What a strange growing season it has been. With next to no rain for five weeks and then rain every other day for the past six weeks, somehow our garden thrived. Just a few crops failed to produce, including summer squash, cantaloupe, radishes, and broccoli, while other crops grew in abundance.

Our tomato plants produced a slew of tomatoes, more this year than ever before. Besides making sauce we still have plenty to barter with. A few items we have traded some of our tomatoes for include eggs, eggplant, summer squash, and hay

Garlic is the first crop we harvest every year, and what a harvest it was. It's always a surprise when unearthing tubers as you never know how this root crop has been doing until it is extracted from the earth. This year we grew both hard and soft-neck garlic, both of which did great.

With as lush as the foliage of the potato plants was, we were hoping that what was hidden below ground grew as well.

We were not disappointed! In the past, we have watered the potato bed by hand. While watering I always wondered how much water makes its way through the hay that is added to the bed several times as the plants grow larger. This year was the first time we used a drip irrigation system which allowed the water to be deposited directly on the dirt. I believe this made a huge difference. It also saved us time watering and the precious life-giving compound, H2O.

No longer wanting to take the risk of climbing a ladder to reach the top of the pole bean vines, sometimes reaching a height of 12 feet, we decided to grow bush beans. We also decided to do two plantings of these legumes rather than just plant them all at once. This has worked out wonderfully. We have been enjoying fresh string beans for more than a month now and still have plenty to put into storage in our deep freezer. While preparing the other half of the bean bed, the number of worms that I found was amazing, so much so that I started a worm box.

The top pic in this collage is of our carrot plants. We have been juicing the foliage, and adding it to our veggie smoothies.

The bottom pic is that of our broccoli plants. They never developed a single head. Sometimes one wonders why a particular crop doesn't do as well as it has in the past, but in this case, I knew what I did wrong. Broccoli is a cold-weather crop and we simply planted them too late. With daytime temperatures in the mid-eighties, the plant simply bolted.

Being a person who likes to look at the glass half full, the flowers that the plant produced drew in bees like crazy. We had never experienced this in past years and just let the plants do their thing.

With everything going up in price including the cost of seeds, we are making a concerted effort to save as many different types of seeds as possible. To our surprise, letting the broccoli plants do their thing, pods developed after the flowers died off, holding those tiny black seeds.

Why spend money on tomato cages or tomato stakes when tree branches work even better and they're FREE.

Candyland, this particular tomato plant couldn't have had a better name.

These tiny, sweet as-candy, mouth-watering tomatoes were the first to ripen. This single plant had to produce several hundred of these little red marbles and it's still going strong. Every morning for the past month this would be my first stop. For most gardeners, there is nothing like going to your garden and munching something right from the vine.

I'd open my mouth a little wider to give you a better look, but if I did, the CANDYLANDS would pour out of my cake hole like a busted penny gumball dispenser.

Despite our vigilance, a few dozen tomatoes succumbed to the slugs. I found that rather than removing the damaged tomatoes from the garden it was best to leave them at the base of the plants.
The damaged tomatoes acted like bait. The slugs would go for the already-marred tomatoes rather than the ones still hanging from the plant. This made it easy to spot them, at which time I would cut them with a pair of scissors.
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I was hoping to repeat last year's success with the cucumbers. We grew both pickling and salad cucumbers, but the plants just didn't produce the abundant number of cucumbers as last year.

Last year I was able to jar 15 quarts of Garlic Dill Pickles. With only three quarts of pickles so far, I'm hoping to be able to make another few quarts before the cooler weather arrives and kills this warm weather crop.

It looks like we will have plenty of carrots again this year. I planted a variety of different seeds with one package sporting different colors. The carrots will not be harvested for a few more weeks. Leaving them to grow a little longer during the cooler nighttime temps should make them sweeter.

Beets, everyone's favorite, NOT, always seem to thrive in the raised planter boxes. For the first time, a few of the plants grew a long stem that towered above the others. At first, I wasn't sure why. My ignorance had me contemplating removing them, but I was happy I didn't. After a few more weeks of growth, I realized that the stalks that towered over the other plants were producing seeds. The seeds are still very immature and hopefully, with a few more weeks of growth, I'll have plenty of Detroit Dark Red seeds for next year.

Peppers, another cool weather crop, are starting to produce loads of peppers. This year we're growing both Green Bell Peppers and Banana Peppers.

What a year we had growing lettuce, both Romain and Leaf lettuce. We harvested lettuce for six weeks or more before it started to bolt, as can be seen at the top of this picture. The radishes were a disappointment. We only picked a handful of them and they were rather woody tasting. Radishes are another veggie that grows best in cooler temps. About a week ago I cleaned out the two boxes that held both the lettuce and radishes and planted them for a second time. With a little luck, both will have the time to mature before freezing temps return.

The Morning Glories surprised the heck out of us. For the first 4 weeks or so the newly sprouted seeds only stood about three inches tall and the plants looked washed out. Over the past month, they grew like crazy and started to flower. The vines climbed to the top of the newly constructed trellis which stands over 10 feet tall. You talk about short-lived, beautiful flowers that appear in the morning are dead by the next day.

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