Pass/Fail

The harvest is all in, with the exception of all the delicious herbage and greenery that I am using as cover crops this year due to unknown toxic loads. (Still unable to find a lab willing to do small scale test for under $500.)

Time to evaluate this superweird gardening year in order that next year be more successful. To note, we had a million rainy days this summer, (yes, one million) which mucked up the whole works including washing away the seeds, rotting the seedlings, incubating our largest mosquito population ever, and delaying the warm stuff. I also felt like nothing put down deep enough roots to hold water well, so when the rains slowed, everything wilted in a day. (This is Catscience, so please ignore if it sounds nuts.)

Total harvest was around 100 lbs, so all in all, a good year, with some surprise underdogs. (*=successful plants from last year, repeating this year; **=plants started last year, but squished by cat-love or melted in great seedling death of ‘08)

• Multicolored Pole Beans: WINNER! Multiple poundage, lots of variety. Early plantings rotted, so direct seeded in early May with first harvest 7/4.
• Scarlet Runner Beans: WINNER! Planted 5 year old seed packet, maybe even from my garden in SF (10 years ago). Same as pole beans. NEED MORE SUPPORT, maybe horizontal next year.
• de Bourbonne Pickling Cucumbers: RIP: rain. Direct seeded. They came up (or other variety did), but no fruit. Lots of flowers.
• Little Leaf Cucumbers: RIP: rain Direct seeded. Three stunted, ugly fruit that tasted like soap. Lots of flowers.
• Northern Pickling Cucumber** See notes on other cukes above.
• Red Russian Kale: DANGER/POISON Easy to sow, easy to grow, still going strong and beautiful. The first few harvests were tasty until I learned about danger of cruciferous family taking up toxins.
• Be my Baby Cherry Tomato: RIP: Every last one washed away.
• Genovese Basil* WINNER DANGER POISON. still going strong
• Thai Basil* WINNER DANGER POISON. still going strong
• Borage* WINNER! As noted in prior posts, seedlings easily rot from top watering and torrential rains, but easily recover, self seed and pop up in every crack. Direct seeds were in bloom by mid-June. A happy volunteer that I will gladly host forever. Probably best to tie up because it looks terrible when it falls, and can knock down bean vines because it’s so heavy. First two plants carpeted with aphids, but after a couple weeks, I didn’t see another aphid. There were ants, though, but couldn’t see that they were farming them.
• Flying Saucers Morning Glory RIP: rain. All but one seed rotted, but it was beautiful sprouting out of burned out guitar planter in late August. Blooms were about 4″ across, streaky and stunning.
• Daddy Mix Petunia: RIP: rain
• Pink Wave Petunia: RIP: rain
• Mission Bells California Poppies: RIP: Rain. We do not have this kind of rain in California, and they never popped up at all. So, not poppies but poopies.
• Beneficials Mix (to draw nice bugs): Middling results. These were damned impossible to tell from weeds. Yes I know they’re weeds by another name on purpose, but still… Some pretty pink and white flowers. I noted a couple tiny waspy things on them that weren’t drawn by other flowers, but the bees preferred the borage and lemon balm by far. Bachelor’s buttons included, which I loved. Also, the easternmost bean container’s leaf cutting mystery coincided with emergence of the white tufty flowered plant. Useless info without photos, I know. Next year.
• Black Beauty Zucchini: RIP: rain
• Bouquet Dill* RIP: rain
• Lemon Cucumber* RIP: rain
• Chadwick Cherry** RIP: rain
• Pronto Beet RIP: rain
• Butter & Eggs Marigold** WINNER! One of few plants that survived transplanting. Very leggy, needs to be planted with lower growing ornamentals or basil? Not anything super dense, though, because choked out last year by pink petunias.
• Caserta Zucchini** RIP: rain
• Cascadia Bush Snap Pea** WINNER! Several pounds harvested, DEFINITELY plant on St. Patty’s day. (added note to calendar to remind me every year.) Organic peas never dropped much below $5/lb, so a significant money saver. Plus, they’re delicious.
• Scarlett O’Hara Morning Glory** RIP: rain

Perennials

• Concord Grape: WINNER! Over 40 pounds harvested. 27 pints of grape juice canned! Harvested about a week late due to rain.
• Rosemary Alta: RIP: rain
• Mints: (some survived, not sure which) Only icky mint survived. Bought new one at farmer’s market. WINNER!
• Lavender: (seems to have survived) RIP: rain
• Paul’s Glory Hosta: Still going strong. Not too much blooming because of the rain.
• Chives WINNER! This the first year I cooked with the flowers. Very nice for fancy pasta salad.

New friends:

• Cherry tomatoes: as noted in prior post. Farmer’s market. Lots and lots of pounds. I failed at weighing them, but I would say upwards of 10 lbs, and with organic tomatoes in the $4/lb range because of late blight, definitely a money saver.
• Butternut squash (Volunteer) WINNER! I think this is my favorite argument in favor of composting. I didn’t plant this at all. I will say it’s a descendant of Hubert’s squash because the squashes were nice, but I’ve had other squashes since he forayed to the Golden State, so it’s parentage is in question. That said, 20 lbs of food from a plant that sprung wildly from a garbage heap is pretty f’ing awesome.
• Liriope From the Bronx, a plant with no home. Happy, if a little dry. A little boring, but surprising August/September purple flowers.
• Bleeding Hearts: Also from the Bronx. Transplanted just after bloom, unsure of color/variety. Should come back next year.
• Lemon Balm: another Bronx transplant. Seems invasive, but smells so nice, I don’t mind it yet. Easy to weed. Loved the wet weather, but roots seemed ill suited for dry spells.
• Thyme: DANGER POISON from farmer’s market
• New Rosemary: DANGER POISON

By next year, I hope to have the toxics issue sorted out, but it certainly didn’t make me want to dig around in the Gowanus-tainted dirt. It’s probably mostly fine, but small amounts of PCBs and PAH’s can be very bad for the living, and I’m not a fan of that kind of risk. All in all, very successful in hindsight, though the mosquitoes and potential PCBs made it tricky to work down there. The nice thing about gardening is that next year is only a few months away. I saved a bunch of seeds, which will make next year cheaper.

1 Comment so far
Leave a comment




Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

Name (required)

E-mail (required)

URI

Your Comment