September marks six months since we started properly growing in the Garlic Lovers' Garden and, as it happens to be Organic September, it feels like a good time to reflect on our first season. It's hard to believe that back in February this was still essentially a field, with cows grazing what would soon become our growing beds.

Our first Getting Involved Day was a challenging one. The ground was saturated and everything – and everyone – got well and truly stuck in the mud. All that rain was then followed by one of the driest springs and summers I can remember, and water has probably been the biggest challenge of the garden so far.

We've spent a lot of time thinking about how we water, where that water comes from and how we can make the garden more resilient to long periods without rain. Our latest plan is to siphon water from the farm's WET system into a tank behind the garden, which will hopefully give us a more sustainable and reliable source for irrigation. The weather this year has certainly made us think about how we design the garden for the climate we're likely to be growing in, rather than the one we might have known before.

Now, at the beginning of September, the rain has finally returned. The garden is soggy again, greens, beets and herbs are in the ground, and we're hoping for enough late summer sunshine to give everything a decent boost before temperatures and light levels really begin to drop.

The garden itself is still very much a work in progress.

We've been building and designing it at the same time as trying to grow food from it – laying beds, working out irrigation, propagating, planting, harvesting, composting and figuring out what on earth to do next. It probably isn't the ideal way to establish a market garden, but it has meant that we've learnt an awful lot about this particular patch of ground in a very short space of time.

Some things have thrived. Basil, chard and spinach have been particularly generous. Some definitely haven't. Flea beetles have given our brassicas a fairly miserable time meaning most of our rocket has become pesto, rabbits developed an unfortunate taste for beetroot and the prolonged dry weather made establishing new crops much harder than expected.

Growing organically means we're continually trying to understand why something is or isn't working rather than simply reaching for a quick fix. We're learning about our soil, our pests, our water, the crops that seem happy here and the ones that need a bit more help. We're also learning that what works beautifully on paper doesn't necessarily translate quite so neatly once weather, wildlife and real life get involved.

We've had some invaluable help along the way too.

Earlier in the year I travelled to Sweden to visit Richard Perkins, whose approach to small-scale regenerative farming left me with a great sense of possibility for what the garden could become. We were also lucky enough to have Iain Tolhurst visit us here at The Garlic Farm. His decades of experience growing organically, and without animal inputs, gave us plenty of practical pointers – and a useful dose of realism – about developing a productive growing system over the long term.

But perhaps the biggest learning curve has been understanding what it means to grow for a kitchen.

Our restaurant is currently our only customer, and it happens to be just 50 metres away. That sounds like a grower's dream – and in many ways it is – but we're quickly learning that proximity doesn't automatically make the relationship simple.

We need to grow the right quantities of the right things at the right time. We need to communicate what's coming. We need to deal with inevitable gluts and gaps and make sure that what we grow actually gets eaten.

It is, after all, much easier for the kitchen to order exactly what they need from a wholesaler and have it arrive clean, consistent and immaculately wrapped in lashings of plastic than it is to deal with our sudden mountain of basil, oversized courgettes or slightly nibbled leaves.

Thankfully, we have a BRILLIANT and flexible kitchen team who have embraced the garden and found ways to use what it produces – turning gluts into pestos and sauces, using imperfect produce and preserving things for another day. What can't be used eventually makes its way back to the compost heap or wormery, beginning the process all over again.

Alongside producing food, the other purpose of the garden has also started to become much clearer.Over the past six months we've welcomed school groups, home educators, SEND students, community groups, volunteers and visitors. Our monthly Getting Involved Days have brought people into the garden to sow, plant, harvest, compost, feed worms and generally get their hands dirty.

Those experiences are helping shape what we want this space to be.

Yes, we want to grow good food for our restaurant. But we also want people to be able to see that food being grown and understand a little more about what goes into producing it – including the failures, pests, muddy days and wonky vegetables.

Everyone will tell you that growing food is hard and not particularly profitable. Six months in, I'm not going to argue with either of those things. But I would add that it is also one of the most satisfying, life-affirming, primal and joyous things this we humans can do.

There is a lot we haven't got right yet. There is plenty we want to change next year and an enormous amount still to learn. But there is something deeply satisfying about working alongside the soil, weather, insects and seasons, producing food and trying, bit by bit, to do it in a way that leaves this small patch of ground a little better than we found it.