How's Your Garden This Year?

[MNeagle]

Can't say I even have one yet. The weather has been so off this season.

First cold, then HOT, hot enough to run the AC in May. Then cold again, & rain. So much rain! When it lets up, we mow. Front yard, back yard, etc. Then more rain.

My ferns are higher than the birdbath, easily 4 feet +. My 2 poor tomato plants which are in the ground, are rotting from the bottom from too much rain.

Our plum tree blossomed beautifully, & now has shriveled & shrunk to nothing. Not a single living leaf on it.

So, other than tomato plants (store-bought already blooming & 3 feet tall); we haven't been able to actually plant anything.

Hoping for drier weather & to get some seeds in the ground.

What's your progress report?

[Dogman]

Very short spring time window to grow anything, put out some swiss chard , tomatos , assorted pepper plants , assorted beans and some herbs. And the heat and lack of rain dam near burnt everything up to the point you can almost see the plants smoking. Screened what I could , mulching like crazy to hold moisture in the ground and trying to trickle irrigate my very small patch of ground. Hoping fall will be better , but do not hold much hope. It is so dry here that even the rocks need to be watered. Other than the peppers and chard not much luck. Moved to try growing the herbs indoors, better luck.

[keehah]

After 3 years of vegetable gardening experiments (I've grown native plants as a hobbie for 10), I can say that this year is my first year with a serious food garden. It is also the first year I have turned into a hardened slug killer. I guess I have near 1,000 sq ft in raised garden beds.

I learned last year here in the northern PNW not to plant tomatos outside until June as the rain and cold killed anything planted earlier. Its been just as cold this spring, but not as wet and mildewy thankfully. My pepper plants look healthy, but they are not much bigger than when I bought them in May! Local farmer sells flats of seedlings cheaply and I transplanted these tomato seedlings into larger pots and kept them in a south facing window or put them outside during the day in May. For a few of the larger tomato plants doing well, I bought some deer fencing and cut it to make tomato hoops. Last year we hade a cold wet September as well that killed the few lucky tomatoes planted after May last year before they ripened.

Seeds I started on my own were too slow. Besides starting seedlings earlier inside next year I'm going to have to use more heat and artificial light next spring to kick things off.

And I'm still grazing while I hand water (and weed) as it is a great way to eat the freshest food and probably the most natural way we are meant to eat. However after Fukushima I'm grazing after the watering ('washing' the vegetables).

This is the first week I'm getting volumes of food, more than grazing on kale and the like when watering. Getting enough strawberries every two days to equal the volume of corporate Californians in the store for $4.00. And mine look smell and taste much better. I almost forgot strawberrys are supposed to be red all the way through.

Next year I plan to have an old greenhouse up to help get a jump on these short growing seasons. Then comes experimentation with drip irrigation to save watering time.

[skid]

Very cool spring here in South west BC as well. I thought I planted my garden late, but with the weather we have had it didn't make a difference. I heard gardens are almost a month behind schedule here.

My potatoes are doing well and so are my beets, peas and carrots. Beans, sunflowers, and especially tomatoes and peppers are doing poorly.

My fruit trees surprisingly seem to be almost on schedule, except for the major damage inflicted by the deer this year. My cherries should be ripe in 2-3 weeks, and the blueberries are absolutely laden with fruit. My oriental and european pears and plums are also doing quite well, but the apples are not bearing very heavily. I had amazing flowers on the fruit trees this year, but was worried about pollenization as it was so cold and windy while the trees flowered.

My nut trees are also doing well. I can see the small nuts on my hazelnuts, and most of my walnut family nut trees have nuts forming. Hopefully we have a warm fall so they ripen properly.

It has been very wet here and I have only irrigated once. I have very sandy soil and normally I have to irrigate weekly. More rain forcasted every day next week:(

[cpy911]

Here in Oregon (Portland) we dealt with a wet cool spring. I have a lot of shade on our city lot, so it makes things more difficult in warming and drying out. A friend of mine gave me tomato plants that were from his green house that I planted last month. These are doing well and have a few green tomatoes. I bought some cucumber starts from local high school green house and these are starting to move after sitting for the last month. The weather is starting to finally warm up with some sunshine. Hopefully, the plants will yield something before the rains, clouds and cold weather set in around October....

THe strawberry season is really short this year. The berries barely came in and are well picked over due to lack of volume. The ones we got were good from our local farm though.

Not the best year for our veggie garden, but hope something good will come of it.

Three years ago I had two tomato plants that produced so much fruit, I canned several dozen jars. Ahh the good old days.

[Mouse]

Bugs bugs bugs. We are having a pretty good garden but we got ....bugs.

In terms of stuff you can eat, it's been pretty poor - we had radishes and lettuce pretty much as much as you want, but the lettuce went to seed and got bitter. I still have some romaine growing and it's happy. I have a really nice early beet crop about ready to pick, but my second planting has been decimated by bugs or critters, not sure which. All the leaves down to the stem have been eaten off but the early crop has been completely left alone??? I have a huge infestation of cucumber beetles that is eating all the green and yellow zuch squash and also killed off some cucumber plants - which are growing really slow this year. I can't figure it out. I am gonna have to resort to pesticide as all my stuff is being eaten alive. Tomatoes are mostly good but have active bugs eating on them, little nemotodes or whatever. Peppers are looking good so far. Just starting to get some jalapenos and wax, the larger peps are too small. The carrot seeds won't sprout except the ones shaded by the other early carrots. The potatoes are good. I have corn and no idea as this is the first try with them. Seems to be good, about 2 ft. Broccoli are doing good but getting bug eaten. No sign of any broccoli out of them. Tons of tomatillos are growing everywhere like weeds. Wow. They are some crazy little mestizos. I have a full bed of tomatillos that are volunteers from last year. Green onions doing fine, big onions all died. Had a superfest with cilantro and had to kill them when they went to seed. Dehydrated them and have a quart jar. Cabbage is getting eaten but still hanging in. Dill did well, some other herbs and catnip did okay. Sunflowers are doing ok as well as sprouts for watermelon and squash and gourds. It's the damn bugs. I hate to do it, but I am going to kill them. I can't let them eat my stuff and I don't have a ladybug solution. Gonna killllllll

[solidus]

It's been very wet here in the Northeast for the last 3 weeks. Can't keep ahead of the weeds. Hoed the garden last night for about 2 hours and am hoping for some sun this week to get things going. Tomatoes are doing pretty well but peppers and eggplant (they like the hot weather that we haven't had) are not doing anything. Beans and peas are doing pretty well. Picked my first peas last night. Damn woodchuck ate all my broccoli. I hope he liked it, it was nearly his last meal. I am trying some new varieties of winter squash this year and they all seem to be doing well. Nothing from my watermelons or cantaloupes. I don't usually do corn, but am trying that this year as well. Might even be "knee high by the 4th of July". Blueberries seem to have a good set of fruit on them and are actively growing. Planted some walnuts and hazelnuts this spring and they seem to be taking. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[Half Sense]

This is my first year of gardening, and I have loved every minute of it. I really do believe that the closer we are to the earth, the happier we will be.

This Spring it's been extremely hot with drought conditions here in North Florida. That's not a problem since my garden is small and I can water by hand. Recently we are finally getting some of the normal afternoon rains, so I'm watering less.

We learned a lot with everything we've tried. Root vegs need to go in the ground months earlier than we planted - some stuff didn't bulb due to extreme heat. Turnips and radishes need to be thinned mercilessly. Lettuce stops growing at a certain point and we should have harvested earlier - but it was still good. We've been very successful growing tomatoes, both regular and heirloom. They are grown in pots. Banana peppers are looking good. We have squash or cantaloupe vines growing up some wires we strung under the trees.

I like the idea of constant experimentation and adaptation. For instance, I chopped a privet hedge down to the bare trunks, which I left about 5 feet high. We put a tomato pot next to each trunk and let the tomato drape itself on the old trunk for support. Now we've got a tomato hedge.

We are using a commercial fertilizer but no pesticides and we've had almost no weeds, either. I've got 2 compost areas going and so far I've gotten good results adding my compost to existing beds.

I'll be turning my efforts more toward permaculture philosophies in the future. I think we'll be able to grow stuff year-round. It's fun and challenging trying to keep expenses down and make do with what we can find or make ourselves.