How Was Your Year?

[stella1751]

At the end of each garden season, I look back, relishing the successes and evaluating the failures. In the balance of things, I think I had a good year, despite the cold, wet May & June and the cold September & October.

Watermelons: Failure & Success. I picked the last five yesterday. Two were unripe; they got tossed. Two were ripe! I sliced them open and gave them to neighbors. One is in my fridge; I'm betting it's ripe. I will end my second year of growing watermelons on a positive note, and I will learn from my many mistakes so I can have a better watermelon season next year.

Pumpkins: Failure. A freeze took out one plant; hail took out two others. I replanted and lost all of them during the hard freeze in September. I left the pumpkins on the dead vines, but they didn't grow afterward, just turned orange. Six small pumpkins from five plants total. I won't grow pumpkins next year.

Tomatoes: Failure. My worse year ever. Two of four plants became diseased. I was dissatisfied with the flavor of the variety I tried this year so will try something different next year. The only positive note was the volunteers from last year that sprouted up and began producing. I might get one or two tomatoes from this before the end. Those were very tasty!

Corn: Success! I ate corn all through July and August. If picked early enough, it was extremely good. This short season variety is genuinely short season: 50 to 60 days. I left one plant, fastening it to the fence with a bungie cord, and I will get seeds from it.

Strawberries: Success! I can't wait until next year. That bed is covered with 8" tall plants that have thus far resisted all our freezes.

Frankenchilies: Success! My second-generation Frankenchilies consistently and heavily produced big Anaheim types ranging in length from 6" to 11". I am incredibly jazzed about next year, when I plan to have one bed devoted to first-generation (if these old, old seeds are still viable), second-generation, and third-generation Frankenchilies!

Habaneros: Success & Failure. They don't like the cold so did nothing until July. However, they are now producing and maturing, and I'm betting I'll get a bucket-load of Habaneros over the next week.

Super Chilies: Success! I've dried enough of these puppies to make a serious contribution to my chile powder project. Best of all, an odd cross showed up in my two dozen plants: A NuMex Big Jim/Super Chile cross that makes the coolest looking, best-tasting 4" peppers I've ever grown. These are definitely going in my chile powder, and I can't wait to try a whole bed of these next year.

Conclusion: To those of you who aren't saving seeds, I highly recommend you at least give it a try. Sometimes, you just don't know what you'll get. It also adds a special zest to gardening that I've never before experienced!

Next year is going to be terrifically exciting

So, how was your year?

[PunkRotten]

My year is not done yet. But so far I would say I had both good and bad and the good outweighed the bad.


Spring I grew tomatoes, peppers, scallions and leeks, several herbs like basil, dill, sage, rosemary, chives, lavender etc.



The tomatoes did ok despite having too many plants and not giving them adequate spacing and support. I grew 8 plants and 4 varieties. The varieties were 2 Roma, 4 jet star, 1 yellow pear, 1 german johnson.


The yellow pear yielded heavy but the taste of the fruit was nothing spectacular. Romas were great, I also really liked the jet stars. The German johnson, although the taste was good it yielded poorly. I only got about 7 tomatoes total. I think it was probably due to my fault though.


For peppers I grew green and red bells and a serrano. The green and reds got off to a rough start. When they were seedlings they got attacked badly by earwigs. They did manage to recover. During the summer the tomatoes were growing crazy and some of the branches were covering up the peppers and the peppers suffered because of it. They loss all their blossoms.

Plus the heat was really bad too. They are still growing strong now and they are producing amazing. At this moment both plants are filled with many blossoms and several fruits all over.


The serrano produced good this year, but at this moment the plant is sick and I don't know if it will make it.


I had great success with the herbs too. I did kill some plants but now I learned a few things. Lavender for me has been hard to keep alive.

Right now I am growing radish, beets, lettuce, spinach, carrots, kale, chard, nasturtiums, mini white cukes, and black cherry tomato. All is going great so far. I have had some problems with cabbage worms lately but nothing devastating. All spring and summer I was battling hornworms, tomato fruitworms, grasshoppers, occasional aphids, and some rat or possum was getting some tomatoes here and there.


Next year I am gonna do more tomatoes, peppers, herbs, melons, cucumbers, and beans.

[jal_ut]

I had a good garden overall. The corn did not all germinate at once due to the hot/cold/wet conditions this spring so some of the later to germinate corn didn't get pollinated well.

Sweet peppers were near a complete failure. I did have one variety of yellow that gave me a few.

The hot peppers did ok.

Melons did well. I left on a trip before they were ready, so my daughter picked them.

Potatoes did very well. I still need to dig some of them.

Brocolli did exceptionally well.

The summer squash was so-so, and the winter squash did ok. I think these warm weather lovers did not get enough heat this year.

I am writing this in Centerville GA. Its raining.

Have a great day!

[jal_ut]

Forgot to mention tomatoes and onions did excell.

Peas and beans did ok.

Carrots did good, but I didn't plant enough.

Lettuce did very well due to the cooler season.

[stella1751]

Melons did well. I left on a trip before they were ready, so my daughter picked them.

What kind of melons did you grow? I'm definitely going to try Sugar Babies again next year, maybe Fordhooks. I need a third variety. Did you start them indoors?

[jal_ut]

I planted Charleston Grey Watermelon and Burpee Hybrid Cants.
Planted seed directly in the garden.

[SPierce]

I... did a lot better this year than I did last year! I will never buy starter plansts ever again, it's going to be all growing from seed!

Lettuce- Fail. I tried to plant from seed directly into the ground, and they just never did anything.

Tomatoes- Success! My in ground and potted tomatoes did great- they produced plenty, but i didn't get to eat all of them because I screwed up and forgot to keep an eye on the ripe tomatoes-- they got mould, etc all over the good ones. oops!

Zucchini- so-so! my potted Zucchini plant grew HUGE and produced a ton of zucchinis-- which is tucked safely away in my freezer for right now. My in ground, zucchinis, however were a fail. They didn't get very large and just didn't ever really get the pollination that they should have before they were overtaken by powdery mildew, and I pulled them. I've got another container zucchini going thats just starting to flower, so with any luck maybe i'll be able to get one!

Pumpkins- epic fail! going to try again next year and just fill my entire in ground garden with them. A mysterious disease killed most of the plants, and after that the SVBs attacked and that was the end of it.

Gourds- so far so good, actually! I don't know what kind of gourds they are (i planted burpee fancies, but whatever it is that's growing aren't fancy gourds!) but i've got 4 miniature gourds that are varying degrees of tan/yellow and dark yellow. Waiting to see what else happens!

Pepper- Biggest challenge this year. My sweet banana peppers never got off the ground. Just none of the seeds really did anything. I tried to germinate an entire packet of bell peppers, and only one survived. I've nursed the hell out of it since Feb. when i started it inside- it took 6 months, but it's now got about 12 peppers on it and is 5 feet tall. I cover it with a garbage bag each night and take it off during the day- mother nature's given a temporary reprieve- it's getting up into the 80s! I go to bed and pray every night for the safety of my pepper plant so I can get some peppers!

Potatoes- Huge success, very yummy!. Wish I had bought more potato seeds so I could plant a fall crop! Whoops!

Onions- fail, i never got an onion this year, they simply didn't bulb. Probably my screw up, i'll try again next year.

Garlic- got a few green sprouts from the garlic, but they never really bulbed/did anything. Hmmm.

Radishes- tried to plant some radishes for the fall. They rooted and grew top leaves, but never bulbed. They've been out there for several months, now, and I'm just leaving them to wait and see what happens.

Carrots- as far as I know, they're doing fairly well. I'm definately getting some carrot tops, but haven't tried to pull any of them to see what they're doing yet!

Strawberries- they did well, but i just got june bearing strawberries so after the beginning of the year... no strawberries. Need to hunt down some everbearing so I can have them on a regular basis throughout the year.

Lima beans- after a non-start, I planted them directly outside in a container and they grow! I got a small ziploc baggy full of Lima beans, so I'm fairly happy. Will be planting some more beans next year!

[Tilde]

Anything you grow in summer here has to be babied - so I took it easy on myself and did front stoop tomatoes, stevia, herbs, and strawberries. And ever present aloe.

Tomatoes - got a few big ones and a couple pints of little ones. Mostly wanted to get the kids back into gardening and it worked. Cut off one of the cherry tomato indeterminates and planted it with a couple onion bulbs to see if it will re-root and grow.

Stevia - bumper crop. Couldn't eat it all. Now know I need to cut it more often or put a tomato cage around it (falls over). Cut back and repotted some babies coming up.

Herbs - mostly basil from last year and rosemary - grew enough to use and look pretty though I need to cut off dead basil stalks now. Trying to figure out what I want to cook with and plant.

Strawberries - put in two plants and got two strawberries. One plant died. I think they were too shaded. Fixing that for the fall. May put another one in.

Aloe - I've had one, potted, for about six years now. It put out a pup a few years back, and now that one has put out another. I put the baby in one of the planters atop my front porch composter as the lid.

I took it easy on myself, used mostly "plant the pot" Bonnie brand types of starter plants. Most of them broke out of the pots, but not as much as stevia (my biggest success). If I use them again, I'm going to score the pots so they break open as the root ball expands.

Starting my fall crops mostly from seed. I think I'll just do it at lunch - layout what I want to do at night and then run home and do it on my lunch hour. Carrots tomorrow, lettuce the day after, and so on.

[RyNJ]

I had such a great time doing it this year! It was my first year of really getting into it, and it was a super cool experience.

I think I bit off a little more than I could chew, and made some big mistakes like going extremely cole-heavy, but now I know for the future.

Radishes: Success, the first round. The second round I only got leaves, which was ok 'cause I ate those.

Beets: Success and failure. I only got about 5 roots worth eating, but lots of greens.

Zucchini: Success! I was able to rather successfully eradicate some SVBs, and that made me really happy.

Tomatoes: Mostly success. They got diseased something bad towards the end, and I think I underfertilized and didn't get as high of yields as I could have, but I still got a good amount of really tasty tomatoes.

Lettuce: SUCCESS! Grew like weeds and not a damn thing ate them. Besides me, of course

Broccoli: Failure. I tried growing them in the heat and that zapped the life out of them.

Cabbages: FAILURE. Same thing as the broccoli, but I could absolutely not get them to grow fast enough and the cabbage worms took a severe toll. Plus flea beetles, which abounded due to the other 5 coles I had put in

Kale: Success! They grew vigorously, even though I left them too close together, and are still growing strong despite a good amount of cabbage worm damage.

Turnips: Failure. Same thing as some of the radishes and beets, few roots, just leaves.

Peas and beans: Success. Generally good yields. I think next year I'm gonna start out planting some different varieties all over my garden.

Peppers: Success and failure. I got some bad plants from one nursery that didn't do anything. and some better plants from another nursery that did fruit, even though I was paying very little attention to them.

I think that's it. I still have kale, mustard, and carrots growing. Hopefully the carrots don't have a root problem like most of my other root crops. Garlic is in and I'm waiting to see if it sprouts. Next year I'm gonna focus on much fewer crops, namely legumes, tomatoes, kale, and squashes/melons.[/b]

[jal_ut]

OK, I was curious if I could use facebook as a photo server. Apparently not.

[img]https://donce.lofthouse.com/jamaica/harvest_9_20_2011.jpg[/img]

So, here is the photo from a different server.

[stella1751]

"Wow" pretty much sums it up. I would imagine you are one of voters who said you had a terrific year! The composition is suberb, too, especially your arrangement of color and size for the greatest contrast.

I suspect I could fit all my harvest at the end of my driveway. It's a thought . . .

BTW, I just looked up Charleston Gray Watermelons. How did you grow an 85-day watermelon in your location? Do you have any tips?

[PunkRotten]

Melons did well. I left on a trip before they were ready, so my daughter picked them.

What kind of melons did you grow? I'm definitely going to try Sugar Babies again next year, maybe Fordhooks. I need a third variety. Did you start them indoors?

I am doing sugar babies too in Spring. I also will grow Minnesota midget.

[PunkRotten]

I had such a great time doing it this year! It was my first year of really getting into it, and it was a super cool experience.

I think I bit off a little more than I could chew, and made some big mistakes like going extremely cole-heavy, but now I know for the future.

Radishes: Success, the first round. The second round I only got leaves, which was ok 'cause I ate those.

Beets: Success and failure. I only got about 5 roots worth eating, but lots of greens.

Zucchini: Success! I was able to rather successfully eradicate some SVBs, and that made me really happy.

Tomatoes: Mostly success. They got diseased something bad towards the end, and I think I underfertilized and didn't get as high of yields as I could have, but I still got a good amount of really tasty tomatoes.

Lettuce: SUCCESS! Grew like weeds and not a damn thing ate them. Besides me, of course

Broccoli: Failure. I tried growing them in the heat and that zapped the life out of them.

Cabbages: FAILURE. Same thing as the broccoli, but I could absolutely not get them to grow fast enough and the cabbage worms took a severe toll. Plus flea beetles, which abounded due to the other 5 coles I had put in

Kale: Success! They grew vigorously, even though I left them too close together, and are still growing strong despite a good amount of cabbage worm damage.

Turnips: Failure. Same thing as some of the radishes and beets, few roots, just leaves.

Peas and beans: Success. Generally good yields. I think next year I'm gonna start out planting some different varieties all over my garden.

Peppers: Success and failure. I got some bad plants from one nursery that didn't do anything. and some better plants from another nursery that did fruit, even though I was paying very little attention to them.

I think that's it. I still have kale, mustard, and carrots growing. Hopefully the carrots don't have a root problem like most of my other root crops. Garlic is in and I'm waiting to see if it sprouts. Next year I'm gonna focus on much fewer crops, namely legumes, tomatoes, kale, and squashes/melons.[/b]

Maybe you are deficient in some nutrients. My bulb plants are doing pretty good right now. I am gonna plant garlic in about a week. I do worry a little they will not bulb up good since they spend a lot of time in the ground. Which means they will be feeding for a long time. It's a good thing I have compost and some organic fertilizer. Maybe you need to add some compost or ferts.

[Tilde]

OK, I was curious if I could use facebook as a photo server. Apparently not.

[img]https://donce.lofthouse.com/jamaica/harvest_9_20_2011.jpg[/img]

So, here is the photo from a different server.

fixed that for you:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hp ... 0960_n.jpg



Need to pull the correct coding. A number of browsers have a "right click" option to copy or view the image source url. You were trying to "image" a link to a page.

Nice haul, btw!

[Tilde]

Tomatoes - got a few big ones and a couple pints of little ones. Mostly wanted to get the kids back into gardening and it worked. Cut off one of the cherry tomato indeterminates and planted it with a couple onion bulbs to see if it will re-root and grow.

Ah, here are some of the tomatoes from the end of May, the first of the bitty tomatoes we harvested before summer really kicked in.

This tomato plant was leggy even back then, didn't have enough surviving stems to cut back and try and replant.

[j3707]

Let's see: bush beans and peas, carrots, beets and pole beans all did well. This counts for the "mostly positive".

HOWEVER...

Tomatoes FAIL!!! We've hit the cool, rainy fall here now and 80% of my tomatoes are green. At least we didn't get skunked. This will be my biggest focus for improvement next year.

Onions Decimated by slugs. I wouldn't have thought it, but the slugs had feeding frenzies over my Walla Walla Sweets. A couple of red onions made it through OK.

Broccoli My first time ever trying to grow these...just didn't have the hang of it, plus the slugs...


Looking forward to next year already! I'm going to add pumpkins and focus on pole beans over bush beans. I have a late crop of beets and carrots growing now. These will be for Spring harvest, my first overwinter crop...interested to see how they do.

[SPierce]

Just picked the last few of my tomatoes I know a lot of people don't like them, but the yellow pears treated me well this year.

[TheWaterbug]

This was my first year growing other than pumpkins, and I had a blast, even if half of my crops failed:

Pumpkins!! My 30 Jack-o-Lantern plants produced about 90 fruit. The Pumpkin Patch Party should be terrific! I also got 3 [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=227214#227214]Big Maxes[/url] out of my 6 vines, and they're 40-60 lbs.

Melons Mixed bag. After a _really_ slow start, they finally started growing, and I got a few nice, [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=218395#218395]small cantaloupes[/url] and at least one decent watermelon. I could have had a much better crop if I'd been as diligent [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=219439#219439]protecting them as I did my pumpkins[/url]. I may try black plastic and some more peafowl protection next year.

Corn My [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=219213#219213]first crop[/url] of Bi-Licious and Delectable was awesome. My second crop of Bodacious is [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=227213#227213]having some issues[/url] right now, but my fingers are crossed!

Tomatoes I _love_ my [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=223153#223153]Cherokee Purple[/url]. It grew easily, yielded well, and the fruit are big and delicious. It's still got some fruit going now. My Roma did similarly well, but I just don't like them as much. There's nothing wrong with them, but they're not awesome like the CPs. My [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39558]Mr. Stripey[/url] is huge and bushy, but has only a few (but delicious!) fruit. The Black Prince was a disappointment. The fruit were tasty, but they were small and few, and then the plant died early.

Carrots Mostly a fail. I planted in warm weather, and [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=218923#218923]they were bitter.[/url] Most of them went to the horses next door, so they weren't a total waste. I may try a fall crop.

Cole crops Epic fail. My first direct-seeded attempt got completely slugged; every single plant. The only plant that grew [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39403&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0]turned out to be a weed.[/url]. My second attempt [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=222281#222281]died from damping off[/url], and my third attempt is now in the ground.

Arugula Mixed bag. They're growing back after the [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=224402#224402]peafowl feast[/url], but it's _really_ spicy. I think maybe I planted too soon, while our summer was still too hot. But at least it grew.

Sunflowers Persistence pays off! My first direct-seeded attempt got chomped before they got off the ground, and only [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=216077#216077]5 of my ~30 plants made it.[/url] The second attempt failed similarly, and my third attempt is growing now, only because I put a row cover on top of it for the first 3 weeks.

Peas/Beans Complete fail. I think they all got slugged, because I never saw a single shoot above ground. I dug down a bit and found some bean sprouts , so they did germinate. I have more seeds, so I may try again.

I'm psyched up to do more/better next year. I think I want to put in twice the tomato plants and build some proper mesh cages for them. In addition to everything I grew this year I also want to try some sweet potatoes, artichokes, and peppers.

[j3707]

Just picked the last few of my tomatoes I know a lot of people don't like them, but the yellow pears treated me well this year.

Thanks for the idea! Just might give 'em a try...

[j3707]

I planted Cherokee Purple this year. Nada. Going to try again next year. Will I succeed?

Yes, yes I will...

[bweber]

First year of a new garden was mixed

Carrots did well and were very tasty
Beets were slim got about 1 meal out of them
Onions did well and will plant double the amount next year
Beens got a few meals and a few bags in the freezer
Cucumbers did well at first and I got several 14-16 inch cuks then got mildew
Tomatoes - Mr stripey did not much lots of plant just a couple tomatoes
Early girls I got lots at first then nothing
Orange cherrys were great
Zucchini - picked about 4 off of 4 plants - alot of little ones but did not grow
Peppers - were doing well but the tomatoe worms got ahold of them and I did not get much of anything
potatoes - red got eaten by something and white all split open (?)
second planting of beans were doing great........
then the deer opened up the buffet doors and helped themselves to the rest of everything

[SPierce]

Just picked the last few of my tomatoes I know a lot of people don't like them, but the yellow pears treated me well this year.

Thanks for the idea! Just might give 'em a try...

for me they worked out great! they don't produce as quick as other varities, but when they do its yummy for me! they grow a LOT of tomatoes!

they also grew 8 feet tall.

[pickupguy07]

well to be a TOTAL Newbie,. I was extatic to gt ANYTHING... ROFLOL
Actually my years not totally over yet. I am still getting bell peppers, tomatoes, and lima beens. Have to admit they are all about fininshed though

Few weeks back planted a fall crop with Brocolli, Cabbage, lettuce just to give myself a shot at how it all dirrers in the Fall as opposed to Spring planting. I'm learning, and enjoying being in the yard

I'm hoping for bigger, better and more prduction next year.
Best of luck to everyone else

[cherishedtiger]

For as wacky as the weather was this year I think I did pretty good. This was my first year with some new crops.

I did a patch of Yukon Golds, I didnt get near as many as I had hoped for, but got about 20lbs of all very tasty spuds.

I planted 2 pumpkins this year for the first time, grew a total of 7 small pumpkins, haven't tasted them yet.

My peppers, second year growing sweet banana and jalapenos. My sweet banana peppers took over, and grew so many the plants all started falling over from the weight, I had to steak them up and its a nonstop harvest. My jalapenos didnt fare so well this year. All were very small and turned black (still edible, just black in color). Not much heat to them, even the ones that turned red. Very small numbers.

I planted spinach and lettuce, because I thought the weather had cooled, apparently I was wrong and it was 100+ for 2 weeks after planting so I believe I lost both those crops. Grabbed some new lettuce, so we will see how that fares, need to redo the spinach.

Planted my beans WAY late, guess I will have to see how those do, should be ok until we get a frost, but the way the weather is going that could be December, or tomorrow...

And, I decided to grow bell peppers and start them indoors, not all grew, all only have their first sets of leaves on them and they are all sort of in limbo, not really growing, not dying... not sure what the status on those is going to be.

Small garden this year, but I had big things that took up a lot of my very little room.

It was fun, learned new things this year! Found out I love growing potatoes and will do again in their own bed next year!

[jal_ut]

fixed that for you:

Interesting. Learn something every day. Thanks Tilde.

BTW, I just looked up Charleston Gray Watermelons. How did you grow an 85-day watermelon in your location? Do you have any tips?

Stella, I just plant seed directly in the garden on the 15th of May if weather is permitting, or as soon after that as possible. They get no special treatment. Weeded, watered and fertilized the same as the rest of the garden. This is the only variety I have had good luck with. The melons are not huge, but some get to over 20 pounds. Should I send you some seed?

I actually get around 113 days frost free, on average, but the overall daytime temps are cooler so warm weather things take longer than they would in Georgia. For instance, we only had 2 days this summer that the temp was in the 90s. That is a little cooler than normal, but this was a cool season, as I have mentioned before. Still I got some melons.