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Mine gave me maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of what it produced last year, even though some of the seeds were from left over packages from last year or what I saved from garden produce from last year. Other seeds were fresh this year. Everything was the same....same plot of ground, same soil preparation and fertilizing, same covering with black plastic, same irrigation system with soaker hoses. We had good rainfall the first half of summer and then it was scanty but I had the soaker hoses to make up for lack of natural rainfall.
The spaghetti squashes were about 2/3 the size of last year's crop and not even half in total number produced even though there were more plants. The tomatoes did not bear as well and the Amish Paste grown from seeds saved from last year were not as big nor as plentiful. (Last year the first ones were as large as a small cannon ball.) The Cherokee Purples did very well, however. Total tomato crop was down from last year. The green peppers were not as large this year either, nor as many. Some were from saved seeds and some from seeds purchased from this year. Zucchini did not bear well but yellow squash was prolific. I also grew Eight Ball Zucchini (round zucchini). The first ones were soft enough to slice and bake but the rest were hard as baseballs, like a hard pumpkin. The beans did fairly well....but maybe a little less than last year. I planted Long Island Cheese squash and got only three squashes. One of them is a perfect specimen but the other two are smaller and misshapen.
I have half a dozen habanero pepper plants and they don't have very many peppers on them. (First time I have tried habaneros.) Maybe they just need a longer growing season with consistently hotter weather than what we have here in SW Nebraska. (It's pretty hot here most of the summer.)
I planted giant Russian sunflowers from leftover seeds from last year. Last year they grew to be 10-12 feet tall with sunflowers 15 inches in diameter. This year they were about 5-6 feet tall and with flowers no more than 7-8 inches in diameter. The other sunflowers I grew were also puny.
The giant pumpkins, also planted from seeds left over from last year, are half the size they were last year.
A few other people in my area have said their gardens didn't do as well this year so I'm wondering if this also happened in other areas of the country.
So.....was it a good year, a so-so year or a bad year for your garden?
We had a so-so year. We had freezing temps and rain until the end of May. Not much could be planted until Memorial Day weekend, which was a very cold weekend. We just started harvesting large quantities of veggies, but the fall cold has already set in. I am not sure how much more we will get.
Do you grow from open pollinated seeds or hybrids? My open pollinated seed did ok, but not great like in years past.
nope it all did terrible cause of the heat and horror of this summer .This summer killed my tomatoes and it also killed the pumpkins out in the country part of this town .
I sure picked a GREAT year to experiment with a container garden LOL.
Rain rain and more rain to start in spring/summer - then a burst of HIGH temps that killed off my melons for the most part - and now a sudden drop back into the 60s during the day - sigh
I still have a lot of green baby toms, whether they'll actually mature and ripen is anyone's guess.
Hopefully some of the cooler weather fall stuff will do okay - waiting to see how that goes.
My tomatoes didnt do well at all this year, peppers were fair, green beans crapped out, and I'm not even gonna talk about the corn.
All the herbs did well though, and my lemon grass is thriving.
Getting ready to plant a fall crop of lettuce, that usually does quite well.
My neighbor told us that some years certain crops don't grow as well as others and each year is different. Last year we had tomatoes until Oct and more then we could possibly eat ourselves so we shared. This year my tomatoe plants had a very short time period where they produced and even then it wasn't great. It seemed everyone in our area had the same problem. Squash, beans, corn and bell peppers did just ok. Hopefully next year will be better.
My tomatoes didnt do well at all this year, peppers were fair, green beans crapped out, and I'm not even gonna talk about the corn. All the herbs did well though, and my lemon grass is thriving.
Getting ready to plant a fall crop of lettuce, that usually does quite well.
The herbs have been the only thing that really THRIVED for me this year, hoping they make it through winter indoors under growlights.
We had a so-so year. We had freezing temps and rain until the end of May. Not much could be planted until Memorial Day weekend, which was a very cold weekend. We just started harvesting large quantities of veggies, but the fall cold has already set in. I am not sure how much more we will get.
Do you grow from open pollinated seeds or hybrids? My open pollinated seed did ok, but not great like in years past.
Squashes and pumpkins are open pollinated. I grew Purple Cherokee and Amish Paste tomatoes--both heirlooms. Also some hybrid tomatoes, which didn't do very well either.
Interesting to see that other areas of the country didn't have such a good year for home gardeners either. It was coolish here in NE through May and I didn't get things into the ground until last of May and early June. Then it turned HOT and stayed that way all summer long. I have habenero pepper plants that are just now blooming plus a couple with a few peppers on them--won't be much of a crop from them.
For some reason it's like the company Ugli Fruit took over my tomatoes.........they indeed were ugly and never would turn red????? But friends had the same issue......good thing Emeril has great green tomato recipes. Everything else was in abundance and perfect..............
Here in North Carolina it was far from ideal, and I had terrible results with in-ground stuff.
We had the snowiest and wettest winter in almost a decade. The March warmup was dramatic - from snow to 80-degree weather in roughly 2 weeks, and regular precipitation stopped in late March. We had the driest and hottest April on record (normally, the stormiest month here), June-July-August went down as the hottest (averaged across the 3 months) 3 month period ever recorded here.
Thus it was a real tomatocalypse. Peppers, tomatillos, cape gooseberries, pepinos, squash, even with regular watering, croaked.
On the other hand, I keep subtropical perennials in pots - several citrus trees, along with guavas and a cherimoya and a couple other things - and they have done magnificently. It's too cold here for those guys to be in-ground, but ironically they (in particular citrus) have quite a bit more drought tolerance, and high temps are not a problem. They are too young to set any fruit, and I don't know if they will in containers, but they thrived.
So it was a 'you win some, you lose some' kind of gardening season.
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