Flops of 2009

[SuburbanHippie]

I know, it's such a positive title, right?

So what was a total flop in your garden this year?

Our above ground potatoes did terrible. I think the fact they were in a black can probably killed them (also that they were in direct sunlight all day). I was really looking forward to having lots of potatoes and we ended up with 4 decent sized ones and about 6 tiny ones.

The strawberry plants grew gigantic, like huge bushes and never produced one strawberry. I got mad and ripped them out and threw them into the compost bin.

Out of our 2 green pepper plants, we only got 1 bell pepper. That was kind of a bummer. It was really yummy though.

I learned a lot this growing season though so it's not a total bust. A LOT of my veggies did great (corn, tomatoes, green beans) and I grew some new stuff this year (eggplant, cukes) that did produce some. I can't wait for next spring!

[PiesandAbrosmama]

squash bugs just wreaked havoc this year!! So they were a bust from pumpkins to zuks to winter squash. The little mexican cukes name is not coming to me did not grow despite plant and replant.
Also have learned so much and had some real success with new plants this year!

[limette]

Bok choi. It bolted around 4" tall. Broccoli also bolts just about when I'm contemplating picking it.

I'm ditching both of those this year and doing cauliflower again. It turned out well for me.

My winter squash are unlikely to be harvested before frost but that's because the seed company mixed the variety I ordered with a super long season variety (I'm in zone 3) so I'm sad that I won't be sipping squash soup all winter.

Carrots did awesome, finally found a variety that produces long, fat, non-soapy tasting carrots.

[lucyem]

Tomatoes - I lost 12 plants I started from seed because I brought in 2 from home depot with blight. I have a pile of 12 plants covered in large green tomatoes and all dead.

Potatoes - I had the most amazing plants until the month of rain killed them. I ended up with one meals worth of little potatoes.

Corn - A critter ate all our corn except 2 tiny cobs. Not sure what because we did fence in well and it got in and opened the husks. Raccoon?? Though it is not going after our chickens right next door. Maybe the chipmunk?

Carrots - A critter ripped off the green tops & ate the tops of the actual carrots in the ground. I saved what I could so we did get some. Chipmunk??

Strawberries - I know it was the chipmunk. He got them all. Next year I have to build special wire cages.

All the rain and lack of sun really limited our squash (1 squash) & broccoli. The pepper plants never even survived.

On the plus side we got more pole beans then I ever imagined. The kids are so sick of beans We also got tons of cucumbers. The pumpkins have also been limited by the rain and lack of sun but we got enough for our needs so I count that as a big positive especially since my goal was 1 cheese pumpkin and I got 4 :

I am already making my list for next year. We learned a lot and it will be better next year. My challenge for 2010 in zone 5 - some peanuts and an artichoke

[verde]

My cucumbers were disappointing -- some bug got them. Something is nibbling on my chard right now. The eggplant was not nearly what it was last year which is a bummer.

OTOH, the beans, basil, beets, and melons did great!

[phoenix78]

This was my 3rd season of sort SFG and I had less flops overall. We actually managed to : our veggies for more than 4-5 times like last summer! I even have a freezer full of frozen goodies already (awesome carrots, beets, beans galore, summer squash, cherries, brandywines and cherokees). That is the good news.

Flops still exist and include:

Peppers and Tomatoes and Peas from Seed - I've decided my Zone 5 is just too cold to start some things from seed (I'm in Buffalo - we don't get last frost until mid-May sometimes!): My peppers and tomatoe seedlings did awesome though!

2nd attempt at berries after 25 failed strawberry plants last year. I ate 3 blueberries and no raspberries.

All but 2 brocolli were destroyed by beetles. The few peas that did grow from seed were destroyed by cutworms. Basil and spinach bolted during our first 90 degree weekend (have I mentioned I hate the climate here!)

Pruning my spring list already and hoping for some good results with my first "fall" garden with row covers.

[lmonter]

Originally Posted by SuburbanHippie

The strawberry plants grew gigantic, like huge bushes and never produced one strawberry. I got mad and ripped them out and threw them into the compost bin.

You didn't leave 'em in to fruit next year? They tend to do a 3-year cycle - some fruit the first year, go nuts the second and also send out runners, do some the third year, and kinda go kaput after that.


My flops...

Yukon Gold potatoes. Miserable. What a waste of garden space. I haven't even dug up my blue or red or russet potatoes. I'm almost a bit afraid.

Bush beans. They hate me. Pole beans love me though, so there is that.

Planting anything up near the evergreen row in the back of our yard. Nothing grew over there.

Blueberries are still "eh." I think I just haven't found a variety that does well here in my yard. We'll get a handful of berries from like 8 little bushes, and that's about it.

Lettuce. Weather is so darned funky - really cold and rainy for a while, then super hot so things start bolting, then cool again. In a 3 month span. It confuses the lettuce - either grows slower than molasses or bolts. No in between. So I'm still experimenting with varieties to find the magical one.

Corn. Eh. I could just grow more tomatoes instead, and buy some corn from the farmer's market or one of my local farmer hookups.

Watermelon. Just, ugh. People have warned me that it's super difficult up here, but I just kept ignoring them to try. May give up and just buy from someone as need be.

[rainbowmoon]

Squash. It just never really grew, save one plant that turned out to be an ibred zucchini-watermelon. Not sure what happened.

Mostly everything else we planted did great!

[mumm]

turnip- I didn't thin them enough and they needed more room.

onions- This was my first year growing big onions so I was all excited when they were about 2" in diameter and I pulled about fifty. The rest grew much much larger. dang!

squashes (summer, zucchini, cukes)- just not a lot of fruit. My winter squashes are doing fine.

You can't give up on strawberries. My first year my 50 plants got me a couple quarts with a rabbit bite in each one. This year I fenced them and got quarts a day for about a month and have transplanted about 75 into a larger space because they were so cramped. I'm curious to see what happens next year because I've heard 2 year old plants are the best.

[Alyantavid]

Cucumbers. I am so disappointed, last year, my cucumbers went crazy. This year I got 3.

Green beans. They finally started producing more than 1 bean a week, but still not many.

Jalapenos. I got 3.

My tomatoes and zucchini are just insane this year. We're getting so tired of zucchini and I'm sick of picking tomatoes, but I know I'll be missing them in a few months. Carrots, onions, bell peppers, peas and pumpkins are doing great too.

I think the weather just messed everything up this year. It was so wet and cold earlier this summer for so long it just took awhile for my plants to grow. Even my fruit trees did weird things this year.

[JessicaS]

I didn't get much squash and NO melons!

My zucchini didn't do very well. How can zucchini not do well??

My tomatoes did well and my herbs.

[jojoboy]

Tomatoes - I think I go a total of 20 tomatoes from 6 plants. Blossom rot, and also maybe blight. Although my grape tomato plants did ok.

Pumpkins, Zucchini, watermelon, lettuce, carrots - None of it came up from seed. All of them laughing at me from in the ground. Taunting me. I will get you to grow next year!!! I will learn how to grow things even when I plant seeds directly in the ground!

tomatillos, bell peppers - died when I hardened them off incorrectly. That was very sad since I couldn't buy tomatillo plants to transplant.

The good news is that the weeds in my garden went gangbusters this year.

[JamieCatheryn]

My tomatoes this year were better than last, but still not that good. Like 8 lbs of tomatoes and another 4 lbs of little yellow ones.

Watermelons, looks like I'll have 2 of them, but I wasn't expecting much this being my first time with melons.

Basil and Mint died right away.

I got blackberries that were supposed to fruit the first year, they didn't, but we're looking forward to next year.

So long as things were producing there was plenty to eat fresh of green beans, carrots, and tomatoes, nothing to put up though. My second year of gardening was a very modest success.

[tankgirl73]

Flops:

Broccoli. Only one plant even grew a head, which was eaten by squirrels the day before I was going to pick it. All the plants were ravaged by cabbage worms.

Peppers. Red, chili, and jalapeno, just stunted by the cold, damp weather. We're now a week away from first frost, and I finally have a chili plant that is COVERED IN FLOWERS. Great timing. And I have one green pepper. One. It's about the size of a thimble. A thimble for a child's pinky finger.

Onions. Well, sort of a success, sort of a flop. They didn't get very big, the humungous ones are less than 2". But I used a package of onion sets that was like, 9 years old or something. I'm grateful anything grew at all.

Potatoes. Blight. Ugh. The potatoes I'm digging up are looking lovely, though the foliage is horrid and I'm chopping more off every day. But I lost a good 1/3 of the plants entirely when it really hit. And the tubers are still quite small.

Successes:

Carrots. Tons of them, grew quickly, grew well, nice and fat, juicy and tasty.

Herbs. All the herbs did well, and I just learned (duh) that rosemary is a perennial, so it's sticking around!

Rutabaga. Did too well, in a sense. I didn't realize the leaves were so ENORMOUS. They crowd out everything else. And for what? A pretty small blob of rutabaga, in most cases. But then there's that one, the one loner, that's just frikkin HUGE.

Middlin' flop/success:

Cucumbers. Late to start, not too many fruits, but the ones that are there are lovely!

Tomatoes. Almost killed them all when hardening off, but they grew tall, strong, bushy, beautiful. The pride of my garden. Hundreds of glorious fruit. That won't ripen. Then the plants got septoria spot. Had to uproot the worst of them and bring the green tomatoes inside to ripen. Leaving the rest out as long as the frost holds off, but it looks like I'll soon be having a house full of green tomatoes trying to ripen...

Green beans. Producing really well, considering the plants never grew more than a foot tall. These are pole beans, they're supposed to be like as tall as me.

[Talula Fairie]

Putting anything in my backyard. It killed squash, eggplant, herbs, tomatoes, everything. I moved what I could of my container garden to the front area and it has done better ever since. The back though....if the lack of sun didn't kill it, the caterpillars that drop like death bombs did.

Also, so far it appears that watermelon, cantelope and corn are flops in containers.

[cristeen]

Originally Posted by SuburbanHippie

The strawberry plants grew gigantic, like huge bushes and never produced one strawberry. I got mad and ripped them out and threw them into the compost bin.

Depending on the breed, this may be a sign of too much nitrogen in your soil, or like a pp said, the first year most strawberries don't produce much. I know I grow alpine ("wild") strawberries, and they don't really start producing until the 2nd year. They reproduce like crazy though and need to be separated.

Originally Posted by lucyem

Tomatoes - I lost 12 plants I started from seed because I brought in 2 from home depot with blight. I have a pile of 12 plants covered in large green tomatoes and all dead.

3 words. Green Tomato Relish.

It's my absolute fave, but I can never justify it because it requires pounds of green tomatoes, which means picking them before ripe, and that just seems like such a shame. But if you're inundated with green tomatoes that aren't going to ripen, it's the perfect use for them!

Originally Posted by phoenix78

2nd attempt at berries after 25 failed strawberry plants last year. I ate 3 blueberries and no raspberries.

Originally Posted by JamieCatheryn

I got blackberries that were supposed to fruit the first year, they didn't, but we're looking forward to next year.

Cane berries like raspberries and blackberries produce fruit on 2nd year canes. So that means a couple things... you will never get fruit the first year, and you should not be pruning them every year until after they fruit. When they start fruiting, mark which canes have fruit (use red ribbon or something easy to find). At the end of the growing season cut just those canes that produced fruit back to the ground, and leave the rest to continue growing. Do this every year and you prevent your cane berries from becoming unruly messes, and ensure that plenty of sunlight is getting to the rest of the plant.

As for blueberries... those are eternal flops here. It's my understanding they like acidic soil, plenty of room, and they need cross-pollinization. My 2 bushes finally died this last year after 8 years of limping along and never producing more than a dozen berries each.

[hjrowan]

Flops: broccoli - cutworms or something ate straight through the roots of most of them, but the ones that survived were lovely. Pole beans: they just haven't flowered yet so doubt we'll see any beans this year. Very odd considering everything else did great. Bush beans were in the middle - but they were an experiment so no worries!

Successes: apples, pears, raspberries, kale, tomatoes, chard, zucchini, lettuces.... now we'll see what happens with the Fall garden.

It has definitely been a good growing season here in the PNW :

[JamieCatheryn]

Originally Posted by cristeen

Cane berries like raspberries and blackberries produce fruit on 2nd year canes. So that means a couple things... you will never get fruit the first year, and you should not be pruning them every year until after they fruit. When they start fruiting, mark which canes have fruit (use red ribbon or something easy to find). At the end of the growing season cut just those canes that produced fruit back to the ground, and leave the rest to continue growing. Do this every year and you prevent your cane berries from becoming unruly messes, and ensure that plenty of sunlight is getting to the rest of the plant.

I know it's usually like that, but these were marketed as special ones that would give us some on first year and then more on second year canes. Thanks though, it is good info to remember.

[Epiphany]

Hm my biggest flops were my gorgeous heirloom tomatoes and fingerling potatoes. Blight in the community garden ran rampant and killed everything. At least I got 2 small meals out of the potatoes.

I tried growing melon and got nothing but a flower or two. All of my purple bell peppers did great but the orange ones only ever flowered. The purples were from Irish Eyes seeds so I know they were good, and the orange were seedlings from an unknown roadside stand...so that may be the problem.

My beans and peas did terribly. My own fault since I had trouble getting anything to start from seed so they were planted much too late. next year I'm starting them in my new cold frame. (I have lots of building to do this fall. hehe)

Next year I'm armed with knowledge from this year so I don't count it a total waste. I know what did well and what we need more of and what we should do differently.

So flops this year are ok, next year I may be cranky about it. :P

[ms.shell]

zucchini/ squash and pumpkins.
the first squash and zucchinis i planted way too intensively and didn't thin. Then the replants did beautifully and only gave me about a fruit each (4 plants) before i had to pull them because of vine borers. Same with the pumpkin replants, which were 2 gorgeous long beautifully flowering vines bored through at their bases just when fruit was beginning to set. The original pumpkins (planted too early, i think, anyway) were decimated by a white mildewy fungus.
So, no pumpkins harvested and only a very few squashes were set, many of which (in original planting) curiously rotted away while developing on the vine.

bush beans didnt produce enough for me to waste space with them again. except maybe for sequoia which did nicely earlier, although the 2nd planting flopped.

pole beans i love and will grow again, but had trouble this year because of trellissing. originally i made a teepee from 6 ft poles and will never do that again. then i bought garden arches which might would be okay, except one was destroyed by a falling branch and i am not entirely happy with the other. Not sure what to do instead next year, but need a good solution for growing pole beans.

basil but not because it didnt grow, but rather i grew way too much. i dont have the proper equipment for processing, and when i tried making pesto with the blender it didnt work at all. so we used fresh basil all summer for salads and scrambled eggs, but i had many many many basil plants that grew huge and bushy and then flowered (i kept trying to keep them from flowering...)
i left them for the bees and they were beautiful but i had to pull them up yesterday to make way for cilantro and fall planting. they are heaped on top of the compost and littering the patio now

i think we will harvest a lot of sweet potatoes, but i sure messed up with where i planted them. They do extremely well here and we love them, but in the future i will give them their own plot rather than planting in the middle of a garden with other vegetables! Between damage from having a huge limb hurled upon it in a storm and sweet potatoe vines growing ALL throughout, that plot is a terrible mess. i am cleaning it now for fall planting (during breaks in the rain; apparently el nino= late summer monsoon), but as i cant yet harvest the sweet potatoes...like i said, that garden is a MESS.

It was a good gardening year, though. especially for peppers, the definite stars of both gardens this year.