After Action Report - Gardening, Year 1

[NeedleCast]

First, I'd like to thank everyone who had advice for me earlier this year. I thought I'd update on how things went. This was my first year planting a garden.

I planted two Better Boy tomatoe plants, Two Juliet tomatoe plants, six serrano pepper bushes and three Greek columnar basils.

Things got off to a slow start. The day after planting my peppers and tomatoe bushes, it rained, HARD, for 48 hours here in Virginia and remained wet throughout the spring and early summer. Because my plants are in a raised bed that doesn't drain very well, I was worried about root rot. However, when things dried out a bit, the plants exploded! My two Julients, both of which looked totally bedraggled for a month, started growing in leaps and bounds. My Better Boy tomato plants put out so many shoots I had to stake them each in half a dozen places. Minus the stuff stolen by critters, I probably got 70 pounds of big tomatoes off the Better Boys and 150ish cherry tomatoes off the Juliets. The serrano bushes pumped out peppers faster than I could use them...by a lot. Next year I think I'll do a bigger variety of peppers but less of the same type...2 or 3 bushes of each kind. Basil only did so-so. The nursery dude suggest they'd go to four feet but mine only got to about half that. They did produce excellent, mild tasting basil, and never flowered, which was nice. I think they got too much sun in the high summer months and often looked a little dried out even with daily watering.

So things went well! Next year I'm doubling my planting space and adding strawberries and something else to the mix.

[WolverineDG]

1. Sounds good

my garden started off great, but the 100+ daily temps (starting in May) quickly put an end to it, even with daily watering. :( I was away from home about a month (after it all died) & was very surprised to find a bean volunteer in the middle of nowhere & tons of basil plants springing up (it flowered & seeded too quickly for me to stay ahead of it).

Now planning for next year. :)

dg