How's your garden now?

[Emerald]

Well due to health issues we didn't plant too much.. definitely less than most years.
I went back to an older type of heirloom/op tomato Rutgers which ripens more at once than a bit here and there and with the heat and drought this year(I did water) they seemed to be very behind in setting fruit. I just picked my first round today.. about 25lbs. Bad thing is the plants were beautiful and even with the heat and dry they looked lovely.. then we got a nice break in the weather and had a few days of cool with rain and then more normal weather.. that is when the blight struck.. with in a week almost all of the plants foliage browned and died off. only the very tops of the plants are still there growing.. but they are ripening up and not getting icky.
We went on a small vacation right when my pole beans were producing the best. we did get enuf for several meals and I did get a few packs frozen but the rest I just let go seed.. lucky for me the types I grow make wonderful soup beans( Roma pole and Rattlesnake pole and a wax pole called yellow pencil) so will probably end up with a couple gallon jugs of beans.

The cucumbers started off slow and just now have really come thru. only had a couple of plants give it up and turn yellow on me. I just grew a mini burpless heirloom called Muncher this year.
Four types of cherry tomatoes just for the grand kids. Large Red cherry which is doing well/Yellow Submarine which is a yellow pear type that tastes better than just yellow pear also heirloom, they have already croaked off due to blight. but we ate them till they were gone/Black cherry which is still looking great, no blight and just starting to ripen and a new one from burpee that my grand daughter just had to have.. Green Gooseberry and that one is a bit harder to tell when it is ripe, has no blight what so ever and tastes very nice.. it is also just starting to ripen. She did give me the stink eye when I told her to eat one.. I had to eat half before she would pop it in her mouth.. but after that.. she loved them too..

We also had Purple Peruvian potatoes from last year and they had long runners when we found them in the basement so son dug up a spot in the garden and plunked them in.. last week the tops were lush and just starting to yellow and today.. all brown and dry and there were a couple potatoes right up on the surface so I grabbed them and brought them in and will probably try getting them out of the ground in the next couple days.
The plain old store bought potatoes that someone dumped in the compost bin are still big and bushy and just starting to yellow at the bottom so hoping they will produce well.. I did dig down and pluck a few of the little ones for new potatoes earlier this summer..

The old yellow crookneck that I planted late is producing more than we can eat so I let a few get bigger for the chickens.. but the zucchini that I planted was planted in a bad spot and is getting too much shade so I have yet to see one.. but I can see them in there so hoping for a couple.. will have to remember not to plant anything but lettuce in that spot next year..

Had no peaches/apricots/apples this year and the cherry tree is still a baby so didn't bloom.. darn old 80 degree weather in march.. For two weeks.. poo...
Had a great crop of red raspberries and got some jams(seedless) made and make a wonderful raspberry cake with raspberry fluff icing for grand daughters birthday.. but later that week I went to pick another round and found many of the plants trampled and most of the berries gone! Found several culprits.. between the ground hog and raccoons(found their footie prints) they didn't even leave me enuf for a pie but good news.. The fall Ann yellow raspberries are putting out huge flowering branches so maybe one last chance for pie!
But we didn't do any other veggies this year. Lucky for me the big farm stand a couple miles up the road always has beautiful veggies. and rock bottom prices we buy much of the veggies from them that we don't grow either or don't do well for us.. I can grow hot peppers like weeds but not nice big bells and they sell them (all colors) for .40 cents each.. they also grow some of the best squashes and cabbages and they are easier for me to buy some years than to grow.. at 3/$1 small squashes(buttercup/acorn/delicata/sweet dumpling and a few I don't know the names of) I almost can't grow them for that price. They have bigger ones at different prices too.. like 2/$1 and $1 to about $4 for the huge ones like the big blue and orange hubbards.

But.. I have high hopes for next year.. I want to try my hand at sweet potatoes.. I have taken a mad liking to sweet potato fries... Curse you Burger King!

 

[baymule]

I garden in beds in the front yard. I pulled the tomatoes last week and prepared that bed for the broccoli seeds I will plant in the next week or two. Today I dug, composted and limed two more beds that I will plant cauliflower and lettuce in. The sweet potatoes are swarmed all over three beds, can't wait to dig them. Okra is drying up, saving the last pods for seed. I am green beaned to death. They are still producing long beans, enough to feed the whole darn town. The second planting of left over squash seeds yeilded three zuchinnis and three yellow squash that are starting to bloom. Basil has had it. Bell peppers are loaded, but don't get big, it is so hot. Jimmy Nardello peppers finally ripened, have had them three times. When I dig the sweet potatoes, I'll plant mustard greens. When I pull the okra, I'll plant turnips. I'll buy green onion sets at the feed store as soon as they show up and I always plant them around the edges of the beds.

 

[Joel_BC]

The potatoes have begun their late-season die-back. I've got five varieties, and have harvested three: Corne du Moutons, Victorias, and Sieglinde's. The first type is very nice to eat and real prolific, though they're not a large potato (and are kinda banana shaped). The second type is normal shaped, can grow to a medium-size baker, but did not multiply (weight-wise) all that much - maybe a four-to-one return. The Sieglinde potatoes are medium size, "buttery" consistency (and choice to eat), and prolific. With the two types still in the ground with living tops, I expect they will be substantial producers, also.

What corn we got - and it was a pathetic crop - we've now harvested. Weather was unsupportive, and was also hard on outdoor-planted hot peppers and squash. With the squash, it was mainly a slow development of the plants, late fruiting, etc. I've been moaning about this on other posts on other threads. The bad year wasn't just due to coolish, damp days - it was lack of warm nights, because normally warmth develops builds up and accummulates over a stretch of weeks. Without that, its always bad for corn, hot peppers, squash, etc.

Tomatoes in the greenhouse are still producing. But of course if our tomatoes hadn't been started early and put into a greenhouse, they would not have done well at all. We had cukes in the greenhouse, too, and they produced well, but the plants got the mosaic virus and the leaves went speckly and eventually brown, etc. So we've pulled the cuke plants.

Bell peppers did well outdoors (but again started indoors under fluorescent lights in good starter soil). Berries, lettuce, radishes, onions, and garlic did well... cabbage family did okay. We're happy about that.

 

[moolie]

Corn is doing so incredibly well--we're very happy with its progress and how many ears have developed, just need enough time for them to mature!

Will be bringing in all the garden tomatoes today, cool daytime temps and frosty nights forecast for this week and they'll finish ripening just fine indoors at this point--most have a rosy blush or are very yellow (except the Yellow Pears for some reason, they seem late this year).

We'll leave the greenhouse tomatoes out a couple weeks longer to ripen as many on the vine as possible. Greenhouse bell peppers are totally done, didn't get much in terms of size off them but the flavour was good. The greenhouse celery did really well, definitely doing that again next year--have been taking stalks off the outer edges of the plants for cooking for a few weeks and will keep them going as long as possible.

Everything else is done and put up or eaten

 

[me&thegals]

We did a lot of harvesting this weekend:

3 gallons raspberries yesterday

I was pulling out 3/4-lb carrots and beets Fri night!
DH was digging sweet potatoes up to 4.75 lb!! A man bought that bad boy at my market on Sat and walked around acting like it was a football on his shoulder
Insanely prolific French fingerling harvest Sat night.

So overall an excellent year. Anything vining has been devastated by bugs, but the root veggies are making up for it.

 

[Mickey328]

Wow, sounds like a great season for you! Our season here has been...so-so. We have a few zucchinis that are still at it, but they weren't prolific this year at all. Except for our grape (which is going gangbusters) the tomatoes are pretty lacksadaisical...I had to buy romas for canning. I never plant corn...it just takes too much water in our arid climate and we don't have that much garden space. Garlic tho...oh my...we have TONS of the stuff, LOL. Last fall I had a couple heads I'd bought that were starting to sprout so I sent DH out to just stick the cloves around here and there...we must have about 35 plants now.

Next year we're going to move out from the garden spot as well...I have a lot of border area that we de-sodded as well as the entire front yard. I plan to stick stuff in pretty much everywhere...who says you can't have parsley growing in with the flowers??

 

[moolie]

We did a lot of harvesting this weekend:

3 gallons raspberries yesterday

I was pulling out 3/4-lb carrots and beets Fri night!
DH was digging sweet potatoes up to 4.75 lb!! A man bought that bad boy at my market on Sat and walked around acting like it was a football on his shoulder
Insanely prolific French fingerling harvest Sat night.

So overall an excellent year. Anything vining has been devastated by bugs, but the root veggies are making up for it.

Sounds like a banner year despite your lack of vine crops

Wow, sounds like a great season for you! Our season here has been...so-so. We have a few zucchinis that are still at it, but they weren't prolific this year at all. Except for our grape (which is going gangbusters) the tomatoes are pretty lacksadaisical...I had to buy romas for canning. I never plant corn...it just takes too much water in our arid climate and we don't have that much garden space. Garlic tho...oh my...we have TONS of the stuff, LOL. Last fall I had a couple heads I'd bought that were starting to sprout so I sent DH out to just stick the cloves around here and there...we must have about 35 plants now.

Next year we're going to move out from the garden spot as well...I have a lot of border area that we de-sodded as well as the entire front yard. I plan to stick stuff in pretty much everywhere...who says you can't have parsley growing in with the flowers??

I often borrow a book from my library that is called The edible front yard : the mow-less, grow-more plan for a beautiful, bountiful garden that recommends mixing your decorative plants with your edible plants to add growing space in your front yard. We're not quite there yet, but we've always grown herbs in amongst our flowers and this year we did add pumpkins and cardoon to our front perennial bed this year to make a start at it, we'll be expanding in that direction over the next few years

 

[Mickey328]

We're moving that way as well. We took out ALL the grass from the front yard and about 20 to 25% of the back (along the fenceline) I've got a good substruction of perennial shrubs and flowers, so now we're going to move the edibles in. I actually did plant some clover and oats in the front this spring...in a few patches, and it's really very attractive as well as useful.