Garden Update: August 2009

I can sum up our garden experience with one simple phrase: There's always next year. Things haven't turned near as well as I would have hoped after putting so much time and sweat into making this garden great. We had nowhere to go but up, and up we went...just not by much. But a little perspective would do me well: The two main crops that I wanted to succeed, did. Our peas and carrots were far and away our best performers, especially our peas. So even though our corn, beets, beans, cucumber, spinach, lettuce, and broccoli were failures to one degree or another, we sure had some good peas and carrots. Here's the breakdown as the Summer wanes:

Corn: What a joke. After some time-lapse photography I came to realize that our corn was getting about 5 hours of sunlight per day, if it was lucky. It was probably more like 4 or 4 1/2. I'm thinking that explains the pencil-thin stalks, the pale green leaves, and some of the most pathetic ears that could ever be called such. Consequently, the results of my plant-spacing experiment (which I actually drew out a diagram for) were horribly confounded and I don't know if I crammed too many plants into too small a space or if my mother-in-law just has the magic touch. Maybe corn just isn't going to work for us here. I don't know if there is any spot in our garden that would provide it with adequate sunlight.

You call those "ears?" YOU CALL THOSE "EARS?!?"

Carrots: Our carrots have actually done quite well. They taste a little bit "off" to me, which is sad. The best way I can describe it is that they taste a bit dehydrated or "woody," though there is considerable variability between plants. I have a second batch that I planted sometime in June and they are really moving! I think this batch will be a significant improvement over the early-Spring batch, which was itself a vast improvement over any previous batch of carrots we've planted.


Peas: Our peas were fantastic, especially the pole peas. They tasted great and just kept on giving until we went out of town and I had messed up on the sprinkler timer; they were nice and crispy after 5 days of triple-digit temps without any water. I planted a fall crop at the beginning of August just like the experts told me to, and only 3 out of 30+ seeds sprouted. What a rip! It looks like we'll have a limited fall crop but I'm sure they'll be delicious!

A small measure of victory.

Beets: Has anyone else ever tried to grow beets? What's the deal with the plant getting burned in the middle? Almost half of my dang beet plants sprouted and started off fine, and then they would shrivel-up half way between the root and the leaves and die. !?! My entire first batch of beets was a spectacular failure; it turns out they need more than 4 hours of sunlight too. So I planted a second batch in June and after a month they were already 10x the plants my first batch had ever been...excepting of course the "middle burners." It looks like we may have one, or maybe two or three, full-grown edible beets this fall. Hooray!

What the heck?!

Yay!

Spinach/Lettuce: Round 1 = Disaster. Yellow, whimpy plants that I think I overwatered. Round 2 = Sprouts on top of sprouts that never became anything more. Round 3 = The worst of the lot. Growing this stuff is still a mystery to me.

Lettuce (3rd try) and broccoli (2nd try). Are you kidding me? The cucumber plant was saved from it's death bed (i.e. the perma-shade of our back yard) and it's the only thing that's remotely performed in this box. Miserable.

Beans: We've had enough to provide us with a side dish for dinner on two occasions, but otherwise the production has been unimpressive. However, it seems now that some of the plants are getting a second wind and are growing heartily and dwarfing their comrades. We'll see if they produce the beans to match.

Some of those plants are not like the others. Some of those plants decided to be men!

Broccoli: I don't even want to go there. I'll just say that buying starts appears to be the way to go. The seeds I planted in June sprouted, grew about 2" and now it looks like they've done all they're going to do and are just waiting to be added to the compost heap.