Evaluation (with photos!)

I decided that today would be the day that I finally got around to using the nifty little USB drive thingie that I got for free from the Quebec City Tourism people to put my photos onto this here blog. I've been saving up.

And now some of these photos are making me sad. I went into the garden last night and realized that I might have some more problems again this year - on close inspection, I do believe that once again, the earwigs have gotten into my peppers. Also, they are selling sweet corn everywhere along the highways of this province and others, and yet my corn has tufts but nothing else. No hint of a cob anywhere. I have one pumpkin, and that's all I think I'm going to get from my 5 vines. I have one cayenne pepper, because the beans overtook the little wee homegrown plants, and the beans are dunzo. The romaine lettuce went bitter so I've let it go to seed, and the cilantro's finally completely done and gone to seed as well. I ripped out all the potatoes I could find, which weren't many because I didn't plant them correctly this year. The garlic's done, and I don't have a bumper crop of tomatoes - of the ones I've got, none of them have started to ripen yet.

Anyway, it's not all doom and gloom, behold the photographs:

I am so proud of this garlic it's sick. And I can't wait to plant three times as much in fall, for next year. What a satisfying thing to grow! And here I thought I wasn't able - this year turned everything around, perhaps because I bought good quality seed garlic from Vesey's.

This is one side of the garden about a month ago. The big dirty bare patch is where the garlic and cilantro used to live, but have since been ripped out. I'm taking suggestions as to what to plant there for fall: spinach? Definitely more garlic, for next year.

My darling peppers, pre-earwig. How on earth can I (naturally) repel these disgusting little terrors? Do you want to know the grossest thing? I eat the peppers anyway. I wash them all out first and cut off the bad bits, but I don't waste a thing dammit.

I think this was actually last year. Yeah, looks too tidy to have been this year. Anyway, this was obviously early June, because of the peonies, but it's my front hill garden in its full messy glory.

I took this one the other morning. I had ONE mutant giant blue morning glory. That's no miracle of perspective - the other ones in the photo are normal size.

Aside from all the rotten garden news, I do have a few successes to report. My turnips are adorable and yummy, though I do have to pull them all out soon. My kale is doing well, despite the slugs on the lower leaves, which I just remove anyway. I did get a hell of a lot of cilantro and garlic and basil, and there's still a good lot of basil that I grew from seed. My one pumpkin is lovely, and I will still get some good tomatoes. I've been eating cherry tomatoes, 2 a day, every day for a few weeks now, so I guess I can count that a success too. I may still get corn, some decent peppers, and one eggplant. I may also get a couple of cucumbers, despite the cucumber beetles I keep finding.

At this rate, I won't be self-sufficient for a very long time.

So here's what I have to do differently next year:

- Fertilize with more compost. I didn't turn anything into my dirt this year and it shows.

- Try rows, instead of this over-abundant free-flowing design which only seems to encourage bugs and slugs. Since the stick ornament may be on its last legs this year (it falls apart if I so much as breathe on it), I can gut the garden in fall and re-design it.

- Mulch with straw.

- Grow more than one ground cherry, eggplant, cherry tomato, and thai basil plant.

- Plant my potatoes properly, and use real seed potatoes.

- Use floating row covers or something right off the bat to protect against cucumber beetles.

- Pay more attention to why my pumpkins are falling off at 1 inch big, and remedy it.

- Harvest beans more regularly. Move back to the purple bush beans.

- Contain the mint.

- Contain the cilantro.

- Grow more spinach.

- Don't let the lettuce get bitter. Why did I do that? I like salads.

- Let the strawberries flourish and spread.

- Put more bug-repelling ornamentals in the garden.

- Pay attention to what's going to shade what when it all grows up.

- Don't try to grow so many weird and exotic things that I don't know what to do with.

- Plant in mounds/raised rows.

- Use landscape fabric to keep the weeds out.

- Put flagstones in the entrance.

Every year is a learning experience. One of these years I'm going to get it right.