Coming to terms with the worst gardening year EVER

[HamdenRice]

It's just a kind of low grade permanent disappointment. I'm not even sure why it was so bad. There was an editorial in the NY Times by a gardener who claimed s/he only harvested a few tomatoes so it was pretty widespread in the area. That person said it was the cold rain spring. But a few years ago, we had the biggest harvests in NY State ever and it was because of copious rain. I guess it has to be both hot, sunny and rainy for rain to do its thing.

The tomatoes, which usually provide bushels from my postage stamp sized urban garden, produced maybe a dozen, although there are still green ones on the vines. For some reason they went into suspended animation and stopped ripening.

Zero cukes.

Raspberries and black berries were prolific, but tasteless, probably as a result of the lack of sunshine, ie sugar production.

The leafy things did well. Best year for collards ever. But it was just about five plants that I kept clipping leaves from rather than harvesting the whole thing and they're still going. Herbs did well -- basil, parsley, sage. But cilantro was a total bust. Weirdly, every planting bolted from the seedling stage -- something I've never seen before and would have thought biologically impossible.

And, as I wrote in another thread, winter squash (butternut) did well, although it was a "throwaway" planting in the first place, and I'd never once grown a winter squash to harvest ever before in my life.

[bvar22]

1. Pretty much the same here, but for the opposite reasons.

We had August weather in May....unseasonably hot, no rain, but high humidity.
Too hot for tomatoes to set.
Some plants had some early fruit, but the heat toughened the skins and splitting was a problem.
Through late May, June, and in to July....no tomatoes.
The heat/drought broke in late July, and the tomatoes started making tomatoes, but it was so late in the year that blight was a problem. We are getting a few tomatoes, but nothing like we expected.
Many of our neighbors got NO tomatoes.

We out thought ourselves this year.
We usually have more tomatoes than we can eat, preserve, or give away (everybody grows tomatoes here), so we only planted 5 plants this year expecting that to more than fill our needs.
We fell a little short.
Every ripe tomato brought into the house was a celebratory event.

Everything else was about like you described.
Bumper crop of Butternuts.
Melons OK...Cantaloupes a bright spot....best tasting we've ever had.
Green Beans OK, but not like last year.
Field Peas (Cow Peas/Crowder Peas) GOOD. Nothing seems to bother them.

The wild Blackberries started great with early Spring rain, but the May/June/July drought just dried them up into small, hard, bitter balls.

Compared to last year, this year was disappointing, but OK.
We learned some stuff, and have exciting plans for this Fall, and next year.

[hedgehog]

2. On the plus side, it looks to be a spectacular year for leaf watchers.

I've already seen more brilliant reds than I have ever seen before, and just a few trees have turned so far.

[femmocrat]

3. I have zillions of tomatoes, despite the blight. (western PA)

They are kind of bland-tasting, but OK for pasta sauce and chili.

Herbs were gorgeous, except the cilantro! I also had prolific chard, broccoli and peas.

I planted 90 cucumber seedlings and got three teeny cukes! The vines all died. No melons here, either.

This was the first year I got more than one pumpkin! I have one big one and four smaller ones.

It was the first year for our new larger garden and it was a learning experience. We converted the old one to a pumpkin/melon patch.

Happy harvest, everyone! :hi: