So, how did your garden do this year?

[my4littlebuffaloes]

Fall is just about here and the last of my tomatoes are ripening slowly. I thought it would be interesting to hear how other people's gardens did since mine were so pathetic.

I have 2 gardens - the one at home and a community garden plot. I got virtually nothing from the community garden.

At home I got 2 meals of green beans, a few peas, cucumbers to eat for a couple of weeks, beets that the rabbit just loves, a few heads of garlic, and tomatoes. Just enough tomatoes for us to eat - nothing extra to preserve. Guess how many plants I planted? 4 at the community garden and 16 at home. Yep, 20 plants and barely enough tomatoes for us to eat for 1 month.

Honestly I am about ready to give up gardening although I don't think I will. But something has to change so that I can get more production out of my plants.

So - tell me how your garden did this year?

[nuisance26]

~I'm so glad you asked! I've been wanting to update everyone on how my SFG did.
Spring crop totals:
3.25lbs of lettuce and baby spinach
1lb mature spinach
2 bunches fresh dill, 1/4 cup dill seed
14.5+ ounces sugar snap peas(dd ate a ton of these before I could harvest)
3.3 lbs zucchini
Summer totals:
33lbs zucchini
3.6lbs jalapeno peppers(which is actually a lot!!!)
10.5 ounces green beans
2.5lbs green bell peppers
6.25lbs Roma tomatoes
7.3lbs Big Boy tomatoes

So far that's well over $100 in produce grown. Since it's organic I could probably place the value at twice that. So I got back my investment this year and should come out ahead with the next harvest.
My garden is still producing tomatoes and peppers. I have a Fall crop of dill, chives, spinach and lettuce in.
SFG is amazing! Next year's produce will cost me just pennies a pound. ~

[Uniwolf]

Mine was horrible. I tried to do containers because, our ground is SOOOO rocky, but with the horrible heat that we had this summer it died. Even totally drenching it in water twice a day did nothing for it (it was watered at about 4 in the morning and then after the sun moved off of it in the evening) but all to no avail other than a higher water bill.

[nodmicks]

We got so many cucumbers I was donating to the senior center, giving to everyone I knew and taking them to the salon.

The little tomatos did ok but have now been frosted and the chickens are cleaning them up.

I got maybe a dozen ripe red tomatos before the freeze. I picked a recycle bin and a 5 gallon bucket full of the green ones.

1 got 1 spagetti squash

The brussel sprouts are still limping along but growing very very slowly.

[Ramona]

Mine was an embarrassment .

I had two Big Boy tomato plants in a container. The first big red tomato was assaulted by an animal who only ate half of it.

I had to harvest 8 green tomatoes which are now ripening on my window sill.

PS I hate fried green tomatoes .

[Birdie]

I have 2 gardens also; at home I have 4 raised beds that are 4x8 and a demonstration garden at a horticulture center with 7 beds, each 100 sq feet.

Both gardens did well once we got past a cool and wet May and June. The tomatoes took until mid August to start ripening, but they've done well and are still ripening. I had zucchini and butternut at home along with the tomatoes, and harvested enough to share with my family, neighbors and the local food bank.

I live in California and we can grow vegetables year around. I just planted my home winter garden with broccoli, lettuce, carrots, beets, chard and spinach. I might add garlic and onions too. We rarely have a freeze, so most of the winter vegetables do well until early spring.

[Debbie-cat]

Ours did quite well. Lots of broccoli, carrots, peppers and tomatoes. Celery was a little slow but the herbs really took off!

We don't plant zuchinni, onions or squash as a neighbor does and he always plants too much and gives us 1/2 of his crops. We supply the seeds since he does this. So ended up with with enough of these plants to last the winter.

All and all pretty good. Potatoes poor this year.

[mndtrp]

My garden is small, and doesn't get much light. My tomatoes did fine, my bell peppers mocked me with two tiny peppers, and my green beans gave me enough for one meal.

Since the main problem is the amount of sun my garden gets, and there isn't really anything I can do about it, I'm not going to bother with a garden next year. When I can get all of my produce for ~.49/lb, it's not worth it to me.

[sinopa27]

i got lots of potatoes that I did in containers. I got lots of broccoli and cabbage (small heads though). I got hot peppers and tomatoes on a daily basis that helped since we make a fresh salsa every day. I still have plenty of tomatoes. I hope they ripen before the frost.

[Ceashels]

Mine did less than meh. The square foot garden concept is good but placement of plants is key. My rutabaga over shaded my carrots, the marigolds over shaded my chard. The beets grew to about an inch and the green beans shriveled up and cried.

Next year I'll be leaving some squares in between or will reconfigure placement so things can get sun.

[Daisygirl]

Ours did terribly - if we had to exist on our gardening efforts we would have died of starvation about a month ago. The only things that did well were butternut squash and green beans.

I overplanted my SQFT garden and I planted everything at once. Next year I will do the spring, harvest that and do some summer planting, harvest again and do fall planting. I'm also going to set up a separate raised bed for squash/viney stuff.

Good learning experience, though!

[nodmicks]

This isnt really the garden but I wanted to mention for some reason we had more apples from our tree than we have seen in the 13 years we have been here. The poor branches were actually bowing! NO clue why !

[NicJean]

We had tons of cabbage (made sauerkraut with only 15 pounds of it, should have done another 15 pounds) easily12 huge heads.
Tomatoes - I've canned 12 pints salsa, several pints and a couple quarts of crushed tomatoes, made 7 pints italian pasta sauce for the freezer, ate our fill, and still have more. We even had a major infestation of horned tobacco worms that ate many tomatoes.
I've fallen in love with the Sungold variety of cherry tomato.
Had enough broccoli for three meals (need to plant more next year).
More green beans and wax beans than I knew what to do with (I did can pickled 3-bean salad, first time).
Peas were never-ending, planted two rows that kept producing (got to the point we were sick of them).
Only 4 green peppers, but 8 hot peppers from one plant.
No cauliflower - 2 plants.
Beets, carrots, corn (need more).
Squash (buttercup) got 40 from 4 seeds. Pressure canning Saturday is the plan . . .
Couple handfuls of blueberries (plants only 2 years old).
I didn't get to eat a single apple from our tree - not many there, and they all dropped really early (chipmunks and chickens got them).

[sunshine]

We did ok. . . I have 2 huge gardens.

My $1 garden (experiment we do every year, spend $1 in seeds and see how much food we get) did exceptionally well. That harvest was donated to our senior citizen housing units. We took bags for each resident weekly (are still taking some things like turnips, cabbage, spinach, lettuce). Estimate so far is about $150 worth of food.

My garden for home use did well too- we've canned 127 quarts of tomato products (spaghetti sauce, ketchup, pizza sauce, salsa, etc.) 75 quarts of peas, 200 quarts of green beans, over 500 quarts of various zucchini products - we use zucchini in place of flour noodles due to dd's celiac. Still waiting to harvest pumpkins, white squash, popcorn, etc. We only got 58 quarts of sweet corn , heat and drought won out. I didnt track how much turnips, lettuce, spinach, etc. we got from our gardens - but we ate well, and I have turnips, onions, cabbage in the root cellar.

[pinetree]

We didnt get to plant until mid june, had too much rain, late freezes and then it got hot. Then the bugs hit.

We did get 5 beautiful watermelon, and have pumkins doing well.

All the corn got eaten by coons or squirrels, we didnt even get one ear. Spinach, green beans, peas, crooked neck, cabbage, well the rest of the garden isnt really worth mentioning.

We pulled alot out and have red clover planted. The tomatoes are just now taking off, which I think will be too late. I dont even have enough to can, with 14 plants.

With the late frost we didnt get any apples, plums, peaches or pears.