2024 Vegetable Wrap-Up

My peppers, bought onions

I thought I would recap what happened this year, what worked and what didn't work. It was my most successful vegetable gardening in years. While we haven't had a frost yet, and the plants are mostly still alive, there won't be any more harvests.

First, peppers. I only put them in the Greenstalk, my rotating vertical grower. They did very very well. When I first set them in place, they took a small beating from small pests (holes in the leaves) but I sprayed with an organic bug spray and also trapped many slugs in beer traps, and from then on they took off. I watered daily during the drought and I fertilized them every couple of weeks through the end of July. 

I probably won't grow the same varieties of peppers again. I mostly planted "mini-bells", sweet peppers that only get to be a few inches big. They were very tasty, but WAY TOO MUCH WORK TO EAT!!!  The teeny little things required de-seeding just like a big bell, but it took a lot of them to make a meal. The orange variety seemed much more prolific than the red ones, and I had a purely green, round, one as well (Cupid) with an especially good taste. I also planted one variety of normal-sized banana peppers, long and skinny, and they were good, but more prone to insect damage than the others. I'm going to look for classic bells and fatter Italian frying peppers next year. (I do not do hot peppers.)

And basil! I had SO MUCH basil! I started 24 basil plants from seed, and plopped in a plant to each of the unused slots in the Greenstalk. I had four varieties - Napolitano, Genovese, Tuscany, and Thai. I also put a half-dozen plants into the ground. I had basil extravaganza for the whole summer! It loved the heat, and I watered daily during the drought. The Thai basil plants in the ground got as tall as me! It's not my favorite variety of Thai, I'll look for a new one next year. I bought parsley plants, flat leaf and curly, at farmer's market and put in the Greenstalk, where they did well. I also bought cilantro plants, twice, and placed in the Greenstalk, but they both died quickly.

And tomatoes! I did regular tomatoes in the ground and in individual pots, and cherry tomatoes in the Greenstalks. (Same variety cherry tomato as I grow inside hydroponically.)  I basically got no cherry tomatoes outside, maybe one or two. I think the bunnies may have gotten to them - they were accessible, though slightly protected. And my big tomatoe plants were partially protected. I had four plants in the ground, inside netting that was easily broken by the animals - and it was shredded by them on Bastille Day, in the middle of July, when the plants were bursting with plenty of green tomatoes and no ripe ones. (see this post). I had picked a few green-but-clearly-ripening tomatoes before the massacre. I repaired the damage as best I could a few days later, and the plants survived their haircuts and proceeded to set a new crop of fruit. I got maybe a dozen tomatoes in all (maybe a bit more). The tomato plants in pots were basically unprotected from the critters and took many haircuts besides having fruit stolen. I did get a couple of handfuls of tomatoes from the five plants in pots. I fertilized all the tomato plants every 2-3 weeks (pots slightly more often) through the end of July. I don't think I fertilized after that.

I did two of the three sisters, corn and beans. I got some little corn before the massacre. The beans, inter-planted at the foot of the corn stalks, continued to grow post-massacre, and I harvested a few handfuls of very attractive pods. I shelled the beans, they yielded about 3/4 of a cup, and boiled them, ate them in a vinegar and oil dressing, and was pleased. But I don't know that either the corn or beans were worth the garden space. Corn from the farmer's market is easier, and I like beans from a can. 

I had my best zucchini harvest in years! It wasn't anything to boast about, by zucchini growing standards, but I actually got maybe a dozen or more zucchini to eat! I planted in my raised bed with new soil, and draped the whole thing with insect netting, fastened down all around the edge of the bed. After the plants started blooming with female blossoms, I replaced the fine-meshed insect netting with wider-meshed critter netting, to allow for natural pollination while still keeping the deer, rabbits and squirrels out. I watered, but far from daily, maybe more like weekly. I sprayed the plants with the organic insect spray, put out slug traps (but slugs didn't seem a problem) and sprayed a couple of times with BT, which is specific for caterpillars. I think I thwarted the squash vine borer, which is a moth that lays its eggs inside the vines, for the emergent caterpillars to eat their way out. 

This was my first year for potatoes! I bought seed potatoes on impulse at the hardware store, and I planted them into three 5-gallon growbags. I harvested one bag at the end of July, and the other two about 10 days ago. It was so fun to peel back the bag, and plunge my hands into the dirt feeling for the little potatoes! The thing to worry about potatoes is their turning green. The green is actually just chlorophyll, which is fine, but bad chemicals (solanine) often develop as the potatoes are turning green. I scrubbed, cooked and ate the potatoes the day they were harvested, and I think a few of the potatoes had some solanine. Some of them were bitter to the taste, and I felt queasy after eating them. How odd, but I won't be doing potatoes again. 

But it's all an experiment, and the fun is in the doing and finding out. I don't know what I'll do next year, but whatever I do, I know I need better pest and critter barriers.