HiveGarden

Big House - Tiny Garden, in Upstate New York State, USA

Some folks plan their gardens with extreme care. They record copious notes about even the tiniest of garden events, every day of the year. They test their soils and amend as necessary to suit the plants they intend to plant here or there. They have lots of compost, mulch, soil and the like delivered well ahead of time. You get the idea.

I am not one of those folks.

_{red onions on their way}

I go out to my garden to play.

I take no notes at all. I make only cursory plans ahead of time, and these often change on a whim-du-jour. I then lose the plans so I have no idea what I have planted and where. I figure I’ll know what is where when it pokes its nose out of the ground. Now and then I go online to find out important info. This year’s search included (and may have been limited to) finding out what plants like to be next to onions. Turns out, not very many. This complicates my garden layout because I plant a lot of onions. Yellow, white, red, garlic and shallots this year.

Why so many onions you might ask.

My goal is to be able to sustain myself all year round, not just during the growing season. The trick to this for me has been to grow foods that I find myself buying often, and onions is one of those. Sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbage, carrots and winter squash are a few others. Then I had to figure out how to store them for the winter. I did very well this past year! In fact, I still have one shallot, oodles of garlic, and a few servings of sweet potatoes. I finished off my potatoes, parsnips and cabbage sometime in April. I am coming to the end of my frozen stash, but still have green beans, ratatouille, and loads of frozen fruits for muffins.

And

Here is my last onion!

You might be thinking that I have acres and acres to grow this stuff on. Surprise! Here is where all that magic happens:

That’s right. If I can do it, you can too. Enough said.

This spring’s big surprise is a rutabaga, a yellow turnip to some of you. I didn’t manage to get all of my fall crops harvested before the ground froze solid last fall. This rutabaga managed not only to survive the winter, but also now looks like it will be the largest one I have ever harvested (I tried to scrape some of the soil away so that you could see the developing root). I’ll plant them again kinda late this fall, and simply plan on harvesting them the following spring, which, if this year is anything like the last, would be right about the time I run out of the previous season’s root veggies.

This is my entry to Hive Garden Community's for May 2026. But wait! The challenge has not been posted! Which makes this a garden post for just because.

images are all mine

Comments · 10

@sunscape(75)· 103d
You and I both have limited growing space. We do manage to get a large harvest to help sustain us until the following growing season. I put in 150 onions this year, the most ever. I hope they do well, since I buy them weekly. I did the red onions, too. Happy gardening.
@deirdyweirdy(72)· 110d
Of course you're a fellow onion eater. I might have known. I love them and thankfully have great success growing them.

I do marvel at how you get so much from so little space.
@amaterasusolar(65)· 111d
Well, I do ponder how I could do it, bone spurs in My thumbs and all (even tying hurts, but I do it anyway)... Being as I am a targeted, elderly, disabled, denied assistance, lost everything, destitute, and homeless lady, sheltering on a friend's floor and using His web on My 15+ year old laptop, not sure how I could do to make this happen for Me.

But oh, if I could!!!
@beelzebubba(77)· 112d
I started doing the raised platforms for produce gardens as well about 10 years ago. I don't really remember how that trend got started but it really does make a lot of sense and one added benefit is that it is a bit higher up off the ground and does wonders for my back.

Then I had to figure out how to store them for the winter.

What did you figure out? care to tell?
@litguru(74)· 112d
A spontaneous garden. I like it. It looks like the strategy works because that's one massive rutabaga.
@amazingdrinks(70)· 112d
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@goldenoakfarm(77)· 112d
With a small garden, it would not be a problem to lose the plan. But with the big ones I have and the many varieties I grow, plus trying to rotate to keep pests and diseases at bay, I must have a reliable plan.

You do really well with your small ones, it's really impressive! Go rutabaga! I had 1 kale survive this winter in the Big garden.
@scribblingramma(70)· 113d
I am always impressed by the amount of produce you obtain from such a small space. Even with a huge garden, I've never been able to grow enough of everything we like to eat in order to last an entire year. Especially onions; they don't do well for me. We've had some good potato years, some lousy years. The winter squash rarely last beyond March in our above-ground root cellar. How do you store your carrots? That's another we've always struggled with. One year I tried canning them, but they were big enough to need to be peeled, and boy! did that ever hurt my arthritic thumbs! There has to be a better way.
@riverflows(82)· 113d
I know I didn't post the challenge. Truth be told, I just couldn't be bothered. I don't know what else to say about that. I can try to promise to remember next month. Thanks for noticing. And thanks for posting.

I think you're more my style of gardening. Haphazard but it works alright. I'm shit at growing onions though. Spring onions, no problem. My swedes got decimated by cabbage moth (rutabaga) - devastated. I did get a PH tester to figure out wtf is wrong with my lemon tree. I miss my lemon and lime at the old place.

Thanks for your motivating post. I like you have lawn between the beds for the insects and bugs. We get obsessed with covering paths.
@qurator(81)· 113d
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