planted where and what we had good luck with. There is another post about the losses, so be sure to check out that link at the bottom of this post as well.

I won’t lie . . . the first few months of getting the garden converted wasn’t easy. There was a lot of pre-planning and physical labor that went into creating the conversion. However, the end project was just as beautiful and low maintenance as I had hoped!

If you want to see exactly how I went about converting our traditional in-ground garden into a raised-row garden, then check out my in-depth post here. I walk you through our whole process with lots of pictures included.

The 2022 Garden Plan

As with all gardens I attempt to do, I start off each year with a basic plan of attack. These initial plans tend to change as I go to plant, but it at least gives me a good starting place. I stuck to the plan, for the most part, this time.

Because of the raised rows, I now have ten growing rows that I can mess around with, as well as three 4×8′ raised beds.

Growing Rows

In the first Growing Row (GR), I planned on keeping my flowers. I usually have zinnias planted in this row and planned on doing the same this year as well. It’s also the row that contains my beloved windmill!

In GR 2, I had my zucchini as well as butternut squash. Both were new additions for me this year. My parents usually have plenty of zucchini that they share with me, but I decided I wanted to try growing it this year as well.

GR 3 and 4 featured two rows of green beans. I usually use Blue Lake varieties and have good luck with them. They always produce multiple harvests from just a few plants that give me plenty to eat fresh as well as put away for the winter.

GR 5-7 were tomatoes and peppers mostly. I tend to grow a few Roma tomatoes, a couple of cherry tomato plants, and then lots of slicing tomato varieties as well.

For peppers, I like nadapeno peppers (jalapenos without the heat), mini bell peppers, and then normal-sized green peppers. I attempted pepperoncini as well as tomatillos this year. I also put several marigold plants in between the tomatoes and peppers to help with pests.

GR 8 was reserved for cucumbers. I have three homemade trellises that my kids and I made a few years ago. We typically grow both pickling cucumbers as well as slicing cucumbers for salads and fresh eating.

Finally, GR 9 and 10 were for popcorn. I was able to get three rows in GR 9 and then four rows in my wider GR 10. Popcorn was a new venture for me and one I looked forward to.

Raised Beds

In the raised beds, the first one is my strawberry patch. It was new for 2022, so the harvest wasn’t massive.

The middle raised box had my fall-planted garlic as well as spring onion sets. The last bed was for my cold crops like lettuces, peas, bunching onions, radishes, and carrots. After those were done, I planted mini pumpkins in their place.

I also have three grow bags that I attempt to grow potatoes in. However, potatoes are one of my garden struggles for some reason!

Planting & Growing The 2022 Garden

I had a bunch of tomatoes, peppers, and squash plants that I had started as seeds indoors that we put into the garden. As for direct sowing, we got most of those in the ground on around May 17th (aside from my cold crops which were sown earlier).

I usually aim to get stuff in the ground after Mother’s Day since we are in Growing Zone 5. Our last spring frost is around the end of April, but we are usually safer with waiting until mid-May.

Everything looked good at first and was growing really well. However, there definitely were some issues that started to happen with a few of the crops. But let’s talk about the wins first.

The Wins

The wins. The reason why we garden right?

We had a wonderful green bean harvest this year. Even though we only had four rows of beans, they produced really well and gave us plenty to eat fresh while being able to also put away several jars for winter. We had multiple harvests throughout the summer.

Tomatoes also did great. The best producers were definitely the Romas. We planted a variety called San Marzano tomatoes this year, which are bigger Roma tomatoes and they did not disappoint! I had two plants and they gave us more than enough to can salsa, tomato sauce, marinara sauce, etc. We also liked to use the San Marzanos in salads since they didn’t have a ton of seeds and gel.

Another fun tomato variety we grew was Orange Hat. This is a miniature cherry tomato that is only supposed to get a foot or so tall. The tomatoes were a beautiful orange color and the flavor was delicious. While the plants didn’t grow a ton since they were so small, they were definitely worth it!

We had an ok harvest of popcorn. Most of the varieties did not get very large, but what did grow was delicious! There’s nothing quite like homegrown popcorn. The stuff from the store just doesn’t come even close in my opinion!

The garlic did well also. We planted both hardneck and softneck varieties this year, even though our zone is better with hardneck varieties. We were able to harvest the garlic scapes and they were delicious!

To Be Continued . . .

I was going to include the losses in this post as well as how I cleaned out the garden at the end of the growing season. However, this post is already long enough and I think the losses deserve their own post! (Unfortunately, I have a ton to talk about when it comes to the failures, lol.) So head over to “The 2022 Garden Failures and Losses” to read all about those!

I will also soon put out a separate post about how I clean out a garden at the end of the growing season, so be on the lookout for that post as well.

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!
– Chelsea

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