How Does/Did Your Garden Grow?

[Canyon]

My gardens did well this summer (western Colorado), in spite of a weird, cool and wet spring followed by bursts of heat in June, the coolest July on record, warm dry spells in August – you get the picture!

Most of my perennial flowers did great; so did the vegies. Sweet peppers and green chiles were slow to mature, but ending up setting great quantities of fruit, same with the tomatoes. I planted quite a few varieties of pumpkins, and some vines ended up smothering the beans and peas. But I’d rather have pumpkins, so that was OK.

My favorites from this year were two varieties that were new to me: Red Warty Thing and Jarrahdale, a blue-grey heirloom pumpkin from Australia. I like both for decorations, and both are supposed to be good to eat. I had already picked about 12 Jarrahdales, which I thought was a good harvest from two vines. Today, I was pulling vines up and found several that had escaped into the perennials and my jungle of perennial sunflowers, and I found another dozen Jarrahdales! Thanks, Australia for this great squash!

We have had a few cold nights, but no killing frosts. My tomatoes plants are so dense on their cages that I should have them to enjoy for a while.

On the other hand, I once again failed to get any artichokes to flower. Oh, well…

Anyone else have successes and failures to share?

[kande50]

On the other hand, I once again failed to get any artichokes to flower. Oh, well…

They have to have a certain number of hours (150?) below 50 degrees F to flower. I've been growing them for about 5 year now and a few "replacement" plants didn't get enough cool time so didn't flower, but most did. In fact, I'm not going to plant as many next year, because I can't eat them all and they're not as good frozen.

We had a great growing season in western mass this year. I need to start more strawberry plants because we could have eaten at least twice as many, but we got more currants, raspberries, apples, and pears than we could use.

I'm also going to plant more zucchini next year, because some of the plants always produce a few squash and then just keel over and die. The yellow squash do much better, but I'd like more zucchini.

Tomatoes, cabbage, chili peppers, and brussels did well, although I do need to stake up all the tomato plants, because either the mice or the slugs chewed on all the ones that touched the ground.

[AnnCohrs]

I had the best sweet peppers I have ever had; I think I had a dozen varieties. Tomatoes OTOH were dismal. Weird because they like the same conditions.

I finally found a deer repellent that is OMRI listed and WORKS!!! I harvested peas! and BEANS!!! - enough to give away for the first time since the deer found my garden.

I had lovely beets and chard. And now the Brussels sprout flood begins.

[Figgy]

oooh, Australian pumpkins.

Y'know, I tried to buy Queensland Blue's to send to Canadian Trotter the other year, as they are a really really yummy eating pumpkin - and I couldn't get Australian sourced seeds... All the seeds came from the UK. Talk about international gardening.

Pumpkins and vegetable gardens were really popular with the convicts, as well as the free settlers, being able to garden allowed them to supplement the government stores diet, so seeds were traded and prized, and pumpkins being a sweet food that could double as livestock feed were easy to grow.

The varieties are just amazing - in the Hunter you can buy heritage gourds and gramma. Gramma is a gourd like squash/pumpkin but its very sweet. Mum uses it as a pie filling, sweet pie filling and it is delicious.

Me - I mowed the jungle today. I picked up some more shrubs from the local council and I have to plant them. I've killed one (I think I killed the callistemon), the grevilla appears to have taken, thank god. I've got to plant out the lillipilli, star jasmine and I can't remember what the other native I picked up is.

And I've had success with my orchid I nearly killed. I bought it this time last year and overwatered it, but thanks to advice from UDBB gardeners I changed the pot, the potting mix, moved it outside and stopped drowning it and this year - I have six orchid flowers - so chuffed! I'm thinking I'm going to keep an eye out and I'm going to try another orchid in a pretty colour now that i'm feeling more confident.

The native shrubs I planted out last year are thriving, my wattle has flowered and flowered and flowered. The sage plants are thriving, as are a tonne of weeds. They aren't garden beds, they are homes for weeds, but for the moment I'm happy to keep trying to shrub the perimeter of my yard in to create more privacy and screen the fenceline.

[CanadianTrotter]

Figgy, I'm saving all the seeds you sent me for when I relocate next year. Propagating plants from another country and climate will take considerable time and care and I want to try and make sure of my success. Can't wait to see how the pumpkins turn out, maybe our squirrels will leave them be because they're foreign!

My Angel's Trumpet reached over 20 feet high this summer and was filled with large beutiful and heavily scented blooms, it was quite the attraction for passersby.

My Lil'Kim Rose of Sharon went dud on me this year after its growing/heavily blooming for eight years in a container. I don't know if the plant has an actual life expectancy or not. I've cut it down and put it into a smaller container in hopes that it will come back.

My Josta Berry didn't bear any fruit as I had hoped it would this year. It's now going into its fourth year of maturity. My Gooseberry produced only one berry again this year... it's large and healthy so I'm not sure what's up with that bush.

I'm growing my two Wisteria vines in containers, they did well over their first summer but are now dead and leggy looking. Hopefully they come back in the Spring.

The Heliotrope that I was too lazy to pull out of the ground and just cut down to the ground last Autumn, actually survived our winter and grew 2-3 feet tall and gloriously thick with many wonderfully scented blooms.

Everything else I planted grew beyond my expectations. With our El Nino temps reaching 17c this week, everything that the few frosts we've had hasn't killed is still hangng on.

[Canyon]

On the other hand, I once again failed to get any artichokes to flower. Oh, well…

They have to have a certain number of hours (150?) below 50 degrees F to flower. I've been growing them for about 5 year now and a few "replacement" plants didn't get enough cool time so didn't flower, but most did. In fact, I'm not going to plant as many next year, because I can't eat them all and they're not as good frozen.

kande, I have tried vernalizing the artichoke plants in my frig, because our spring weather is so erratic. My technique is not working. But, people do ask about the artichoke plants in my garden because they are so unusual - just no flowers.

It would be much easier for me just to have you send me your extra chokes .

[Woost2]

Pretty good year altho early-ish hard frost did in a lot of unripe peppers. Now we are back to 70s. Still have brussels sprouts, tronchuda and russian red kale and a ginormous collard plant going. My peppers and tomatoes always have a lull when it is too hot to set fruit and then come on strong later ... and it's a race against the weather.

I'm doing those blue pumpkins next year. I've never grown a pumpkin.

[Racetrackreject]

After my dismal showing the year before, I only planted tomatoes and lettuce this year. The lettuce was an experiment that was planted it in a bag of potting soil.

The tomatoes did ok, but the squirrels got them, again. The lettuce produced like crazy and I just noticed this morning that I have lettuce coming up again in the potting soil. I had put the bag into an upside down pallet, and I left the soil there, thinking I would add it to my sage planter after I removed the expired plants from it. Well, I removed the plants, but hadn't managed to migrate the soil over the other sage planter yet, but now I have more lettuce growing, so I will just leave it until I can eat the lettuce.

[kande50]

It would be much easier for me just to have you send me your extra chokes .

I could have sent one to everybody this year.

I've been letting my seedlings get a little bigger before cold treating them, because I lose fewer if they're bigger when I start. I was also reading that once you start the cold treatment you shouldn't warm them up again, but I always do because I bring them in the house if the unheated room is going to get too cold, so they warm up at least overnight several times during the cold treatment. I would think the fridge would work. Do you set up a light in there?

[StraightForward]

Considering how much I was on the road this spring when I would normally be prepping the garden, we got a pretty good haul. Late season heat gave us some amazing brandywine tomatoes, and all the other tomatoes went bonkers as well. We've got enough sauce, paste and whole tomatoes canned that I won't grow nearly as many next year. Also got an OK harvest of Bloody Butcher corn to turn into cornmeal, about 70# of sweet potatoes, tons of okra and a pretty good pepper harvest. Kale plants are huge right now. Squash on the other hand, were a complete bust. It was weird not having any zucchini.

I also nearly completed the xeriscaping on the front yard and it's nice to see it start filling in and getting less weedy and more colorful.

Can't wait for next year. The strawberry patch is getting productive and I'm hoping the apple and cherry trees will start to produce. Will grow way more cabbages, broccoli, beets and potatoes, and be more diligent about keeping my squash plants alive. Want to grow a crop of black beans too.

[Avola]

I had a late start this year and the wind around here will kill just about anything but, thanks to the Most Awesome greenhouse DH built me, I was able to get peas, beans, tomatoes galore, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, onions, lets of peppers and eggplant. Between canning and freezing I'm "almost" ready for the zombie apocalypse. Waiting for the rest of the brussel sprouts, the kale, the leeks and the chard now. Almost there.

[Woost2]

Just spent 2.5 hours digging/pulling quack grass out of my garden plot beds and paths. Wasn't in all that bad of shape. Not done yet. *sigh* But 6 of the 8 beds are prepped and composted and/or planted.

[Canyon]

NWS has posted freeze warnings for the next several nights. I just picked a few more boxes of tomatoes, peppers and green chiles.

[Minz]

We had a weird summer weather wise. My tomatoes did well, both in and outside of the greenhouse, and everything else did meh. I kept it simple this year because I knew I wasn't going to be home much to supervise. My only disaster was the squash. I planted spaghetti, buttercup and pumpkin squash. One row of each. I ended up with 4 small spaghetti squash and nothing else. I think the deer ate the flowers and baby squash before I ever saw them. This is a picture of the spaghetti squash that taunted me all season. It was the first baby squash I found in my patch, and it was perfect, for a whole 3 days. Then I went out one morning and found that the deer had bit a face into the skin. It never really grew after that, it just leered at me all summer. Everytime I saw it, it seemed that the deer were saying that my garden was really only there for their pleasure and if I got a crop, it was only because the deer had allowed it. I covered the patch with chicken wire afterwards, but I think I was too late. The deer had sent their message, and then we had a drought which didn't help matters.