Reflecting on My First Year Gardening: Lessons, Surprises, and a Whole Lot of Zucchini

Yesterday I decided to go outside and clean up my garden beds because it is already nearing mid-October and honestly I’m tired and ready to wrap up the season. As much as I would love to live in a state that has fewer winter months, I find myself looking forward to the excuse to throw in the towel at the end of the year and call it a day.

My First “Real” Year Gardening

Even though I’ve grown a few plants before, I’m calling this my first real year gardening. In the past, I always relied on plant starters and kept things minimal. This year, I planted entirely from seed, and it’s been such a rewarding experience watching everything grow from scratch.

I grew up around gardens—I remember grabbing sweet peas and radishes straight from the dirt as a kid. But back then, I didn’t fully appreciate the effort that went into maintaining a garden. So when we moved into our current home, I knew I wanted to build raised beds and create that experience for myself.

Planning (and Failing to Plan)

The Importance of a Garden Plan

Because I did my homework beforehand, I knew the importance of creating a plan—what to plant, where to plant it, what grows well together. I started off strong with a notebook, jotting down companion planting ideas and grouping strategies. But soon enough, I was dumping disorganized thoughts into my phone, and my note-taking kind of fizzled out.

Something I’ll need to improve on next year.

Companion Planting Wins

Despite the chaos, it was well worth taking the time to understand companion planting, and the time spent learning about this paid off. I didn’t use any sprays or pesticides in my garden this year, and yet, pests were minimal. Although my kale did show a few holes it was still edible. I think the plant groupings helped, and the marigolds I filled my garden beds with likely played a role too.

Though… note to self: marigolds are beautiful and helpful, but I’m thinking about planting them in nearby pots next year. They completely took over sections of my garden beds and shaded out some of my veggies preventing them from growing to full maturity.

Flower Power (and the Chaos That Comes With It)

Borage: Beautiful, Beneficial… and Huge

I tried growing borage for the first time this year after reading how great it is for pollinators.

Spoiler: it really is beneficial, almost too much. Bees were absolutely obsessed with it. However, there were a few lessons I’ve learned after growing it myself:

It gets massive – Way taller than I expected for my little 2’x5’ garden bed.
Strong root system – I had to pull mine out early in order to gain access to my cucumbers and other vegetables in the garden that I was unable to reach, and was amazed at how large the tap root was when attempting to pull it from the dirt.
Bee territory – Since I planted these flowers in front of my cucumbers, I was not brave enough to work around them in order to harvest my other plants. I’m working on this, but bees do terrify me a bit and I have yet to be stung.

On top of that, we had several windstorms that bent the tall borage plants right over. It wasn’t a pretty sight—especially since my beds are in the front yard and I try to keep a good aesthetic for my neighbors.

Borage’s Aftermath

Borage does produce cute little flower clusters, I soon learned that they can drop seeds like crazy. Apparently, borage can self-seed and are tolerant of colder zones all the way down to zone 2! So it’s safe to say that I’m a little anxious about what my garden will look like come next spring. Fingers crossed it’s not a jungle.

Garden Identification Issues

What’s a Weed, What’s a Plant?

One thing I really need to do better next year is to label my seeds. I grouped my seeds by companion planting but didn’t make any physical tags in the garden. I thought taking pictures of the seed packets in the general area I had planted them would be enough, but truthfully, it was not.

I referred to those photos constantly as things were starting to sprout, but I still ended up pulling out some of my flowers as well as some other lettuce plants, thinking they were weeds. Considering how large my flowers that I had not pulled grew, that may have been a blessing in disguise.

But next year, I will plan to tag everything so I can refer to my garden markers instead of trying to find the photos lost in my phone’s album that I took earlier that spring.

The Importance of Patience

I found myself too eager to keep my beds weed-free and pulled up some of the very plants I wanted. Lesson learned. Patience is key—I will try better next season.

Pest Problems and Protective Measures

Next spring when I begin planting in my gardens, I’m choosing to cover my beds with garden fabric right from the start. I used netting briefly this year in one of my beds, but a couple things I could benefit from if I cover them early would be:

Keeping the fallen seeds from trees from taking root, as I would get so many helicopter seeds covering my beds every time when a gust of wind would blow.
Repelling pests like deer, rabbits, and even the stray cat that I found walking through every single one of my beds as if they enjoyed leaving their little foot prints behind.

I can always remove the covers once the plants start to flower and need pollinators. By this time they will be actively growing and no longer competing as much with the weeds. At least I’d be able to tell them a part more easily.

Planting Strategy: Less Chaos, More Succession

This year, I wasn’t thinking of the big picture and I chose to plant all of my seeds in the garden at once and had not considered timing when the plants would be ready to harvest.

When everything matured at the same time, I will admit I was overwhelmed with the amount of produce and had a difficult time keeping up.

What I’ll Do Differently:

Succession plant to stagger my plants and seed even a week or two a part should allow me less produce all at once, giving me more time to enjoy it fresh from the garden.
Track seed-to-sprout timelines would allow me to understand how long it takes my plants to emerge in my own garden beds based on the amount of sun the beds receive in their location.
Only plant what I can realistically eat or store is incredibly important. I read about this all the time but never truly understood until I was facing the challenge myself at the realistic amount of produce a plant can provide you.

These lessons may sounds simple, but it can be so easy to get carried away when sowing seeds in the spring when you’ve been waiting all winter to get out and enjoy your hobby again.

Too Much of a Good Thing

As the header states, there is such a thing as having too much of a good thing. I had so much produce from my garden that it felt impossible to keep up. Although I did give some of it away to my family and neighbors, which did feel good to share, I also had to toss more than I’d like to admit.

If you’re new to gardening, plan ahead for how you’ll preserve your harvest. Whether it’s:

Canning (learn it before you need it!) I would love to learn the proper way of canning, but had not taken the time to learn this skill yet. By the time my gardens were filling up, I could only think of finding ways to make meals, or snack while it was still fresh.
Freezing will help preserve the life of your produce longer, but not everyone has the room available. Make sure if you know you want to freeze your harvest that you aren’t filling your freezer with other groceries.
Dehydrating or fermenting is another option if you think you would enjoy eating your foods this way.

Having an idea of how you plan to use your harvest ahead of time will hopefully help you face some of the obstacles that come with growing a garden. Such as, not waiting too long while zucchinis are piling up on your counter.

Zucchini Overload

I have a funny story for you which definitely pins me down as a beginner gardener… Even though I considered myself somewhat prepared, little did I know that zucchinis were one of those plants that experienced gardeners are fully aware of just how well they produce.

When I seeded these plants, I chose to place 2-3 seeds in a small grouping with the plan to thin them out once they reached a healthy size for me to choose which to keep. Well, I planted 3 groupings which resulted in 9 successful sprouted plants and I soon realized I didn’t have the heart to toss them and replanted them elsewhere.

Yeah… I made so many desserts with zucchini this year that I’m pretty sure I gained a few pounds. And don’t get me started on the cucumbers—I would dread walking by my garden knowing I needed to pull more off the vine that I was not ready for.

I’m not sure I can eat fridge pickles anymore as I’ve had my fair share. bNext year, I’ll have recipes ready before harvest day to keep things interesting.

Finding Small Joys

Even through the chaos, I found things I loved. This year was the first time I made homemade pasta sauce, using the Roma tomatoes from my garden. I learned how easy it is to freeze it in batches, and it felt good to preserve something I knew I grew and the money saved compared to buying jars of sauce at the store.

Final Thoughts: A Season of Growth

All in all, I couldn’t be happier with my first year of gardening. It taught me:

The value of planning and labeling
The importance of patience
How much joy (and frustration) a garden can bring

All in all, I could not be happier with my first year gardening. I learned how important it is to have a plan for all phases of gardening, and even though I feel I learned quite a bit this year, there is so much more garden knowledge I have yet to gain.

I hope that by sharing my first year gardening with you and the lessons I’ve learned will be valuable information that can better prepare you to begin your own vegetable garden. We will all face our own obstacles for various reasons, and if you’d like to share any of those with me, I’d love to hear about the successes or garden flops you may have experienced.

Happy Gardening!

What My First Year Gardening Taught Me