A Bountiful Harvest from our Raised Bed Garden with succession planting, varietal selection, and intercropping in our short growing season.
It takes several years to create a sizeable vegetable garden that will eventually produce enough food for your family during the growing season. Depending on how much time you invest in the garden, you may achieve your goal sooner or later.
3 Years Of Intense Cultivation And Improvements
For us, it took 3 years with intense cultivation, improvements, and sheer hard work during the summer months. We are still learning and making improvements as we go along. There were setbacks and failures but giving up is not an option after investing so much time, effort, and resources in our homestead.
Dream of A Good Size Garden With A Bountiful Harvest
When we moved here, we had a dream to set up a good size vegetable garden and orchard. Over the four years, the gardens just grew and grew. Gardening literally grows on you, at least that is the case with me. Seeing and enjoying the fruits of our labor make me want to grow even more food.
We started out with just 6 raised beds in this Raised Bed Garden. Today, we have 20 raised beds, 2 troughs, and 2 more raised beds in the Stand-Alone Greenhouse.
Increasing Growing Space With Pots
I also placed many, many pots, wooden barrels, and tiered growers to increase our growing space. There really can never be too much growing space. 😉
A Chart Of The Raised Bed Garden
At the start of 2024, I made a chart with all the beds in this growing area with what to grow in each raised bed. I tried to follow it closely but not all the way. At that time, we had not extended the Stand-Alone Greenhouse yet.
Succession Planting, Varietal Selection, And Intercropping
Since our growing season here in Wyoming is short, I wanted to try succession planting to maximize yield. It was hectic but doable.
I also practice varietal selection by planting multiple varieties of the same vegetable with different maturing dates for staggered harvest. I like doing this because I like the variety of vegetables I can harvest.
To maximize use of the growing space, I also tried intercropping by planting faster growing and smaller plants in between larger plants. Yeah, it was all a lot of work and you have to be very organized to do it. 🤯
Similar Products Used in This Bountiful Harvest From Our Raised Bed Garden Post
This post contains affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy here.
Fiskars Garden Harvest Basket
Oval Ultra 170-Gallon Stock Tank
Galvanized Raised Garden Beds, 6×2×2 ft
Mitef Anti-aging Orchard Anti-hail Netting, 26.2x50ft
A Bountiful Harvest
So, after all that hard work, here pictures of what we harvested from this vegetable garden. I was surprised at the variety of vegetables I was able to plant while editing the pictures.
In fact, there were a few other vegetables that I planted and harvested but they were not captured. Zucchinis, patty pan squash, and Gai Choy (mustard green) come to mind.
Radishes
First up, were radishes planted very early in spring. I direct sowed these French Breakfast and Hailstone radishes in early spring and they were ready for harvest not long after that. We ate them fresh and I used some for making kimchi. The leaves are also edible and they taste peppery.
After harvesting, I put in more seeds for a continuous harvest until they started to bolt. Radishes prefer cooler temperatures.
Asian Greens and Garlic Scape
Oh, the wonderful vegetables you can grow in Wyoming! I am ever so thankful that several different varieties of Bok Choy, Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli), Mizuna (a kind of Japanese mustard green), Choy Sum, Gai Choy (mustard green), and Amaranth (Chinese spinach) grow relatively well here. This saves me from having to go to the Asian market to buy these vegetables.
I usually plant garlic in the fall, both hardneck and softneck varieties. Garlic scapes come from hardneck garlic.
More Greens and Carrots
I was surprised at how good the Ford Hook Swiss Chard tasted. The texture and earthy flavor is a little like Malabar spinach. As such I like to cook it in a soup like this Malabar Spinach Soup. The loose leaf lettuce and Tong Ho (garland chrysanthemum) were grown from seeds I saved from a previous year.
Of course, Choy Sum is a favorite at our house. I can never grow enough Choy Sum but they can be tricky to grow here as they bolt easily. We love carrots and so I grow several varieties, starting in early spring right through fall. The ones shown here are Yaya carrots.
Cilantro, Kale, And Cabbage
Cilantro is easy to grow once they get started. They grew really well and I managed to save some seeds for the years ahead. Red Russian Kale is so-so. I prefer curly or dinosaur kale.
Napa cabbage is always good. We eat a lot of it and I make kimchi with it. Tronchuda cabbage (also referred to as Tronchuda kale) is a favorite at our house. I use it in this Caldo Verde (Portuguese Green Soup.
A Bountiful Harvest of Garlic
2024 garlic were all grown from 2023 seed garlic. I harvested 15 pounds of garlic! 4 pounds went back into the ground in November for 2025 harvest.
Daikon, Peas, and Cabbage
I have had much success since my Colorado days with Minowase daikon. These were grown with seeds saved from 2022.
Sugar snap peas are fast and easy to grow but they do prefer cooler weather. These purple Magnolia sugar snap peas were amazing! 2024 was a good year for growing cabbages. All the different types of cabbages in our garden grew really well.
Corn, Beans, Cucumber, Tomatoes, And Okra
Homegrown corn is the best! They are so sweet and delicious. I like growing a variety of bush and pole beans. Of course cucumbers and tomatoes are a must grow in home gardens. There are many varieties to choose from but I grew mainly from seeds saved from previous years.
Unlike in Colorado, okra is a hit and miss here. The okra I grew in Colorado were over 10 feet tall! They were very productive. It probably has to to with the altitude. Where I used to live in Colorado was around 5,000 feet above sea level. Over here, it is above 6,000 feet above sea level.
Celery and Herbs
Celery seeds are very, very tiny and difficult to handle but they are well worth the effort. Homegrown celery tastes much, much better than store bought celery. Chinese white celery is very mild and great in stir fries. I use Utah Tall Celery to make Cream of Celery Soup.
Every vegetable garden must have herbs. They may be difficult to start from seeds but are well worth the effort. They help keep off pests in the garden and provide a lot of flavor to homecooked foods.
Mature Cucumber, Carrots, And More Tomatoes
I use mature, brown cucumber to make soup like this Lou Wong Kua Tong. I have not had much success with Sikkim cucumber but this Poona Kheera cucumber appears to be promising.
As for these Parisian carrots, they are fun to grow. They are great for snacking. It seems like almost everyone grows tomatoes, and always have a ton of green tomatoes at the end of the season when frost sets in. Believe me, I have the same problem. 😂
Bountiful Harvest of Cauliflower, Alcosa Cabbage And Squash
We harvested a few beautiful heads of cauliflower grown from seed. Likewise, we had half a raised bed of beautiful Alcosa cabbage, which is a petite kind of Savoy cabbage. The Waltham butternut squash did really well in 2024. So did the Kabocha squash. Sweet Dumpling squash tends to struggle here but I am glad to get at least a few them.
Malabar Spinach and Pepper Galore
Malabar spinach takes a long time to grow in Wyoming. I think it is more suited to the tropics. Peppers do relatively well here and I like to grow different varieties. The Holy Mole peppers did especially well.
Flowers
Whenever I start a new garden, I always start with flowers to attract the pollinators. At the perimeter of this garden, I have my favorite Phenomenal Lavender. They are more hardy than most other varieties. At first, they were difficult to establish but they appear to be doing well now.
I also planted English Lavender and Cat’s Pajamas Catmint/Nepeta. This catmint is the smaller variety and it is really pretty. All these plants attract a lot of bees. On the other side, I planted 3 Caryopteris bushes but only 1 survived.
I am not a big fan of sunflowers but I found dwarf sunflowers and decided to give them a try. These grow to only about 2 feet tall and they are quite charming.
Asparagus And Eggplant
The asparagus that I planted in 2023 should be ready for harvest this spring. Only the purple asparagus survived. There may be still a Martha Washington one on the other side of the arbor entry into this garden.
Eggplant did not do well in 2024. Hopefully they will do better in 2026.
When The Weather Turned Cold
Around November each year, I will cover some of the raised beds with frost cloth that I sewed to fit the exact size of the raised bed. This will enable whatever is left in the raised bed to survive for a few more weeks.
Bountiful Harvest From The Other Gardens
Our main unheated Greenhouse with a Green Tentprovide us with some vegetables throughout the winter months.Plants in there grow very slowly but it starts to pick up in March as the weather slowly warms up and there is more daylight.
We also get lots of potatoes and other vegetables from the West Terraced Garden.
Melons
I was not expecting the musk melon (cantaloupe) seedlings that I purchased to do very much but to my delight they produced a Bountiful Harvest of sweet melons for us to enjoy. The Minnesota Midget melons were started from seeds. They have good flavor but not as good as the musk melon. I saved the seeds for future planting.
The Sugar Baby Watermelon was okay but not great. Watermelon takes a long time to mature. These were planted mostly in Terraced Vegetable Garden on the east side of the house.
Preserving The Bountiful Harvest
I canned a lot of the vegetables we could not finish eating.
Boxes Of Goodies For Friends And Neighbors
We also gifted some of the vegetables to friends and neighbors. I filled these boxes whenever we had a Bountiful Harvest like a CSA box. 😊
2024 was an amazing year for our vegetable garden. I only purchased meats, dairy, and dried foodstuff from the grocery store during the growing season. I brought in basketfuls of produce every day from the the garden. We are very thankful to God for His provision! 🙏
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