Annual Garden of Good and Evil Breakdown

Every year I look back and reflect on what I've learned about gardening.  The challenges I faced.  My successes.  My failures.  My ideas going forward.  2022 has been one of my best gardens ever.  And that's a satisfying feeling.  Things should improve a little every year.  Yes, new things will happen that we learn from but its nice to feel that you have a little more than the basics figured out.

This spring I started as always around March 15th with two week succession plantings of Penelope Peas along with the lettuce and carrots.  The one difference is that this year I planted my own pea seeds that I saved from last year's crop.  Penelope is an open pollinated variety.  The plants grew well and I had a good yield.  Not much to report there.  However, over the past few years I have noted that the April plantings do much better overall than the March plantings.  The early plantings sort of go into a holding pattern during weather shifts and the April ones catch up and you end up harvesting them all at once anyway.  Next year I am going to plant early and mid April.  As usual, I direct sowed lettuce seeds along each side and that did well, except for the row that was germinating just when a cold snap hit.  That one had to be reseeded and never really did as well as the others.

Penelope Peas and Lettuce

My carrots did very well this year.  I planted both Sugarsnax and Nantes Half Long.  Some were pelleted, some were bare seeds.  The pelleted is easier to work with initially, but the leftovers do not keep well for next year because the pellet hardens.  I planted them in containers with fresh potting mix and added bone meal for root growth.  I made sure to water them every day over the long dry summer.  Last year I tried them in grow bags and they did not do well.  The grow bags dry out too quickly.  I got a really nice harvest, and I have been pulling and using carrots since cole slaw season back in July.  I still have one later container to harvest.

This year I again planted both bush beans and pole beans.  While in 2020 the pole beans refused to grow, this time it was the Jade bush beans.  The pole beans did excellent.  I think I am done with bush beans.  The pole beans are just so much easier to harvest standing up rather than getting down on my knees.  I have many examples of awesome bush bean crops over the years, but this year was too frustrating.  I know I wasn't the only person in the country to struggle with bush beans.

This year I planted Monte Gusto Yellow Pole Beans, Fortex Pole Beans and Sychelles Pole Beans.  The Monte Gusto are an old favorite and produced like mad.  I love growing a yellow bean to contrast with the green on the plate.  The Fortex wasn't much to my liking.  My husband noticed the difference the first time I served them.  They don't have a lot of taste when young and then matured fast to a tougher, tasteless bean.  I know they get rave reviews (which was why I tried them) so the taste must just be my growing conditions.  The Seychelles were a very tasty and productive green bean.  Those will be my choice for a green variety going forward.  The beans had a few Japanese beetles on them, but not so many that I couldn't pick them off each day.  I treated that bed with Milky Spore in case any of them laid eggs in there.

Seychelles

This year I planted too many summer squash.  I do that now and then.  There is something just so satisfying with having a big jungle of squash plants, even if you produce way more squash than anyone could possibly use.  Chickens would have been helpful at this point.  I planted Cue Ball, Dunja and Clarimore.  The Cue Ball and Dunja are old standbys and performed well as expected.  The Clarimore was new for me.  It is the variety I will be growing again next year.  It is a light green squash with silvering on the leaves (which in my experience helps them resist mildew).  It produced heavily and resisted mildew.  All three varieties were heavy producers and very resistant.  I don't have anything negative to say about any of them.  But next year, I am only planting one plant.  Not three pairs.  The green leafed Cue Ball were the first to show signs of mildew.  I sprayed them all with SaferGro Mildew Cure at that point and that held it off for several more weeks.  I saw some cucumber beetles in the blossoms late in the season, but no squash vine borers this year.  The Honey Bees worked hard on these flowers which they have not for several years so its good to see them back.

I also way over planted on Cucumbers due to not having had enough last year.  I planted Cool Customer Pickling Cucumbers, Supremo Pickling Cucumbers, Bristol, Corinto, and Burpee's Salad Bush.  The Bristol is a repeat but the Corinto and Salad Bush were new.  They both produced very heavily and were beautiful plants.  Neither one of them can be considered "Burpless" and if you enjoy eating a whole lot of cucumbers, that is a factor that must be considered.  For that reason I will go back to the Bristol next year.  And I only need one row.   Not three rows plus backups.  I won't need to do pickles next year so I won't need to plant any picklers at all.  No pests on the cucumbers and they were well pollinated by the sweat bees.  Because of the volume of plants planted I was able to remove tired plants before they showed any sign of disease.

Cantaloupes were a particular success.  This year I chose Napoli and Hannah's Choice and both did very well.  I admit I fussed over them.  Cantaloupes are something that may or may not work in my area depending on the weather.  We got a hot dry summer so they did well.   They got enough heat during the day and I also kept them covered for added warmth most of the time and especially at night.  I watered them every day.

 It paid off.  I got about 14 large melons which was plenty for us, plus we were able to give some away to anyone who said "its been so long since I got a good cantaloupe."  These were good.  They smelled heavenly and they tasted even better.

Beautiful vines

 

My Sweet Corn had good success overall despite challenges.  The first planting went smoothly and had a really good yield of four dozen large ears.  The second bed had some germination problems making it late.  The ears were not as big, but it was still a success.  It would have been better if it were earlier and the ears had had the same hot weather during their growth period  Next year I will plant only one bed and maybe buy some from the farmstand as well.  The fun thing about the corn crop is that it is always loaded with ladybugs.  They're everywhere,  Of course now they're trying to get into the house for the winter....

Sweet Corn - Gotta Have It

Over the past few years I have experimented with the spacing and number of rows of the sweet corn.  I have never gotten more than three or four dozen from a bed no matter what I do with spacing, fertilizer, water or hand pollination.  So thirty three square feet can produce about four dozen ears.  For this reason, next year I am going to be sure to thin down to three rows of twenty plants.  Sixty plants.  We'll see if with the added space I can get closer to sixty ears.

I grew half of my usual amount of Broccoli, Cauliflower and Cabbages.  It all did well.  I'll plant the same next year but instead of starting from seeds, I'll buy transplants at the end of April.  This will shorten my gardening year by the whole month of March.  I grew Diplomat Broccoli, Flame Star Cauliflower, Golden Acre Cabbage and Violaceo de Verona Cabbage.  I probably won't plant Violaceo de Verona Cabbage again because I've decided I'm not a big fan of its crinkly texture.

The one thing that was different is that I had small black slugs in that bed.  This is not something I dealt with before. Some slugs - yes.  Scads of little black ones - no.  The leaf mulch didn't help matters because it made an excellent environment for the slugs.  Next year I will try mulching with regular compost to see if that suits better.  It might just be that bed because it was closest to the woods.  I'll be using a different bed next year too.

It was a standard year for tomatoes.  We avoided blight just about as long as anyone can expect to.  Next year I will continue in containers with whatever variety strikes my fancy next spring.  Always a yellow and a black variety, and I will also start my grandfather's seeds for my Dad.  I won't bother with patio tomatoes or cherries next year.  But I do like a month or so of tomato sandwiches.

Another particular stand out this year was the Havasu peppers.  They are a mildly hot sweet pepper and had a nice thick wall.  They were the perfect size and shape for dipping hummus which is my favorite way to eat fresh peppers.  I also grew Sweet Banana which did well but paled in comparison to my enjoyment of the Havasu.  

I grew four plants of each in one 10 gallon container and they grew as well as they possibly could.

Havasu Pepper Johnny's Seeds

My potatoes in grow bags did quite well.  I started robbing them in mid-July for the occasional potato salad or salt potatoes.  We still got a good harvest at the end.  I grew the white Satina and Red Maria.  Potatoes in grow bags are a big user of resources for me and they are not cost effective to buy seed potatoes each year.  Not only do they take a lot of potting mix and leaf mulch, but they have to be watered every, single day.  Also they do not keep more than a few months in storage.  Next year I will not be growing potatoes.

But I will grow sweet potatoes!  I have been growing Mahon Yam in grow bags for several years now and I think I've got it down pat.  I also grew them in the ground this year with good success.  Next year I will use the potato grow bags and soil for sweet potatoes instead.  They store very well for me and I can start my own slips in the spring making them a very cost effective crop.  We have been enjoying them both fried and baked.  Next I'm going to spring some mashed ones on my husband and see how that goes. 😏

And finally, I grew Parsips.  I haven't tried this for ages.  I'm getting a really nice harvest.  I like them mixed with carrots and roasted.  My husband doesn't like them at all.  Since he now eats steamed broccoli without complaint I won't be pressing the issue with the parsnips.  I'll share them with the neighbors instead.  And its about time to start digging horseradish too.

So that's the year in the vegetable garden.  It was not a good year for fruit.  My Surecrop Strawberry plants were on their third year and didn't seem to appreciate the leaf mulch I put on them last winter at all.  So I replaced the plants with Honeoye which have done very well for me in the past.  Those plants took off like mad and hopefully they will produce well next spring.

The Apple trees didn't blossom well this year.  I suspect that the week of single digit nights in the winter may have damaged the buds.  Also we did not have a cross pollinator because we lost the Macintosh tree to a windstorm in April.  Still, we got a few apples.  Not the bushel after bushel we got last year.  So we had a break from drying apples and making apple pies.  I still have pies in the freezer left from last year so all is well.  We will use those up this fall and hope for a better year next year.

The Pear tree produced six pears, which was twice as many as the year before.  It is still a baby tree and didn't put on a lot of new growth in this dry summer so its doing well at that rate.  The pears were small because of the drought.  I watered it once a week just to keep it going, but didn't want to interfere too much.  I'm hoping it will put on more new growth next year.

Everything is put to bed.  The food is stored.  The seeds are sorted.  Nothing to do for the next five months except plan for next year.

Things that are going right and things that are going wrong - the early version

I usually wait until the end of the season before I do my "Garden of Good and Evil" recap, but since I'm retired I have time to putter almost every day and obsess over the things that are giving me trouble.  The garden is growing great.  About 95% great.  Maybe 98%

The Tater Patch is growing by leaps and bounds

But the dreaded Flea Beetles found it. 
They are getting Neem every night for a bedtime snack

 

The Sweet Alyssum ground cover in the Bush Bean Bed is Beautiful.

Except this one 

The Penelope Peas went from blooming to pods in record time

The Grow Bag potatoes are even better than the tater patch
And the flea beetles haven't found them (yet)

No matter how careful I am seeding and watering carrots I always get huge bare spots
I just keep seeding until my space is full.

The Lima Beans are taking off and beginning to bud

There are some patches where the lima cotyledons came up but the growing point seemed damaged beyond saving.  I just ignored it and finally they are sending out leaves

Sweet Corn

The Cauliflowers are straining against their insect mesh.  
They didn't really do that last year.  They need to start flowering!

I always think I will not have cucumbers.
But then I always end up with too many cucumbers.
Again - I just keep seeding until I run out of seeds
I've been killing half a dozen cucumber beetles a day.  This is the first time in several years I've had more than one.  Seriously, I usually find ONE.

The cucumber beetles are also on the Cue Ball zucchini
But the zucchini hasn't noticed

Hmm... what do do with this big extra pot?
Spend too much $$ on a big bag of soil and plant old cantaloupe seed.

The tomato plants are doing awesome and almost ready to flower

This is my herb garden.
I always have more herbs tucked here and there but here I have
rosemary, sage and red and green basil.
Also calendula, snapdragons and four dahlia plants I didn't know what to do with
because somehow I have a gazillion orange Noordwijks Glorie dahlias and I'm tired of
them but don't want to throw any out.  So I booted them out of the Dahlia bed.

Remember over the winter I did herb cuttings?
The sage was awful leggy, but the rosemary did well.
The yellow arrows point to my parent plants that I overwintered
The three red arrows show the successful rosemary babies
The blue arrow shows one that decided to die this week. 
I do have another one elsewhere I might move

Instead of keeping my few leggy sages,
I was happy to find colored sage at the nursery and bought two of each.

I have a real thing for bicolored and tricolored sage but they are super hard to find.  I found FLATS of them and snapped them up so quick.... mid- April.  The nursery staff was sure I would kill them that early because our night time temps were so low but the cold frame did the trick.  I even brought them in a few nights.  I love my sage.

The End

Hindsight is 2020

 The 2020 gardening season is winding up and its time to look back and summarize what worked and what didn't.  For starters, the year 2020 has gotten a bad rap.  Apparently whatever can go wrong is going wrong, and the gardening world is no exception.  I heard one person lament "if I'd have had to rely on my Covid Survival Garden I would have starved"

I'm hearing everywhere how challenging the weather has been this year, and honestly, I haven't found this year to be any more challenging than most years.  You know - its always something.  As usual, some things went well and some things fell flat.  

 This year, I had my fill of the abundant cauliflower and summer squash but had to wait for ages for any decent beans.  My sweet potatoes were a great success (in my opinion) but the volume of regular potatoes was a disappointment.  Late beans and small potatoes were a theme nationwide.  August was so hot and dry that tomatoes refused to ripen, but that too came to an end.  I don't think I had trouble with anything to the extent that I'd never try it again, but there were a few things I need to practice on some more.

May Weather:  OK, May was a trial.  The first half anyway.  I struggled to keep everything growing through day after day of frost, wind and snow.  It was made worse by the lovely warm end to April which enticed me to optimistically pot up my tomatoes into gallon pots instead of leaving them in the safety of the basement under the grow light, and the fact that I received a pear tree fully leafed out two days before a late snow storm.  The cole crops in their shelters, and the seedlings still in the house did just fine.  The peas, in their eternal wisdom, waited it out, but did just dandy when the weather finally turned.  For several weeks I thought for sure all of the tomato plants were going to die but they recovered and carried on like nothing ever happened.  It was a lot of work taking care of everything, but it was one of those cold snaps which can be overcome by supplies, preparation, hard work and dedication to carrying. everything. in. and out. every. single. day. Without fail.

Peas:  Peas did well.  I succession planted them beginning in March, as I always do, which ended up not mattering at all because the weather was so erratic that the early peas stopped growing for weeks on end and then they all agreed at the same time that the weather was perfect and they should get going all at once.  But that's the awesome thing about peas in my growing zone.  They are a very sensible crop.  They deal with a lot of issues on their own.  You put them in the ground as soon as you can and then you wait and let them do their thing.  I'm done experimenting with varieties for awhile. Next year I'm only growing Penelope because they are currently working perfectly for my needs.

Carrots:  Carrots don't like root pruning grow-bags.  That's an easy and broad assumption to make but I'm taking some responsibility in the meager results.  I didn't water them enough.  And grow bags dry out quickly.  Next year I am putting them underfoot so I will pay more attention.  But I am also putting them back in plastic containers.  My local nursery was thoughtful enough to bring in stacks of good sized, non-decorative, useful growing containers at a price much more reasonable than I can find online and I got two appropriately carrot-sized pots to replace the grow bags.  Grow bags are a great thing to have on hand.  They fold flat to store, and you can use them as a back-up when you run out of space.  But that doesn't mean they are the end all solution to container gardening.  

Cauliflower:  I'm feeling quite comfortable with growing cauliflowers now.  They are a long term commitment, starting in March and going into the garden in April, but if you enjoy fresh cauliflower its worth it.  We've discovered a lot of difference in taste across the varieties.  The purple Graffiti were beautiful and fun to grow but had a rather strong taste.  We prefer the yellow Flame Star for its mild, sweet taste, so next year I will probably only grow those.  I have a lot frozen and I plan on trying my hand at some cauliflower cheddar soup.  The key to growing good cauliflower (really all cole crops) is row covering to keep the cabbage moths off.  

I was quite happy with my row cover solutions and my supplies are ready for next year.  I'm going to start in spring with the heavier GardenQuilt from Gardeners (which held up well tot he weather and clips) and then skip straight to the see-through AgFabric insect netting .  I've purchased the appropriate sizes and labeled them in case I forget what my plan was.

Broccoli: I only planted broccoli as a fill-in but very much enjoyed fresh broccoli and pea salad. So next year I will again buy some transplants but not start seeds.

Cabbage: transplants were also an impulse buy because I was in the mood for homemade cole slaw.  Next year I will grow some again.  Not a great quantity, but at least four for fresh slaw.  The cabbages can share a bed with the broccoli since they require the same covering.

Brussels Sprouts:  Talk about a long term project.  They are still in the garden even though we have had one hard frost and I should be picking them now.

Lima Beans:  Much like the cole slaw, I got a craving for lima beans.  This was my first try for limas. The plants did very well and there were a lot of blooms, and the earliest ones set well but after that most of the blossoms dropped, probably because of the hot dry weather.  In fact, they were still blooming and again setting baby beans when I pulled them out.  The six or so portions I did get were very good so I will try this crop again and see how they perform under different weather conditions. 

Sweet Corn:  I hadn't grown sweet corn in awhile but this year and last have been so successful that I will probably keep growing at least one bed each year.  The taste is far superior to the best the local farmstand has to offer.  Next year I will drive T-posts at the corners of the bed so I can run a cat's cradle of wires to prevent the stalks from lodging during wet weather.

Pole Beans: Good things come to those who wait.  My fourth planting of beans at the end of July was the real success.  I planted two varieties of bush (Jade and Jade II) and two pole (Monte Gusto and Carminat). The yellow Monte Gusto were my favorite.  Awesome variety of long, straight beans.  I have an excess of beans stored away.

Tomatoes:  I grew too many tomatoes.  Go figure.  I planned to grow three plants.  I ended up growing seven because I was so worried by their early (non)performance.  And that is more than TWICE as many plants as intended.  Must do better next time.

Cucumbers:  I grew too many cucumbers.  Again - I get nervous with germination problems and I start to over plant.  This year I also grew pickling cucumbers because it was a pickle year.  I won't have to plant them next year but I have leftover seeds and will probably plant a few plants because I've found some good pickling packets that you can make one pint of refrigerator pickles at a time.  And I found that to be really fun.  And man - are those pickles SPICY.  They will light you up! And they're very crunchy.

Potatoes:  the plants were more impressive than the harvest, but I still have plenty of spuds stored away.

Sweet Potatoes:  What Fun!  These were beautiful plants to watch all season and the tubers were plentiful and just about perfect.  I cured them for two weeks in a sunny window and they are super sweet.  In fact, the first time I prepared them, I roasted them and the instructions suggested that I toss them in oil and brown sugar.  Well - they didn't need the sugar.  I sampled them when they were almost done and pulled the whole batch out, rinsed them in a collander and put them back in the oven.  The next time I prepared them I baked them and we ate them plain. Not even any butter. They had a terrific taste and texture and the skins fell right off onto the plate.  I am working my way through processing them (about 20 #), storing them in the freezer both baked and roasted.

Summer Squash:  

I will not plant more than one zucchini plant. 

I will not plant more than one zucchini plant. 

I will not plant more than one zucchini plant. 

I will not plant more than one zucchini plant. 

I will not plant more than one zucchini plant. 

I will not plant more than one zucchini plant. 

  I will not plant more than one zucchini plant.   

And the one plant will be a Cue Ball.

As you can see, this year's theme was "Too Much".  I went through a phase where I felt undue pressure to use everything I'd grown. All at once.  I didn't really have an excess of any one thing so much as too many things happening all at once.  I would have five fresh veggie dishes I wanted to serve for supper when one or two would do.  I began eating cole slaw for breakfast - which isn't a bad thing.  This isn't the first time this happened.  I felt this way in 2011, the second year for the raised beds when I went hog wild.  There have been years when I lamented that I had refined my quantities so well that I no longer had an over abundance of anything.  I am again cured of this.  I will go back to careful counting.