What is THRIVING, in your garden, this year?

I'm in need of some growy GOOD news!
My lemongrass is doing fantastic! The sage, thyme, and rosemary are abundant, and thriving beyond my hopes. I've discovered several types of fleabane growing well (very good news, considering we are getting puppies, this autumn!), the wild mullein is doing beautifully, and hasn't suffered at all, for my early harvest, and the clover and plantain are growing lush, and tormenting my pullets, with desire, lol!

Nice idea to focus on what is doing really well, where I tend to focus on the disappointments.  

This year I've got several varieties of tomatoes going in a new hugelkultur raised bed.  Normally my tomatoes are all rather lackluster.  This year they are doing the best I've ever seen by far!  I've got a jungle of tomato vines, many taking over the trellis that was intended for the pole beans, and they are loaded with tomatoes!  

My seakale, a perennial type kale, finally settled in and really grew for the first year ever flowering beautifully.  I should have harvested some of the florets but just let it go.  Now I've got quite a few seed pods developing I can hopefully use to start more plants.

The bronze fennel is going gangbusters as it normally does.  I really need to find some good ways to use it all.  Currently it is mostly food abundance going to waste.

The bulk of my harvests for the past few weeks have been daylilies and milkweed, both of which are doing excellent like normal.  The milkweed has now moved into the immature pod stage of harvest.

Perhaps not thriving yet, but I'm still absolutely delighted to see that this year the perennial wild sweet peas I've been trying to start are getting established.  Several have flowered for the first time.  I'm going to continue to encourage them to spread and take over their zones as these are want to do.  Then I should have an abundance each year of early shoots, followed by tender immature pods, and later dried peas to eat.  The side bonus will be all the glorious flowers!

I planted a rosemary in a bucket in my greenhouse and it seems to be doing fabulous too.  I'm quite happy about that as I've never had luck with them in the past.

It's a strong sweet clover year. Everything else is just doing ok. It's been a weird year. It was cold, cold, cold then HOT HOT HOT. No real in between.

Peppers! I usually figure 1or 2 peppers per plant, with some producing nothing. This year it's more like 5 peppers per plant :)

Raspberries.... yum. Planted one this year and getting a few a day.

Peas! Mine are still produring like crazy. I am picking every 2 or 3 days. Usually I get only 1 or 2 meals and don't know why I bother planting them.  

Tomatos are slow but it looks like I may eventually get my first ever large tomatos not picked green.

It's been a slow and disappointing year otherwise, but its great to remember at least some things are doing well.

Earlier this season I got a pretty good haul of spring peas, lettuce, baby potatoes, and radish seed pods. Just in time for the end of the peas, the first of my summer beans are starting to form. :) They're sunset runner beans, which are like scarlet runner beans but with a light pink flower. My other beans are quickly catching up. Tomatoes are going crazy but I've only gotten one fully ripe one so far, which I picked and ripened off the vine because I noticed it was splitting a bit. My squash are also doing a lot better than in previous years. I'm getting a good amount of flowers on them so I'm hoping I'll get some pollinated ones soon. I think I was underwatering them last year.

I'm actually having a really good year in the garden this year! Our summer dry season has been interrupted with a few random sprinklings of rain, which the plants have really appreciated. There have been some kind of pests eating a few plants but overall it's been really productive.

i'm in winter, so things are weird, but I have a few bits of good news....

the peas had a slow start but are finally covered in flowers. First pods were delish and they are the tallest peas I've ever had.
Winter tomatoes look fabulous. I have too many pests for summer tomatoes, so I plant them in pots under an awning, it is JUST BARELY warm enough for them.
I also put a long-suffering blood orange in the ground a few months ago (it was tormented by aphids and ants for years while it lived in a pot) and it is now COVERED with blossoms. This is a young tree that has produced exactly one (01) orange in its life with me.
And I planted one entire bed with forage for the rabbits. The sorghum died but the peas came up, so I reseeded oats, and now it is just lush deliciousness for the little poopers to eat.
And I have a patch of sunflowers, which I threw out in the bed in a fit of frustration. In winter. Go figure. (the rabbits will love them later too).

Early spring the strawberries did their best ever, then  lots of spring greens and kale and collards.  Peaches are looking great and so are the asian pears.  My potted dahlias (edible flowers) and moringa 'shrubs' are both excellent providers at the moment.
We're excited about every little thing that comes out of our new garden space, it's maybe not thriving by most standards but producing pretty good potatoes, cucumbers and beans for a first year spot.

"What is THRIVING, in your garden, this year?"

Bunnies.... :-/.....otherwise, things that bunnies don't like, such as tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and hot peppers.

Sweet Potatoes, Moringa, Walking Onions

John Weiland wrote:"What is THRIVING, in your garden, this year?"

Bunnies.... :-/.....otherwise, things that bunnies don't like, such as tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and hot peppers.

Stew AND mittens you say!

The best performers this year are many types of tomatoes, black eyed peas, & sweet potatoes. Have harvested only one sweet potato plant just to check progress. Looked good but the leaves alone are worth it, they are very tasty. Fully expecting to be overwhelmed with the tubers a little later this season. Various cucumbers, beans, & okra have also done well. Watermelons started slow but are looking better now. Summer squash suffered but most of the winter squash is doing good. Had a better than expected beet harvest. Will plant a larger amount & more variety of those next year. Too early to harvest peanuts but they are still looking strong.

Buckwheat is easy here & has done very well. Experimented with hulless oats & highland rice this year. The oats produced & the rice is starting to look like it might also.

Transplanted some asparagus of various ages & types into a new garden last year. Some had been moved several times. Harvested a little this year but left most intact. They are looking very healthy now. Looking forward to my best ever asparagus crop next year!!!

Started a strawberry patch this year. Didn't harvest many but the plants have expanded greatly. Even the ones from seed are still doing great. Blackberries are still producing & a wild raspberry I brought here last year is finally starting to give a few berries. The chickens say they taste good. Elderberries are forming fruit now.

The wildflower expansion project didn't go as well as hoped but some are doing good. Comfrey & yarrow are too. We have wild mullein so that's a good thing. Found a little more wild ginseng. Ornamental sunflowers did good but are starting to die off. A big storm last week didn't help. Some black oil sunflowers volunteered in the chicken garden. Hoping there is enough warm weather left to get a small crop of those. Peppermint has outgrown it's container so will move it into an unused portion of a flower bed soon.

It's starting to look like a great chestnut harvest this fall.

Various types of corn are almost ready to harvest. The wild critters know it too. They are systematically knocking it down & eating/destroying it. A little more each night. ARGH.

Almost finished building this hugel. Started gathering seeds for the initial planting. Some are just to get roots in the soil quickly but long term it will be for perennials.

You win some, you lose some. Overall I would call this a successful season of gardening here.

Beets, kohlrabi, and raddichio have done really well in our abnormally wet and cool spring and summer.

Potatoes are going great; the rotted woodchips I dumped on that area of the garden really agreed with them.

I was overwhelmed by so many redcurrants and black raspberries that I could not harvest them all.

I forgot to mention that Tatume Squash did exceptionally well until I let the fruit mature and the plants died back.  We had weeks of too many summer squash to eat (shared loads with neighbors) and now we have many winter squash to eat in the coming months.

David Huang wrote:

Perhaps not thriving yet, but I'm still absolutely delighted to see that this year the perennial wild sweet peas I've been trying to start are getting established.  Several have flowered for the first time.  I'm going to continue to encourage them to spread and take over their zones as these are want to do.  Then I should have an abundance each year of early shoots, followed by tender immature pods, and later dried peas to eat.  The side bonus will be all the glorious flowers!

Perhaps off topic, but I thought it was important to note that the flower commonly known as sweet peas in the United States (Lathyrus odoratus) is toxic (all parts). Garden peas (pisum sativum) on the other hand are delicious, but annual. I'm not familiar with a perennial edible pea. What species are you growing?

My sunflowers are amazing.  I always plant flowers in my veggie garden, and this year my sunflowers are 12 to 15 feet tall.  So much for deadheading them.  It's so amazing to see them so high in the sky, it makes me smile every time.

It is hot here, so tomatoes, peppers and corn all look amazing.

John Weiland wrote:"What is THRIVING, in your garden, this year?"

Bunnies.... :-/.....otherwise, things that bunnies don't like, such as tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and hot peppers.

I see your bunnies, and raise you an invisible woodchuck!



Switzerland, the extremely camera shy woodchuck that lives in the yard. Named Switzerland because in the constantly running battles in the yard between the chickens, cat, squirrels, rabbits and crows, he/she is a neutral,  no one fights with him and no one even looks at him, like he's invisible. It's weird.

Other than wildlife, sunchokes are taller than me, no flowers, but good growth. Peanuts might be doing ok, they are peeking up over the grass. And grass. Grass is thriving and amok.

Holy Crap, my zucchini is going bananas!  I've grown zucchini before.  I know not to plant too many.  But this year I have a plant that is absolutely stunning.  Unless I've lived with mediocre zucchini all these years and now I have a normal one?

Here's what I just picked (5 bigguns and a rubber ducky).  We picked 2 fruit off it three days ago.  There are several more about 10" long that will be ripe by Monday.  Is this normal?  I have three more plants to go pick but I filled my bag with just this one.

Pearl Sutton wrote:

John Weiland wrote:"What is THRIVING, in your garden, this year?"

Bunnies.... :-/.....otherwise, things that bunnies don't like, such as tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and hot peppers.

I see your bunnies, and raise you an invisible woodchuck!



....

That's why so many have bank accounts in Switzerland....they just disappear from sight! :-)  Great story of his mingling with your other animals.... Rodentia seems to be having a banner year!

Mike Jay,...... What you are experiencing looks pretty normal to me for zukes.  Ours are unusually behind this year, but have a bevy of little ones just ready to explode on the bushes.  Against the backdrop of other losses, we are welcoming the windfall.

Mike Jay wrote:Holy Crap, my zucchini is going bananas!  I've grown zucchini before.  I know not to plant too many.  But this year I have a plant that is absolutely stunning.  Unless I've lived with mediocre zucchini all these years and now I have a normal one?

Here's what I just picked (5 bigguns and a rubber ducky).  We picked 2 fruit off it three days ago.  There are several more about 10" long that will be ripe by Monday.  Is this normal?  I have three more plants to go pick but I filled my bag with just this one.

Yup. Now, you have a normal one. You're also letting them grow much larger than I ever have, lol (I usually pick at about 10"). I LOVE the rubber ducky!!!

Wow, all these years with under-performers...  Normally I get about two fruit per plant every 3-4 days.  This was 6 in one day with several more ready for Monday or Tuesday.  I guess my zucks are only doing ok...

Potatoes and bananas are thriving though.  Everything else seems to be a couple weeks behind schedule.

My cool weather crops thrived this year. (Our last spring frost was June 21st.)

I had my best harvest ever of fava beans. Good thing I planted many more than usual.

The brassicas really thrived: broccoli, cabbage.

The wheat and barley was outstanding!

5 out of 6 corn crops are growing marvelously.

For various reasons, I couldn't get to my garden for weeks, during which the temperature fluctuated something like 60 degrees F.  Also, every single new rabbit protector was knocked over.  It must have been by wind, though, as the plants are intact and the protectors are now stabilized.

The garden is untidy and many things didn't survive, BUT:

--All the perennial alliums I put in look happy.  
--The lemon balm is doing great and finally being the aggressive groundcover I knew it could be.
--All the edible flowers edging my annual bed are growing like crazy.
--Both new grapes made it and will soon need some training.
--My asian pear and cornelian cherry trees are both loaded.
--My perennial greens bed is full of edible leaves, especially perennial buckwheat which looks like it will need regular harvesting to keep it from taking over the world.
--My hazelnut trees are filled.  Now just to compete with the squirrels.
--Edited to add:  I tried those silly felt bags for potatoes, with some half-digested compost and excessively old potatoes.  Potatoes never grow for me, but there they are in the bags.  Need more compost!

It could be a gorgeous garden, if I were there regularly.  But the stubbornest plants are surviving despite me and it's only going to get better.

Bugs. Bugs are thriving this year. Not only the butterflies, bees, wasps and spiders that I want, but squash bugs, horn worms, army worms, leaf rollers and beetles. And don't forget the fire ants. Both ends of the garden area pollinator paradise.
Aside from that... Roselle, sweet potato, asparagus, kale, collards and Everglades tomatoes. Sugarcane needs trimming so it stops whipping me. Herbs are going gangbusters. Elderberry looks fantastic, I've got a few figs ripening. The passionfruit is trying to take over the world. Various berries are putting on new growth. I should mention that this is a fairly young garden, less than 2 years old.
The perennials are doing so well that I'm going to have to start a new garden for annual crops!
I'm getting ready for fall with regular veggies - beans, tomatoes, peppers, corn, squash and pumpkin, potatoes...some crops will have to wait until late October/early November - they don't do well in Florida's long hot summer.

Julie Williams wrote:The passionfruit is trying to take over the world.

And that is one thing that I definitely don't mind taking over!  

I saw passionfruit in a local supermarket recently and it was going for $2.50/each.  Just knowing that makes me feel rich.  It looked like a different variety though, with purple mottled skin instead of the deep green that I'm used to seeing.  

The hummingbirds! We began the hb season with 4 pairs. Now, I've lost count! It seems the babies have all taken wing. I got up to a count of 20, a couple days ago, but they don't exactly hold still, for roll call, and I KNOW there were more than 20 - they're almost like a swarm. I'm so proud of my hb 'flock', lol!

The tomatoes are doing quite well. The new heirloom beans I planted are coming along nicely. The kale is thriving with no help from me. The fall radishes are popping their little green first leaves up and saying hello.

Also one of the apple trees is just covered in fruit this year. Looks like a bumper crop.

I grew new varieties of favas. Some of them thrived, some croaked. I love that some of them have patterns on the seed coat.  

The landrace favas that I've been growing for a decade thrived.

Grasshoppers! If you need fishing bait, we have 'em in clouds, bring a net! And I mean literal clouds. When the dogs run in the pasture, disturbed hoppers look like clouds of dust. I don't know why they can't eat down the weeds as well as they eat everything else!

Zucchini... forgot that one zucchini can feed India, and made the mistake of planting two. And instead of a normal-sized bush, it's a giant fighting bush.

WAY more rhubarb than I can eat, tho the grasshoppers are helping. Apparently the way to make rhubarb super-happy is to accidentally break the giant root into three pieces when you move the whole affair.

Peas... two kinds (one supposed to be heat-tolerant, from saved seed; the other a sweet-pod type) -- I only really like very young peas straight from the pod, but with the cool wet spring they had so many I couldn't keep up, so now I have dried peas for soup, and hopefully good seed for next year. Plus a few volunteers trying to be fall peas.

Last year's Walla Walla onion sets that bolted and were left in the ground are this year's GINORMOUS (almost 6 feet tall!) flowering onions, and so far it looks like 100% seed set. Only got one walker and it was a single bulblet almost big enough to eat, on a stem that made TWO flower heads. Further, some of them have made new big solid bulbs, mostly in clumps, having multiplied on both ends. (Wonder if they're actually perennials. The random onions I planted in the flower garden are now four years old and bloom every year, but they never made real bulbs again.)

Got fruit from 3 different potato plants, so we'll have true seed to experiment with. (Hand-pollinated a few of the most vigorous plants with each other, tho not sure this came from that. They're several types planted all mixed together and I don't keep track.) And feels like the dirt is full of potatoes. Meanwhile, the grasshoppers feasted on some but not others... apparently they prefer the dry end of the bed.

Watermelon -- several about half-grown that look like they'll beat the frost. (Some little round variety...got just one last year but boy was it good! these are its children so looks like it breeds true.)

Peppers -- the two that make little pointy peppers are both pretty well loaded up. We'll see what "heatless jalepenos" actually taste like. (I like the taste; I don't like the heat.) The other is a sweet red Italian.

Tomatoes... not as absurd as last year's crop, but plenty on the vines, tho so far only a couple have ripened far enough to eat.

Neighbor's garlic (descendants of volunteers) have made whopping great bulblet heads, so plenty to plant for next year.

Leeks look like this year they'll be big enough to bother with, and the sorry specimen that was left in the ground last year made 3 flower heads, so perhaps I'll get some seed as well.

Jury still out on the corn but looks like most have a couple ears working. Bugs are chewing off the silk so I've been hand-pollinating, hope it still works.

And I have learned that the weird perennial in the flower garden is a "medusa onion" tho what used to be bulbs have become ropes, very very strange.

Winco has shallots, so I'm going to get a few of those to plant for next year and see what they do!

Hot, hot, hot and super dry here after a very wet and long, cold spring. Setting up a new garden with the neighbor was difficult. Meager results, but seed saving wise i have done good, keeping cuttings alive has not been too bad. The phacelia has had a great run, buzzing with bees it was. Tomatoes doing great in the greenhouse, basil is ok, hedgerows of herbs are doing good, salads and spinach were absolutely great in spring, big bag of spinach seeds i saved, lupins were gorgeous, dill was great, new patch of comfrey was fab. Bulb fennels are thriving, and i got loads of volunteer Portulaca oleracea or purslane popping up all over. which is a super healthy, drought resistant, succulent groundcover. The salads in the picture are of Marrocan descent, so drought resistant.

Great idea to focus on the positive!
Here in Germany we have a second year in a row of exceptional heat, but in contrast to last year we had the usual frosts until mid May and more rain as well.

So:
Rhubarb grew like crazy (does so most years)
Harvested a decent amount of redcurrants and sour morello cherries
First crop of raspberries was very satisfactory
I even harvested carrots which is not a given with my clay soil and the amount of slugs

I will get the first pears of my new little pear tree, and hopefully enough apples to make some apple sauce. There will be lots of grapes, as every year.
I am getting some tomatoes although not much as there is a new problem due to the higher temperatures (Auculops lycopersici).

We harvested enough honey to get us through the year and sell some.

The new little pond (dug last year) had lots of visitors, some transitory, some permanent.
The wildflower patch is a real joy, the abundance of insect life is amazing! I am often going on a photo safari and document some of the species I have never seen before. It is only a few square meters, but makes a real difference.

I will also have some decent potatos.
Happy harvesting!
Anita

I made a new keyhole garden last year, filled it with sticks, leaves, soil and varied compostable stuff and finally planted it with cucumbers and squash. It's taken over the backyard. The dogs are a bit worried.

Lee Missouri wrote:I made a new keyhole garden last year, filled it with sticks, leaves, soil and varied compostable stuff and finally planted it with cucumbers and squash. It's taken over the backyard. The dogs are a bit worried.

The dogs don't know if the vines are coming for them next!

Pearl Sutton wrote:The dogs don't know if the vines are coming for them next!

Gee, I wonder why the footer ad that I got starts, "Run away! Run away!"

What is a keyhole garden??

About to plant some turnip seed (you can't have soup without turnips) in the spot conveniently vacated by the lettuce, which all bolted and is now excellent mulch for the peppers. And the third pepper (big round orange ones, very sweet) is suddenly loaded up too. There must be something in bolted lettuce mulch that they really like, because that's when they really took off making fruit... wonder if it's hormones; the lettuce was pretty well budded up.

Apples look like they plan a rational-sized crop, reasonably distributed around the trees, not 500 apples all on one branch like last year's insanity. And the tree that was visiting the afterlife (three years ago it had, count them, SIX leaves) suddenly has a lot of new growth, so maybe it'll resurrect as good as the one up in the pasture did. (All I did was cut out the dead parts; after that it was on its own.)

My chokecherries didn't bear enough to notice, but the ones along the road are loaded and look really good. And the wild hops are back.

Cukes went from too small to too big overnight, so now I have a bucketful to give away to picklers.

Not a damn thing and it pisses me off. I didn't plant one because I was busy working on clearing a fence line around 12 acres. I don't have a well and this would have been a good year for a garden due to plenty of rain. It also hasn't gone much over 90 degrees so nothing would have roasted. Oh well. Fence will be done this winter so I'll be able to garden next year. Almost time to start prepping it too. Need a lot of work since it all went to grass this year.

John Pollard wrote:Not a damn thing and it pisses me off. I didn't plant one because I was busy working on clearing a fence line around 12 acres. I don't have a well and this would have been a good year for a garden due to plenty of rain. It also hasn't gone much over 90 degrees so nothing would have roasted. Oh well. Fence will be done this winter so I'll be able to garden next year. Almost time to start prepping it too. Need a lot of work since it all went to grass this year.

There is another thread to address garden rants, and I fully understand the need for that. But, my intent in THIS thread is to help people see the good things that have come of it. May I suggest another way of looking at it? This years rains have gone deep into your land, to nourish the deeper lying biology, that will subsequently nourish whatever you do get planted, next year. Your fence line will help protect that garden, next year, allowing the deep watering to profit you, instead of larger marauders. The grasses that grew were nature's way of protecting your land from becoming a wasteland, with no, or poorly nourished soil, because of runoff, from the more than generous rains, this year. It sounds, to me, like you and nature were working together - and productively - toward future harvests. I'd call that a win - especially considering you also didn't end up wasting money on good, expensive seed that simply got washed away, like many others did. Sounds like you're a smart man!

Beets and turnips did great in my new garden on barren desert. The turnips were delicious, and finished, but I've got a few pounds of beets still in the fridge.
Greens: Plenty of salads and cooking greens came out of the new garden. They seemed sparse at the time, but really there was and still is enough for us to eat.
Broccoli: Now that the first frosts have hit, the broccoli is finally heading up, though I have to go out with the hose every few days and blast those clusters of cabbage aphids.
Baby trees and asparagus: I seeded these in beds in the outdoor garden, and they're small but I hope they'll survive the winter and then I'll move them out to their final spots in the spring: dozens of asparagus from seed, eight peaches, a couple of apricots, 5 local sacred juniper, 12 baby robinia (black locust). None of the cherries came up, and I didn't think to plant apple seeds.
Flowers: This year the calendula, marigolds, edible chrysanthemum, nasturtium and anise hyssop all made good shows. The perennial chrysanthemum, that I planted a year ago and didn't bloom last winter, now has lots of buds and is a sprawling monster that will give huge dramatic blooms all November and December in the greenhouse.

My greenhouse raised beds have good soil from composting toilets of the school I worked in, so the growth was good, though the heat wasn't great because I took the glazing off in April and then the weather got cold again.
Muskmelons from Lofthouse seeds: slow to start due to lack of heat, but finally two plants produced two each, and it was my first time growing them so it was exciting.
Maxima winter squash from Lofthouse seeds: also slow to start but finally two plants produced one each, which was good considering I didn't give them nearly enough space and they were totally crowded in among other stuff.
Tomato foliage: hahaha! Only one plant got started early and produced a good amount of tomatoes. The others started in the temporary greenhouse germinated months after seeding, finally grew a lot in September, and now in mid-October as the top of the plants get slightly touched by frost, some of the cherry tomatoes are starting to show some color.  
Herbs have been booming. Enough coriander leaf (cilantro) for all the different friends and housemates who have been cooking Indian feasts in my house, and even a quart jar (litre) of seed for cooking or planting next year. Rosemary, that I always failed to get going from cuttings, finally is successful from Johnny's "primed seed" and now looks quite Mediterranean in the greenhouse, and I've got 20 small plants to give away next year. Lemon balm that creaked along in a container for years, never thriving, finally sprawled and bloomed in a bed in the greenhouse. Thyme, oregano, dill, anise hyssop, fennel, dragonhead (nice local lemony herb), perennial rocket (arugula) all boomed. Parsley, that I hardly use, one plant is a 2 or 3 foot wide sprawl (I think I'd better cook it as a green).

Houseplants: After years of failing to get them, I now have aloe vera and curry leaf growing well in sunny windows, and a south Indian friend has been using the curry leaf a lot. Yay!

Greywater canal: Everything thrived! My kitchen, washing and bathing water goes to an open canal, that I sometimes also water with clean water. In April I transplanted out 12 little seedling apricots, 2 apples, one each of peach, mulberry, rose, coreopsis, iris, mint and Caragana (seaberry), and a few asparagus, and every single thing stayed alive, as did some chick pea volunteers that must have come down the kitchen sink. I've never had such a good rate on transplanting things out, and I put them too close together (5 feet), expecting only 50% success.

Can't help it, gotta tell my failures too: basil and peppers didn't exceed 4 inches, probably due to lack of heat. Beans sprouted and reached 4 inches in July but then didn't grow anymore, though each pathetic plant produced two or three beans dangling on the ground in September. Tomatoes outside didn't exceed a foot but each produced one or two fruit that I ate in the garden when it showed half color. Portulaca and Cape Marigolds didn't come up where planted due to lack of heat, but in September one of each came up as volunteers where they were last year, and are still blooming now despite the cold nights. Zinnia, cosmos and cherries never germinated, and three rounds of various cukes germinated and died promptly. New Zealand Spinach finally boomed in September, but it turns out I don't like the taste, but now it's a sprawling monster and will probably survive the winter months of light frosts in the greenhouse, and my housemates like it well enough. Malabar spinach reached 6 inches tall so last week I put it in salad and liked it, but I had thought it would get big and climb up a trellis.


It certainly was a learning year for me, and I'm scheming ways to get more organic matter, compost and mulch next year, and how to increase heat if it's a cloudy cool year like this year was. I've been drying lots of local vegetables for the winter, and started getting local raw milk daily, so that's good. I haven't started the annual pickling campaign yet.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:I grew new varieties of favas. Some of them thrived, some croaked. I love that some of them have patterns on the seed coat.  

The landrace favas that I've been growing for a decade thrived.

They look good. I first thought it was some collection of stones lol

It’s mid-spring in the Southern Hemisphere now and in my Mediterranean climate I now have:

- a whole bunch of different chillie varieties growing in a huge pot that I planted before winter. They grew only an inch in 5 cold months but now the biggest is nearly a foot tall. I didn’t label them and am excited to see what variety they turn out to be, and their seeds will be new hybrids!
- some spinach I didn’t even plant is growing really big really fast without going to seed yet. I’m surprised as it’s nornally a winter crop here and bolts when spring starts.
- snow peas are growing real fast in pots. Hopefully these will survive the slugs and the later transplant.
- cucumbers have grown strong but small in small seedling containers. When it cools in a few days i’ll transplant and hope they survive the slugs.
- I can easily eat lettuce regularly now.
- growing marjoram for the first time and one of them is growing great! It might even become invasive like it’s cousin oregano, which is a problem I don’t mind having!

What I’ve learnt this season:
1. Stop using tiny seedling trays and just plant in pots/ milk bottles etc. They’ll grow bigger and stronger and therefore will survive the transplanting better.
2. Don’t buy potting again! I’ve planted seeds in pure pine leaf mulch or compost and they’re growing as good if not better than cheap purchased potting mix.
3. Things root really well in a jar of water. Propagating’s fun and easy this way. I’ve successfully grown roots on a tree cutting for the first time (a fig) and am excited it finally worked for me. Just needed some TLC.

Tim Kivi wrote:
1. Stop using tiny seedling trays and just plant in pots/ milk bottles etc. They’ll grow bigger and stronger and therefore will survive the transplanting better.

I also finally figured this out this past year. Built some boxes and just rotate things in and out. Works so much better and things can survive a day or two without water (if I need to get away for a day or two). The little trays, not a chance.

Spring has sprung indeed, today I have the rain I've been desperate for.
So far the corn is up pretty well, I just turned under two beds to give them a short rest (buried bokashi and manure) before planting again. My passionfruit survived the hail, the greens (collards and kale) are starting to bounce back post-winter, and my early eggplants have a good start. Noodle beans just coming up, and may put in some bush beans as well (burgundy, they are a very short season bean).
What is really thriving so far are the bean beetles. I put in scarlet runners during the winter and the beetles just did a job on them. I sprayed some neem on the new beans, and hope to try to catch the beetles before they get out of control.
My winter cherry tomato is still yielding like crazy. I planted some new ones but don't expect much (bug pressure in summer is generally too much, and the specific tomato beetle has already appeared, just killed one the other day).