Yes its a tough year, but....

[COMPOSTER]

Gardening is an incredible hobby and nature is an incredible teacher. Like a lot of folks here I'm having a difficult time with some of my crops because of a crazy weather pattern that occurred early spring through early summer in the North east. Although I have lots of tomatoes on my plants I'm struggling with foliar diseases on at least 50% of them. I lost my broccoli to woodchucks 3 times and my squash production was hurt by striped cucumber beetles and the woodchuck. But let me tell you about the amazing amount of bush beans I have been picking and my cucumbers are producing like gangbusters. My Swiss chard has been producing for months and is still going strong. I see lots of melons sizing up nicely in my melon bed. Every one of my tomato plants is one I have never grown before and I am so excited to experience them for the first time.

Enough about my garden. In a tough Gardening year what are some of your greatest successes?

I don't know about you, but I am more excited about gardening than ever!

Glenn

[Rideau Rambler]

Cool topic. Last year I got a groundcherry late from a friend and enjoyed the fruit it produced. So this year I started four way back in February. They are still small and not doing much. However, in early June a volunteer came up, it is lush and strong and gorgeous and covered in fruit. Hello groundcherry jam and pies!

My pole beans are magnificent this year, last year they were a bust so that's exciting. And tonight I dined on bush beans and swiss chard.

It is exciting!!! I have over 35 new varieties of tomato this year and I am delighted watching them forming. My striped stuffer, indigo rose, banana legs all look so neat!!!!

[BoiseGardener]

My greatest successes generally come from a prior year's great failure! After something catastrophic happens in the garden, I try to identify the problem and correct for it the following year. In general this leads to improved conditions the following year and most of the time greater success for my plants. Like Rideau Rambler said...they're are always ground cherries and tomatillos to save the day since you can't kill those dang things!

[TNTiger]

My cucumbers have done pretty well and my tomatoes are also hanging in there in spite of a rough start and lots of fungus concerns. Probably my best results have been with red bell peppers = in particular the ones in Earthboxes and Smart Pots. Sadly, the in-ground peppers are suffering with fungus.

Not a vegetable but my red geraniums are gorgeous - the prettiest I've ever seen or grown. They are thriving on the cooler temperatures!

[Rideau Rambler]

Is that the secret? My geraniums are having a stellar year, and the brown eyed Susans are popping up everywhere in my veggie garden which is great because it brings the bees. And I think I will plant oregano in every tomato row from now on, again a bee attactor with magnificent large purple blooms.

[TNTiger]

My geraniums seem to look their best when temps are between 75 and just under 90 F. They look great in the spring but get a little rough looking in the middle of the summer and then green up and get pretty again in late summer and through the fall until the first frost. I also use only fish fertilizer on them (a tip from a local nursery years ago). They also seem to like a steady supply of water. In the hottest part of the summer I water daily but taper off when it's cooler. I've just started needing to water pretty consistently. They are in clay pots so this does contribute to them drying out kind of quickly. Anyway - they are beautiful this year!

I've got marigolds, basil and cilantro planted in with my tomatoes. They aren't flowering much though!

[tlintx]

My bermuda grass is growing really well -- in my flower beds.

On a positive note, all of my spring peppers are surviving the heat and will be in a great position once it cools down a little. My corn-squash-bean pots are lush and beautiful. My greens are doing well enough that we haven't had to buy bagged mix so far this summer. And my fall tomato and pepper seedlings are looking good!

[Father'sDaughter]

My tomato plants are falling to disease (fusarium), but I've managed to get a decent amount of ripe fruit off them, I've tried lots of new varieties, and hope to get more to ripen before they succumb completely. On the plus side, I canned enough sauce last year to last me another while, and I'm getting just enough slicers to keep us happy without having to find something to do with them before they start rotting. I think I'll plant fewer eating tomatoes next year.

For the first time I had a fantastic spring lettuce crop. In the past I've tried both direct sowing and transplants with little success. This year I started my lettuce in DE (Ultrasorb from Autozone) and was able to put out seedling with massive root systems, which resulted in big healthy heads of leaf lettuce. My fall crop just went in the ground about a week ago.

The one pound of shallots I planted last fall produced over 25 pounds. My onions were much larger and healthier this year than the last two. They were also started in DE from seeds back in January, and were nice and healthy with great roots when transplanted out to the garden in early spring. And except for loosing most of one garlic variety to rot, this year's harvest was a good one.

My cukes and zukes were slow to produce, but I picked my first cuke this week, and my first two zukes should be ready within the next few days. I dug the first few squash vine borers out of the zucchini plants early on, and a weekly application of Take Down seems to be keeping new ones at bay. The eggplants are starting to come in big time. The bush beans aren't doing much, but the pole beans already produced a good amount before taking a break, and are now starting up again. Most of the hot peppers are doing great, but the sweet peppers are not doing much of anything.

All in all, some good, some not so good, but I can't wait to do it all over again next year!

[COMPOSTER]

The broccoli plants that were taken down three times by the woodchuck were the nicest that I had ever started from seed. The chuck didn't kill them just ate enough of the leaves and the head so they did not produce anything to eat. The plants were so nice I decided to leave them in the ground and I have picked about 5 side chutes from 6 plants in the last couple weeks. Decided it was time to pull them so I can open space for Fall crops. Unbelievably, one has about a 2 inch head on it and I see a dozen more side chutes to pick. Not success, but not total failure either. Also I have started to experiment seriously with mulching. Mostly with grass clippings throughout this season, but also with wood chip mulch in a few isolated areas. I planted my fall beans under a 1/2 inch of dried grass clippings and light covering of wood chip mulch. I was a bit skeptical but after being inspired by Durgan and the film "Back To Eden" I decided to go for it. 90+% germination in 5 days. Amazing! Also my fall carrots were planted under 1/2 inch of dried grass clippings. While the jury is still out on how well they will come up, I do see some of them in 7 days. My weeding has been tremendously reduced. So, I will say a rousing success to experimenting with mulching also!

Oh, and by the way, we are having excellent weather in the North east for the last few weeks!

Glenn

[cythaenopsis]

The only real success I've had this season is in gaining experience.

"Tomatoes are one of the most commonly home grown plants."
"Tomato plants are hearty and easy to grow. Anybody can do it."

So you'd think with these statements that it wouldn't require significant knowledge to do it properly. That all you do is take a pot with some soil in it, add a tomato plant, and keep it sufficiently watered with periodic fertilizing. You'll have a nice harvest of tomatoes and enjoy the fruits of your simple labors.

I thought that all of the heavy duty biology and techniques were just about optimizing tomato plant growth and that if you just did the simple stuff you'd get a nice modest crop as long as you didn't do anything terribly wrong. This is NOT the case, as I've now learned. Now I know that it is SIMPLE to grow a tomato plant, but COMPLICATED to get a decent harvest from it.