Success:
- The herbs in the front garden are ridiculously large (and need to be dried/frozen for winter). I have so much I don't think I could use them in the next 5 years. The whole front garden wound up looking really amazing (I know I should have a picture, but I don't). The landscaping isn't quite finished because we ran out of free compost, but it should be finished with pictures next spring. The front yard also proved to be a good area for growing, with good sunshine until late August when the sun got to low on the horizon. I have lots of plans to make better use of the space next year.
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| Crazy Herb harvest (and some green tomatoes). These herbs represent only a small fraction of what is in my garden. |
- My cucumbers were abundant and I even managed to have enough to can some relish.
- The tomato and pepper harvest has been modest (it was a pretty cool year), but the plants are healthy and continue to produce.
- The peas all did well and produced all season (because of the aforementioned cool year). They would have done even better if Darwyn did not continually ravage them.
- The baby carrots did well and are delicious. I wish I had planted more.
- The raspberries were reliable as ever. They produced a bountiful harvest all July, much to my son's delight. He was an excellent raspberry picker. Hopefully he will stay that way as he gets older :)
- The strawberries did not produce very heavily, but they were delicious and a huge hit with the kids. Next year I think I will decrease the amount of garden space spent on them and transition to only ever bearing varieties.
- The lettuce and spinach harvest was good, but short. Next year I will need to make more effort to stagger my plantings and plant earlier. The spinach was definitely planted too late.
- I wasn't sure whether the rhubarb was a failure or a sucess. It got sick and died of the same thing that killed it every other year, but it lasted longer this year than any other year. Also, everyone else's rhubarb died this year too. Apparently it was a bad year for rhubarb. I got some more plants which I planted in the front. They have been attacked by the same fungus, but apparently they have been more resistant to it than everyone else's rhubarb...so perhaps that is a success?
Failure (although this isn't completely fair because I still got a harvest off these plants):
- I planted a variety pack of carrots in the front. The carrots did well and look great to look at but they taste somewhat bitter, especially the peel. If we peel and cook them they are still quite good, but I usually enjoy carrots raw and I was disappointed that these were not tasty without cooking. Did I do something wrong?
- My beans and zucchini did not produce much, which is unusual. The zucchini was ill, but actually the illness rained it in so we got just about the right amount of zucchini. I'm not sure why the beans didn't produce much. They are usually very successful and they look healthy.
- My onions were a total flop. The spot I planted them in did not get enough sun and the onions never got bigger than a golf ball. They made a delicious baby onion harvest though.
- I was really excited to try growing Florence fennel after I tasted it this spring. My fennel is huge, healthy and gorgeous, but it has no bulb. I'm not sure why...if anyone has any insight I would love to hear it.
- I was really excited about my grapes. They grew large and beautiful and I had many bunches start to turn purple...but we left to visit my sister right about harvest time and when we returned a local raccoon had harvested half of them for us. He came 4 times in the first evening we were back to visit the grapes again (much to my children's delight) and every time we had to scare him away with a broom. I got concerned that he would polish off all my ripe grapes before I went to bed and so I went out and picked them all (save two or three hard to reach bunches) so that they could finish ripening inside. Turns out grapes don't ripen off the vine. I had a lot of unripe sour grapes on my hands....so we made raisins. They were quite tasty, but they took 3 days in an electric food dryer to turn from grapes into raisins. And there were almost none. The box you see pictured below made about 1/2 cup of raisins. Oh well, at least the raccoon lost too.
I still have a planting of kale growing in the garden for harvest this fall. I may have planted it too late in the season....we will see how it goes. I loved the garden this year and I am already dreaming about what I will plant next summer, so I guess that is success enough.
