The 2020 Season

The year 2020; a year that seemed to catch us all by surprise. It certainly hasn't turned out like most, or all, of us had envisioned. 2020 has caused many people heartache, sadness, and/or frustration.

As for me, 2020 has signaled a shift in my focus from "hobbies" to life necessities. Mainly meaning, my time and attention has been focused on my schooling to finish my last year of my Master's program. That being said, even though most of my time has been spent away from the garden, I was still able to sneak a few seeds in the ground to fulfill the relentless desire to watch things grow. Since I haven't seemed to have the time to write much in the past few months, I wanted to give an update on how things went this summer.

I knew going into this year I would have less time than I did last year to work in the garden due to an increased load from school-related projects. Due to that fact, I wanted to plant more "non-perishable" crops, or those that require less maintenance throughout the growing season. This was also the first year I was able to use the tractor and new planter to save my back and knees during planting. As always, I had a blast and I'm sure anyone who saw me on the tractor thought Oliver Wendell Douglas had gotten younger and was at it again.

My main crop was sunflowers with hopes of marketing them to local florists as well as trying my hand at creating a few arrangements. I would like to thank every one who purchased a bouquet from me. My growing skills may slightly outweigh my bouquet arranging skills, but I enjoyed putting them together nonetheless.

The culprit for my lack of time in my "play" garden is my school research plots. For my thesis research, I am observing physical and chemical changes in soil and and how it affects green bean and okra plants. At the beginning of the season, I was on track to have around 1,000 plants to take care of until Mother Nature had other plans. A wet spring that led into a dry summer created an abundance of weed competition that resulted in the failure of some plots. Another difficulty I faced was having critters help themselves to the buffet of plants that they must have missed last year. Several more plots were demolished due to deer browse, even after measures to dissuade the feast were in place. Nevertheless, some of my bean plants still produced enough to satisfy my research needs as well as provide my parents with enough beans to enjoy three times a day!

As this growing season comes to an end, all of my time will be devoted to the finalization of my thesis project and I hope to graduate in May with a Master's degree in Plant Science. My mind is already wandering with plans of future gardens, but as this chapter comes to a close, another must open resulting in an unclear picture of what the future has to hold. I do know that wherever I will be, I will be growing something and it will be growing me.