Compared to other years, the garden was disappointing. Compared to how others did with gardens this year, mine did relatively well. I was very disappointed with my tomatoes, peppers, and hot peppers. The tomatoes got early blight and I got low yields with the peppers. However, it was my best year ever for lettuce and a banner year for beans and butternut squash too. It's all a matter of perspective.

I have a few more winter squashes to pick. Ready or not they are being picked tonight. We're just not going to have enough warm days left for them.

I'm honestly not sure how mine did! It was my first real year doing it.

I got lots of zucchini until early September when the SVB's killed them and the summer squash.

I got quite a few cucumbers until about mid august when the cucumber beetles killed them.

The tomatoes did decent, but took a little longer to mature than I expected. The cherry tomatoes were excellent.

Basil and Parsley took longer than I expected as well, but once they were full grown, produced like crazy.

I was way to late getting the peas in the ground, so we only got a meal or two before it got too hot.

The bush beans did great - we ate them all summer long.

Sweet Peppers also did great, more than me and the wife could eat, and have 5 or 6 gallon bags of sliced peppers frozen - all off of 9 plants.

Overall I'm happy, but have learned a LOT, and can't wait to do even better next year.

I thought it was a great year because of all the rain. I never had to water and everything was so lush and full with all that moisture. My peppers were fantastic and I had tons of tomatoes until the deer or raccoons or some other night critter came in and ate them all. I didn't do much work outside this summer, but everything still looked great.

I had a great garden season!!! Lots of flowers, lush green grass and tons of veggies!! Did lots of canning, like gotta said "no watering"!!! That is a real plus for me!!!!
By the way Kathy, I got a datura cutting from you at the plant swap ,I think 3 years ago--I over wintered for 2 years, this year I got one cutting to root, so I planted them in the ground and they both flowered.. They were beautiful.. Was going to dig then up but the frost got them first!!!! Oh well!!!

I also had a great season, but then I was blessed to be able to devote lots of time to gardening, Here is a list of what I planned to do and what I accomplished:

*Winter-sow lots of seeds. ( status: over 100 pots both veggies and flowers)
* Add more natives to my little patch of "woods". (made some good trades and brought some others home from my adirondack camp)
* Attract hummers and more butterflies, ( 3 feeders, only one occasional hummer, planted 3 butterfly bush, WSed cone-flowers)
* Increase size of veggie beds - more variety. This means I have to deal with rabbits and woodchucks. ( the have-a -heart trap was kept busy. I had lots of variety. I planted
spinach and romaine and mesclune
peas and sugar snap peas
3 kinds of potato
3 kind of onions and garlic and leeks
asparagus
3 kinds cucumbers
2 kinds eggplant
4 kinds of peppers
corn
parsley and 3 kinds of basil
acorn squash, pumpkins and butternut squash
2 kinds of sunflowes
turnips and kale
broccoli and cauliflower
zucchini and yellow squash
wax beans and green beans and pole romano beans
cabbage and brussels sprouts
celery
over 50 tomatoes ,,, about 1/2 heirloom
I had a great harvest, way more than I could manage. I canned and froze as much as I could. The zucchini got SBV, the cukes some kind of wilt, and the tomatoes got blight. Yet I still had a good harvest.
* Clear out the massive mounts of weeds from strawberry beds ( replanted the bed)
*. Develop a small meadow garden for cone-flowers, milkweed etc.. Well, that's my butterfly garden.
* Get DH to hook up the rain-barrel. (Nope, never happened)
* Start collecting seeds so I will have some to trade and winter-sow next year. yeah.( I have 2 muffin pans of seeds waiting to get packaged>
* Plants more fruits- replace the old gooseberries, new apple tree, more blueberry. etc. ( planted 1 blueberry, 2 apple, 2 pear)

Mulchy,
Please tell us more about what you plantes and put up.

kim

Hi Kathy and everyone else too!
Overall, I was very happy with this year. My tomatoes and peppers did wonderful. The rain really helped a lot of things. The roses were gorgeous.
I was not happy with the hail twice in one day. That was bad. I had just planted out my eggplants which really looked great. They got trashed and took forever to recover.
My father and husband built me a trex deck on the back of the house this summer, and I built quite a bit of new flower bed space, so I'm really looking forward to next year!
Remy

Showoffs!!!!!!!!!!!lol Glad everyone else's garden did great but not mine.

I planted only open-pollinated varieties this year. Tomatoes started poorly, with BE Rot on every Brandywine until mid-season, then they came on strong. I didn't get any of them staked, so it was a mess, but we still got lots of tomatoes, especially the Romas. Saved some seed from each variety.
Cucumbers started nicely -- 3 varieties -- but quit completely after one good picking. We got some nice plckles, though. Zucchini (Cocozelle) and yellow squash did poorly. Got a wheelbarrow full of acorn and butternut, plus some that volunteered in the compost pile.
Radishes did well, and bush and pole beans were excellent!
I was late getting my potatoes in -- just threw tangles of sprouts into two trenches -- and ended up getting over a bushel each of German Butterball and Red Pontiac! Go figure!
My 3-year-old granddaughter wanted to help in the garden, so I got her some nice garden tools, set off one corner for her, and she planted a sunflower, 2 dahlias, and 6 Connecticut field pumpkin seeds. She got beautiful blooms, and a pile of great big pumpkins, and now she's hooked on gardening! Nest year she wants to plant birdhouse gourds, a pole bean house, and she helped me to dig up all the dahlia tubers to plant and trade for next year.