On March 26 I planted pumpkins, tomatoes, chives, basil, strawberries, artichokes, radishes, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers and baby bottle gourds.
5 pumpkins seeds sprouted and 3 pumpkins grew. It was fun watching them get bigger. But the foliage wilted EVERY day despite my watering every other day in my sandy soil. A couple weeks ago the foliage started to get crispy and die back leaving brown vines sprawling across our backyard. Our summer wasn't THAT bad until August arrived with it's oven like heat! Last weekend I noticed that 2 of the pumpkins were rotting! Ugh! :-(.
The 2 tomatoes have produced nicely but are looking crappy now. I left the radishes in too long. The cucumbers were tough. The zucchini stopped producing about a month ago. The chives are doing well. The carrots never sprouted. I was taught that one could grow them any time. But maybe they do better in cooler weather. Strawberries are spreading. I lost one of my 2 artichokes because I moved it remembering how huge they grow. The basil is still growing like crazy! The gourds are very happy and have about 10 gourds on them!
Last evening I ripped out the pumpkins and zucchini.
I'm not the best vegetable eater but I'm a huge salad lover! I'm really looking forward to planting cool weather veggies like spinach and many different varieties of lettuce and carrots. I know broccoli gets aphids and cabbage gets worms. Maybe I'll try snow peas.
I'm still learning and will adjust next year from my mistakes. How did your vegetable garden grow this summer?
California and Switzerland are apples and oranges as far as gardening goes. I can grow lettuce nearly all year round (if I protect it in a mini greenhouse in the winter). For once, I had loads of decent broccoli, cabbages, and eggplant! This is also the first year I've had luck with bell peppers. On the other hand, artichokes grow dismally here -- I haven't found the right combination. The plants do not take on any volume at all once I bring them home from the nursery -- in fact, I'm convinced that they shrink! I waited a bit too late to plant my zukes and melons, but the cukes are growing famously! These are all planted (experimentally) along 2 construction fence grills that I propped up against each other like a tent. They grew a bit slowly at first, but now there are all sorts of buds and fruit on them! Will send pics.
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