Garden Diaries, 2020

[WLLady]

Yep, my tomatoes took a hit. YES! and my mexican sunflowers are all drooped over. my last remaining butternut is black and laying on the ground. Glad i picked the beans.....need to investigate the peppers. they are so tender they're likely all done. Lettuce fared just fine, as did the brussel sprouts and rutabaga. beautiful day....about to go and check trail cameras, and hopefully get a sunburn lol. then start tidying up for fall. bring in the sprinklers and watering buckets and stuff like that.

[labradors]

My bush beans didn't make it. I should have thought to cover them last night .

The frost was patchy in our garden and some things got hit while others didn't.

How odd about your lettuce surviving WLLady!

[Killerbunny]

Our lettuce is fine as are the strawbs. Squash - not so much LOL!

[TomK]

Thought i had better pipe up...people may think i up n died or sumpin...garden was amazing this year...fenced the whole thing...changed almost everything to raised beds..only potatoes, garlic, onions and the various fruit bushes are on original soil...all the pathways between beds are crushed gravel with HD landscape fabric under ...looks amazing and the deer were stymied...finally!!!!.. Yay me....3 varieties of potato...28 varieties of tomatoes...herbs were amazing...3 varieties of beans went nuts...carrots, beets, chard, parsnips, turnips, kohlrabi all quite surprising...had some early issues with a marauding bunny in the garden but once the fencing was complete that problem was solved...only one cabbage split...yay...got some sweet potato slips from a friend in exchange for pumpkin sets and they grew crazy but i dug one hill and nada,,,oh well..now tomatoes, my focus most summers, Sgt Peppers, Ernies Plump, Lunch Box and Abu Rawan came thru as always...screwed up with a miss tag on Costoluto Genovese and ended up with an extra Painted Pink Ellie...so have to get new seed for that breed...new trials were Fargo Yellow Pear , Gold Medal, Old German, and Mortgage Lifter..all really good results...the most prolific variety by far, and I mean by far, was 10 Fingers of Naples...a new test and it just blew me away...Old Ivory Egg was a new try too, really nice tomato...I will leave it up to you to chk them out online..have a few new ones to try in the spring..always exciting...MJ thinks I have lost my mind on this...

[WLLady]

yep, my pole beans are black and oogie....i just checked everything before coming in. Peppers are nuked too. the lettuce is nestled a little bit underneath the outer leaves of the next broccoli plants...so i think just sheltered just enough. i seem to have black leg (or whatever it's called) in my brussel sprouts this year. lost another 2 plants. I might pick them tomorrow before any more succumb. never had it before, so this is new (and totally disgusting!). The stems go black about 6 inches above the dirt and stink like a dead animal. YUCK. anyways, whatever. i found a cauliflower i forgot to pick. It's over on the counter now, and found 2 peppers that were in the middle of a couple plants and were still good. also in on the counter. PHEW. another garden season survived! of course the rutabaga look like nothing happened, all nice and green and lush while everything else is black and slimy all over the ground all around them!

the secret to sweet potatoes-start the rootlets no later than christmas. Get them into pots in a heated greenhouse (or direct sun or under lights) in early march. the growing season here is just not long enough to put out small plants. they really need an extra 20-30 days over what our average growing season is here to get to be nice big tubers.

[labradors]

TomK, great report on the tomatoes. Glad you had a terrific year! I can't complain about how my tomatoes grew either this season. I can help you out with an excellent strain of Costoluto Genovese seed, but I had the most awful BER on them which rather put me off, even though they were incredibly prolific and I did get a ton of them for sauce-making. I also have some Estler's Mortgage Lifter seeds from his grand-daughter. Estler is said to be the originator of that variety and Radiator Charlie apparently stole the name with an inferior 'mater! Such intrigue in the tomato world!

WLLady, thanks for the info on starting sweet potatoes which I will pass along to my friend. I didn't get around to checking them out yet.....

Linda

[Killerbunny]

My CGs have been fabulous and also Chadwick cherry. You've seen the pics of Believe it or Not! Toms are still going.

[KimChick]

It was an excellent year for bush beans (3 pickings) and a terrible year for cucumbers (an early blight). Also a good year for peppers, eggplant, lettuce, zucchini, squash, onions, basil, cabbage, kale, chard, carrots, beets.
I was disappointed with sugar snap peas; there were mixed seeds in the package - regular peas mixed with sugar snap.
I may have to do more canning if the turkeys and cockerels take up too much room in the freezer(s).
This year, I prepared beets for borscht (julienne pieces), raw packed, and pressure canned them in hopes of keeping their colour. It looks like it worked. There are only a few left in the garden.

[kenya]

We had a really hard frost, covered the tomatoes and they still got hit. I've never had that happen before, if I covered them they always survived.

[labradors]

My tomatoes this year.

I concentrated mostly on cherry tomatoes this season, with a view to dehydrating the extras, since I still have a ton of sauce from last year.

None of the new cherries really stood out! I enjoyed Sungold F1, Maglia Rosa, Blush, Garnet and Sweet Aperitif, all of which I have grown before. Super Snow White was ok for a large, juicy off-white cherry. Lucky Tiger was a tasty green bullet-shaped cherry which was a bit stingy, and difficult to tell when it was ripe.

The two large-fruited varieties were excellent. EM Champion is a compact, early, large red heart which was sweet, with an acid kick. I will grow it again. Captain Lucky is a mid-season green bi-colour beefsteak with excellent taste. I found it difficult to tell exactly when it was ripe.