Success stories: A local gardener reflects on what did well this summer

MOSES LAKE — There may not be a more joyous time than right now for gardeners, reaping the benefits of their garden’s harvest as summer turns to fall.

Lacey Jensen and her husband, Darrel Jensen, have grown a sizable garden in their backyard in Moses Lake for years. Lacey Jensen reflected on this year’s harvest, what did well and new things she tried out for the first time this growing season.

Jensen said they grow just about anything they can in their garden.

“This year, we did some corn, sunflowers, tomatoes, lots of different peppers, squash, zucchini,” Jensen said. “I’ve got melons, cantaloupes, grape vines, a blackberry bush and a peach tree we’ve never had luck with.”

Jensen said recently they have too many vegetables coming up to know what to do with, packing boxes full of produce to give to neighbors or bring to the office for co-workers to grab from. She said she was pulling out tomatoes, peppers, squash and zucchini pretty much daily, with a good-size basket of each every three or four days.

Even after taking a load of squash and zucchini to her co-workers, Jensen said her plants were reloaded with more to pick.

Jensen said all of her tomatoes did really well this year, with a wide variety sprouting up in her garden. This was her first year growing tomatillos, but she said the green tomatoes did really well and are still producing.

“The plants looked kind of sad during the heat wave, but they didn’t stop and now they’re loaded,” Jensen said. “They turned into giant bushes and I hacked them all down a few weeks ago and they’re still crazy.”

While many gardeners lost a good portion of their garden to the absurd heat wave in June, Jensen said her husband was out watering their plants constantly, going out in the evening before bed and back out at the crack of dawn.

She said that crazy dedication paid off. Japanese eggplant, zucchini and squash have all done well this year, too, Jensen said. She said she only grew one plant of zucchini and squash, but has seen both grow to huge sizes this summer.

The sunflowers were all volunteer starts leftover from last growing season, she said. Despite starting on their own, she said they’ve done really well despite the incessant heat. Jensen said they never plan to have stuff come back each year, as they try to reorganize the garden each spring.

While the harvest time has passed for strawberries, which typically come up in spring and early summer, Jensen said she’s actually still got a few plants hanging on and putting out berries every few days.

“They don’t normally do that,” Jensen said. “In the spring, my daughter normally comes out and picks her own bowl every morning and that’s her breakfast in the spring when they’re growing.”

Pepper plants, including bell peppers, jalapeños and banana peppers, have all done surprisingly well this summer, Jensen said. She said this is probably the best year they’ve had with peppers and wasn’t sure if it was due to the black plastic she and her husband laid out under rows this year to keep weeds minimized.

“We did rows and covered our mounded rows in plastic and we didn’t put plastic everywhere, just over the rows,” Jensen said. “It seems to help a lot, there’s still weeds, but it was a lot more manageable.”

While the plastic covering helped to keep weeds at bay a bit, Jensen said she thinks the plastic may have kept her carrots from sprouting this year. She said carrots are typically harvested around this time, but she’s concerned they may not have gotten enough sunlight through the plastic covering.

While the corn did well this summer, Jensen said birds got to most of it before she got a chance to harvest. Fortunately, she said they typically leave the stalks around anyway to use as decoration in the fall and Halloween.

Having a bounty of produce at the end of the growing season is a great feeling to have, she said.

“It feels really good being able to take a box of vegetables to work and let people just take them or give it to your neighbor when you know they didn’t grow anything this year and have four kids,” Jensen said.

Knowing where her food is coming from is a nice bonus to have. Jensen had a baby in December and said she’s been able to make baby food for her newborn.

Jensen said she had to give her husband credit for helping start the garden in the spring around Mother’s Day while she was busy in the house with her newborn. In their first year at their home, Jensen said their garden was about three times the size of the one this summer.

But, she said it was overwhelming and just too much to take care of. When the garden is a more manageable size, she said it stays enjoyable until the cold comes around.

“We got an abundance of vegetables out of it, but it’s also an abundance of weeds and work,” Jensen said. “You’re out there every day and when it’s like that, you give up on it about this time of year.”