Show us your end of season results!

I know some of you have posted here & there & elsewhere, but now that I think most of us have had enough hard freezing to call it a season, how about a photo thread of the "fruits" of your labor?  

The only catch is, it must be homegrown by you or someone you know (friend, neighbor, relative), not purchased.  

If you have any tips for the new or prospective gardeners, feel free to post them.  If you had failures, share those too so the newer folks can learn from others' mistakes or challenges.

As soon as I can get mine uploaded, I'll share some of my own, but until then, show us what you grew!

Here's a sampling of my pumpkin harvest this year.

I had 4 OP Maxima's out of 6 plants, but due to my learning curve, only 2 fruit survived to be fully cured & edible.  The reddish one in the photo is from an Amish Pie Pumpkin mother.  Not pictured is a smaller OP one that started out with green & red blush that cured into a beautiful dark grey with light grey stripes (suspected triamble in OP lineage).  

The Moschata pumpkins you see are OP, but favor the cheese types in appearance.  The largest of the 9 went 20 pounds, the 2nd largest was 15 pounds, and the rest ranged about 7-9 pounds.

The 3 yellow & orange striped pumpkins I'll save seed from for my Pepo Winter Squash Project.  They have a hard skin once cured, are very attractive and long-lasting ornamentals, and very likely carry some Sugar Pie Pumpkin pollen in those seeds, so we'll see what happens.

The largest field pumpkin I grew, cured for months, used as decor, then carved into a Jack O' Lantern.

I have many other veggies that I harvested this year, but these are some of the ones I snapped pics of.

You got some hefty pumpkins! I sowed quite a few maxima and pepo seeds too but didn't get much to grow this year. Most of my squashes are butternuts. I am still rounding up the harvests but here are some quick pictures.

Wow May, what a harvest!  Just curious how many butternut/moschata plants you had for a yield like that?  Also, I'm going to have to look up sunchokes & lotus roots.  Do you have a pond or something like that to keep your lotus contained?

I counted about 70 butternuts from 3 clusters of volunteers out of the compost. I don't know how many vines but in the beginning there were many seedlings popping up. Moschata has very vigorous roots. On one vine that I pulled up, the fleshy root went on over 16 ft along the ground surface where it got shaded by the leaves.

As for the lotus, I used large containers such as storage tub or trash can. The ornamental type can be grown from seeds and the edible one is usually starter from tubers.

Sunchoke and broomcorn are easy to grow for food and biomass, even in poor soil. They are the keepers I grow every year.

Good stuff there!  I do have a packet of multi-color broomcorn seeds, but not sure when I'll grow them just yet.  As a kid, I went to the Broomcorn festival in Arcola, Illinois.  They had true artisans up on stage making the most beautiful handmade brooms you've ever seen.  I would eventually like to take a stab at it myself because I like a challenge.  I've even gone so far as to reverse engineer (dismantle) some good examples of old handmade brooms to see how they were made.

I am planning for my first stand of about 100 Hickory King corn plants next year with as many pole bean varieties as I can gather by then growing on them.  I'm trying to broaden my dry bean varieties, and bulk up my best corn seed for freezer storage.  As anyone with limited growing space knows, I already have a decade of garden plans in my head, now I'm waiting on the calendar to catch up, lol.

here are some photos of our harvest. The corn has been a breeding project for 4 years now. The squash as well. the onions are with bought seed. Most of the beans have been saved from the previous year. There is more of course.

Wow Jordan, you've been busy as well!  Can you tell me more about your buttercup squash landrace & your corn project?  I never knew there were red orca beans, very cool!

Cy Cobb wrote:Wow Jordan, you've been busy as well!  Can you tell me more about your buttercup squash landrace & your corn project?  I never knew there were red orca beans, very cool!

the corn started from adaptive seeds. Open oak party mix. I get to grow the minimum to keep it alive. I am hoping next year to be able to double what I normally grow which is 120+ plants. Mostly the corn is neglected, and grown with almost no fertilizer. I direct sow the corn early in may. The first year the corn was attacked/eaten by many birds and maybe rats. I didn't save any seed from those cobs which were eaten. The next year I had no cobs eaten!! Now I soak the corn in grass root water in hopes to inoculate the corn with local organisms to help the corn roots along. Yea the corn is tasty. We also try to save seed from cobs which are easy to thresh. Again not growing a large crop means I cannot be to picky about the cobs.

The butternut and buttercup squash has been grown similar to the above. This year about 6 of the buttercups were eaten by rats. They didn't seem to be ready so I was hesitant to harvest them. It might have been better to bring them in early rather than lose 6 of the fruits. The first year of trying different varieties resulted in some of the fruits being 10+pounds which I dislike, they also had a hard outer skin which was almost impossible to cut thru. This outer shell needed to be cut off and resulted in a lot of processing just to eat the squash. I didn't save any seed from those squashes. Most of the squash I save seed from are "easy" to cut through, have a small button on the bottom(buttercup) and taste good. I don't really save any seed from the first few months as I want squash which meets the above criteria to also taste good 4 months later..
The buttercup I believe is blue kuri, burgess buttercup, lower salmon river and possibly another.
the butternut is waltham, butterscotch, early remix.

Open pollinated corn I have been growing since about 1997, mixed with a bunch of different varieties over the years, including commercial yellow dent, various colored corns and glass gem, etc. I am selecting for intense color, dark red to dark purple. The pic is about 90% of my production this year, leaving out the smaller scrubbier ears. I eat it.

The many sisters garden that corn came from:

Thanks for the explanation & photos Jordan & Thom, great inspiration for folks that save their seeds & work toward a goal year after year!  

Hello,

Not much has happened, and not where i thought it would. We had no single drop of rainwater between early february and the end of march, then alternated between wet storms with the accompanying slug frenzy and completely dry weeks : all in all, we miss around 200 mm of rainwater compared to the reference. The winter was very warm, only a few nights of light frosts in january.

We are nearing the end of a warm season. One of my three zucchini plants is still alive and bearing fruit.
On the positive side : Oca plants and sunchokes have done well and will be multiplied. A Granny Smith apple tree gave us five very little, but good, apples for its second year with us, a volunteer amelanchier surprised us with a few berries just after i discovered it. Goutweed, beetroots, volunteer swiss chards are flourishing between dandelions - just have to find recipes that will be accepted in the house. Celery grew quite well. Red veined and patience docks are finding their place. A kale plant tried to grow a third year. A taro plant manages to grow somehow near a pond, and i have found what seems to be volunteer Yucca filamentosa plants ...
Another positive note is the fungal flora i have seen this year. I have seen Clitocybe odora and Paxillus involutus, which are known mycorrhyzal though not considered edible. Lower parts of bamboo poles get eaten where the much is thickest.

On the negative side :  
Not a single flower on chaenomeles, pear trees, other apple trees ; some installed cherry and peach trees died. Plum trees did miserably but they could alternate. Spring sowings never grew, replanted cabbages bolted, installed collards were razed. A few tomato plants managed to bear fruit, around half of what they did last year (i planted four different varieties, Black cherry, black Crimea, Roma and Berao, of which only the Berao did well). Cucurbits other than zucchinis only gave fist-sized fruits. Two seed packs of parsnips seed gave two plants. I usually grow fava and pole beans ; fava grew but gave hardly any beans, and the pole ones never came after three sowing rounds.

So for next year : i plan to sow whatever i can in advance, starting early january. Everything that has managed to grow, even miserably, will be allowed to reseed itself.
I will try apricot and prickly pears in sheltered and drier areas. Pomegranate trees are on the list too, and i have planted kaki trees. Hosta and Asparagus have been installed.
For annual plants, i will try to plant whatever i find on the flower market that might be accepted on a plate. It could hardly be worse.
I need to install frog or toad eggs in my ponds ... A hedgehog came after the early july storms but was of little help. Bird nests will be hung this winter.
And irrigation.

Have a nice evening,

Oliver,

It sounds like you've had a pretty dismal growing season, but at least you're learning from it and planning accordingly.  In all honesty, the climate is a fickle thing, and can vary wildly from year to year.  All we can do is put forth our best effort, make our plans, adjust when those plans didn't work out, have a sigh of relief when something does grow, then become disgusted when some new pest wipes it all out.  Then, maybe just maybe we'll have the occasional banner year where most everything gives you a bountiful harvest that makes it all worthwhile.  Better luck next time!

Cy Cobb wrote:Oliver,

It sounds like you've had a pretty dismal growing season, but at least you're learning from it and planning accordingly.  In all honesty, the climate is a fickle thing, and can vary wildly from year to year.  All we can do is put forth our best effort, make our plans, adjust when those plans didn't work out, have a sigh of relief when something does grow, then become disgusted when some new pest wipes it all out.  Then, maybe just maybe we'll have the occasional banner year where most everything gives you a bountiful harvest that makes it all worthwhile.  Better luck next time!

It was pretty poor here too, in Illinois. Dry, cool spring. I carried buckets of water for a month to keep things alive. End of June we got a few good rains which changed a looming disaster into not-too-bad.

Thom,

You have some really nice looking corn there.  Do you spray BT at silk time, or do you just have really good tip coverage?  I'm in the same region as you, & with sweet corn at least, I lose a quarter to a third of most ears to corn ear worms.  Those look perfectly filled to the tip with no damage!  Next year will be my first year growing "field" corn.  I've got an assortment of seed that I want to grow, just have to get creative with space.  I'm planning my first stand of 100 Hickory King White plants for next year.  I also have a few other varieties to try, but would have to turn my front yard into a corn field to get it all grown, lol.

Cy Cobb wrote:Thom,

You have some really nice looking corn there.  Do you spray BT at silk time, or do you just have really good tip coverage?  I'm in the same region as you, & with sweet corn at least, I lose a quarter to a third of most ears to corn ear worms.  Those look perfectly filled to the tip with no damage!  Next year will be my first year growing "field" corn.  I've got an assortment of seed that I want to grow, just have to get creative with space.  I'm planning my first stand of 100 Hickory King White plants for next year.  I also have a few other varieties to try, but would have to turn my front yard into a corn field to get it all grown, lol.

Looks can be deceiving! There was a fair bit of worm damage, but all those ears I broke off and tossed the damaged tips, and what remained went into my scrub ear pile, and thus are not pictured. In fact though, this year was very good for all insect damage, very little, even on the sweet corn. I think the dry, cool spring reduced insect populations. Crow damage was worse.

I did not spray any insecticide at all. Have not on the corn since I started growing it. I do sometimes use insecticide on vine crops, but did not this year. Spent quite a bit of time killing squash beetles by hand, and was mostly effective. All my vines, squash, cantaloupes, watermelon, tomato are open pollinated and so are a mish-mash of whatever seeds I originally bought, seeds from store-bought fruit, seeds given by friends, crossing over 15 years. What dies, dies. I way overplant and generally get enough. I figure gradually more-resistant varieties will prevail.

The corn is seriously mixed genetics. Several years ago I planted a patch of seeds gleaned from a neighbor's commercial yellow dent. I wanted to see if I could get a good crop off second-generation hybrid corn. It grew great and produced a large crop, even on really poor, dry, hard clay soil. I was impressed by how tough even second generation away from hybrids are. Some of the pollen from my colored corn floated over so I could see scattered red and black colored kernels on those ears. I saved those and replanted one row next to my colored corn the next year. It also produced a large crop. Most ears still resembled commercial corn, except for the color. The best ears from that were selected, and the colored kernels were separated and mixed with my regular colored corn this year, not segregated into a different plot or row. The result is what you see in the pics above. Some of the ears look like almost perfect hybrid corn, others look like my original corn.

Plan for the coming spring is to select what visually appears to be pure purple and red flint corn. It will not be, because of years of mixing with commercial corn, but it will LOOK LIKE a landrace open-pollinated corn. It will take a few years of selection to eliminate the dent appearance. My reason for moving towards flint corn is insect resistance. There is a clear visual difference between sweet, dent, and flint corn in post-harvest weevil damage to the kernels. Sweet is worst, dents bad, and flint pretty resistant. I can see flint kernels that weevils TRIED TO attack, and gave up and moved on to a softer kernel.

Thom,

Of course after I submitted that post, I thought, maybe the damaged ears were the off camera ones, lol.  I unfortunately didn't grow corn at all this year, but did try my hand at nixtamalization for the first time from last years corn.  I fought the squash bug battle myself almost daily.  Lots of work to eke out a harvest, but worth it.  I had a steep learning curve with the maxima squash & squash vine borers, but I have a plan to do better next time.  I have lots of good flint & dent seed, but don't 100% know what I want to do with it just yet.  Eventually it'll get all mixed up, but I want to increase some of my individual seedstock before I do that.  

I also plant excess of some of my crops, knowing some will succumb to overcrowding by weeds, drought, insect pressure, storm breakage, etc.  With my sweet peppers this year, I planted about 25-30 plants of 3 varieties grown from seed.  Even with the drought conditions we had early on & most of the summer, I harvested loads of peppers, but to be honest, they all struggled except for the banana peppers.  I started with 15 of them, & gradually culled down to 5 good, strong stems (all peppers were unsupported & freestanding), prolific survivor plants with 2 of those being exceptional specimens.  I did save seed from mature peppers from all of the plants to go into my sweet pepper mix, & of course more seed from the best ones.  I plan to grow different sweet peppers each year to add to the mix, eventually doing larger scale seed trials to select for the best unsupported producers that outcompete the weeds, and don't take forever to ripen a fruit set.