Gardeners: How have your crops done this year?

[Joel_BC]

Some of us have been dealing with unusual weather conditions... though maybe it's not the case for everyone. There are always soil conditions, new crop/variety trials, experimental cultivation methods, pests and plant diseases, etc.

How's it been going in your garden?

 

[moolie]

Can't complain at all, really--especially when I keep hearing about all the droughts across North America.

We had a very mild winter compared to the past few (very cold) years (so I guess that was unusual), a warm wet spring (pretty normal, last year was way colder), and summer so far has been in the mid 20s Celcius with the occasional thunderstorm that has meant we haven't had to water much (pretty normal temps and storm patterns).

We did have a week or so of low 30s Celcius back mid-July when we had to watch that things didn't fry up in the garden, and we have had occasional hail with the thunderstorms, but everything has pulled through ok.

The only things lagging behind are the pumpkins and cukes, and the pepper plants don't seem very big this year to be setting flowers. The carrots are growing like crazy, the tomatoes look very happy and none of what remains shows any signs of the blight that caused us to chuck all of our cherry tomatoes, parsnips and swedes are doing well, corn is 3' high, peas and beans are podding nicely... so all seems pretty good there.

Our apple trees got hit by wind during blossom time so they are a little light on fruit this year, and our raspberries haven't really done much (but it's only the year after we put them in so as I recall from our old place it will take a while before they are producing well).

 

[so lucky]

We had a three month span of time with only about 1/2 inch of rain. And record heat, of course. Now it is raining almost every day lately. Still very hot. It's gonna make my tomatoes burst!
Crops: beans, blossoming but not setting beans. Tomatoes, good production, but blossom end rot in the romas. Cabbage, good; Cucumbers, very good; onions, good; lettuce and spinach, good; broccoli, not so good; peppers, not good; potatoes, poor; squash, nil--hasn't set a single fruit. Cantaloupe, looks good so far.

 

[baymule]

Some have done great, others, not so much. Our garden is small, in the front yard between the sidewalk and driveway because most of the yard is too shaded. So instead of a row of this or that, I count plants. 3 bell peppers, 14 squash, 20 tomatoes, 25 green beans, you get the idea. But overall, this has been a really good year especiallly after last year and the worst drought in 60 years.

The tomatoes produced so much that I had enough to can soup and dehydrated quite a bit. Now they have slowed to a crawl in our ferocious heat and we get enough to slice a few for supper. Of all things, corn worms decimated our tomatoes to begin with, eating the bottoms out and we wern't getting ANY! Then I discovered Voo-Doo Juice and the worms were history!

http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=33761


I planted red potatoes in early spring in 2 tiny beds and was rewarded with a HUGE increase!

http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=33864

I planted for the 3rd year green beans from Baker Creek, Thailand #3 and they have outdone themselves!

http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=33860

I planted sweet potato slips from store bought sweet potaotes that were sprouting on my kitchen counter. They are running riot now and thriving in our Texas hotter-then-hades-heat! We'll see when we dig them if they are a success story or not.

http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=33974

I have 3 bell pepper plants that were slow to take off and the first few got BER and we didn't get to eat them. Now they are loaded and I am licking my chops.

The zuchinni and yellow squash (8 plants of each) exploded with growth and we picked 6-12 squash every other day. Then just as they gave up and dried up, I found a recipe for zuchinni cobbler that is out of this world and I replanted and have 14 zuchinni that have been up about 2 weeks now.

I planted cherry tomatoes, late, and they are loaded with little green yummies. The green onions I planted last fall, that we didn't eat, grew large enough to make a respectable table onion and we are still eating those. The okra is producing well, but I don't have enough room for rows of okra, so it takes a week of cutting okra to make a mess. The basil grew 3 feet high, has gone to seed and I pulled seed and tossed it on the ground. I noticed tiny green leaves growing yesterday. I planted Jimmy Nardello seed from 2 years ago, some came up and I wound up with 3 plants that are loaded with peppers. Waiting on them to turn red so we can eat them! The one bananna pepper plant I planted have given us ONE bananna pepper ALL SUMMER!

The cucumbers took off, we got to eat a few, then they turned yellow, brown and crunchy. Dead. Oh well. I got periwinkle plants from a friend and scattered them through the garden for color and they are pretty. I also scattered marigolds in the garden and they provide color. The corn worms ate them too this spring. I didn't think ANYTHING ate marigolds! The flowers attract bees and butterflies, our pollinators. We also have volunteer wild sunflowers that pop up by the hundreds every spring. We pull all but a few because we love the pretty flowers.

Planning the fall garden now.

 

[luvinlife offthegrid]

What the bugs didn't eat of my pea plants, they were surprisingly productive despite the heat. Of My bush beans that germinated from 2 year old seed, they are pretty productive. My pumpkins are growing well, and I have a few baby watermelons. I have a 300 gallon rain tank hooked up to the house gutter system. I have two 4x16 raised beds, so even though we have had very little rain, I've been able to keep things growing. The tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets lost a few fruits to a thunderstorm a week ago. Yesterday I noticed that one plant had brown splotches on the stems, and white streaking throughout the fruit. I have late blight. :-/. I dunno how with it being so dry. I think I'm going to grab bushels this week at the farm before they get it, if they haven't already.

 

[BarredBuff]

Despite everything, all is well here. My early crops, did not do good. Got a few to eat but nothing to put up. The brocolli and peas, I had enough to freeze and eat fresh. The cabbage was not good, and the early corn FAILED. Beans did alright, enough to eat.

The main season stuff is doing great. The potatoes out did my expectations, and are great. Plentiful and huge. The tomatoes are okay, not the best we have ever had. The melons are thriving, and the peppers are good. The corn is the prettiest I have ever seen, and will begin canning it thursday. The beans look good and I will probably have several to can in a week or two. The swuash are doing great too, and the onions did good.

Really, I can't complain. The main season, which is my canning foods, are doing great. We had to water, of course. But lately the rain is helping it.

 

[Hinotori]

I have peas coming along great still and some broccoli doing good. The tomatoes I planted caught something when the weather turned cooler again and they've about had it. I'm just hoping they last long enough for the fruit to ripen. The cucumbers I planted never did anything, but I have some volunteer acorn squash running rampant in my compost/chicken litter pile that I hope will put out some flowers here soon.

The service berries I planted in June are growing like mad. My blue berries in pots are almost ripe and will actually get out in the ground when the rains come back since I decided I don't want them so close to the chickens who eat the green berries. I planted a big pot with tarragon and it's doing well. The chickens ate the one I'd had for three years so I had to replace it. It over winters fine here.

I have a huge pot of lemon verbena that I love. Already harvested and dried a cutting of leaves and it's almost big enough for me to cut it again. I'll have tea all winter with how it's growing.

I planted some of the high oil peppermint against the house where I don't want to have to trim anymore. Just a few runners planted last fall that is 3 feet across now. I've cut it once already as well and it's more than big enough for me to cut again. The single little runner I planted on the other side of the steps had a setback from chickens scratching in it's dirt, but it's starting to take off now. I planted some out in the damp soil by one of the streams this spring. We'll see how it does over winter with how wet it gets.

I've been cutting out the himalayan and cutleaf blackberries and trying to encourage the native trailing blackberry to grow. I need to put out a trellis to tie those to or make them grow in rows since the vine creeps along the ground instead of erect. There are a few trying to come up by the well house that I may have to move since we are going to build a new one. Other wise I'd train them up the side on a lattice. So far I'm having very good luck encouraging them where I want them and should get a lot of tasty berries next year.

 

[Dawn419]

Thanks to the excessive heat and drought, it hasn't been a good year here.

Temps here hit the mid 90's in April (and were close in March) so spring crops that thrive in cool temps fizzled and worse. We didn't get our normal spring rains, on top of the warmer temps so it's been a major "fail" as far as the spring/summer garden season is concerned.

We lost the dozen baby figs on our small Brown Turkey Fig "bush" (with weekly soakings) and it's a heat loving plant.

I plan on starting to sow my fall garden with head held high, despite still being "blessed" with crazy high temps. It was 110F in the shade at 4:30 p.m. today.

The lemon balm, yarrow and oregano all did well and is still growing like mad with no extra watering but the parsley and dill didn't do well at all.

 

[Joel_BC]

Thanks to the excessive heat and drought, it hasn't been a good year here.

I commiserate with you, Dawn. Though from the standpoint of different weather conditions.

So far we've had a year of cool nights, even during those sporadic periods when the sun has been out during the day and when midday (say, 1:00-4:00PM) has been pretty hot. Mostly, we've had a lot of overcast, and the rainiest June on record! And cloud & rain continued well into June.

Result: corn stunted - and any corn plants that we did not start in our greenhouse are super-stunted (in fact, most of that seed rotted in the ground and didn't show at all!). And that's with us having planted three different short-season varieties.

An outdoor planting of jalapeno peppers has done terribly (thank goodness our Jupiter bell peppers have done okay outside). Squash are developing slowly this year. A few outdoor tomato plants have done pretty badly, though all the vine-type super-yielding plants in our greenhouse have done very well. So have the cukes we planted in there.

Again on the positive side, berries have yielded well, cool-weather loving or tolerant crops like lettuce, spinach, potatoes, onions, and garlic have all done well. (Our carrots need another thinning, and we probably will have decent beets.)

We seem to have been able to overcome our blight problems - which killed off all our poratoes and tomatoes last year - by choosing blight-resistant varieties and using an organic bacterial soil drench product that consumes the fungus that causes the blight. Similarly, we've made strides against the clubroot (caused by a soil slime mold) by using an organic bacterial innoculation... the brocolli has done quite well, though the treatment did not seem to benefit the cauliflower quite as much.

Last year was depressingly cool, too. I still don't quite know how to plan for it, especially with the corn, which normally was the most feasible grain for us.

 

[Bettacreek]

Well, my garden WOULD have done VERY well this year, except for the birds. I can NOT keep them out of the garden. They tear the fence down, dig under it, fly over it, etc. My tomato plants look like something out of a fairy tale, but they get eaten right before they start to turn orange. I'm seriously ready to just kill every last bird and be done with them. The pepper plants look like sticks sticking out of the ground. Every last bean plant looks the same. The bean plants had been doing really, really well, until the birds got to them and destroyed them. The lettuces barely poke up before they're devoured. I think I've pretty much given up on getting any kind of produce out of my garden, because I don't have the money for more fencing, more posts, etc.