The 2025 Season in Review

I'm sorry to say that 2025 wasn't a great year for the garden, or for me keeping up on posts here. The weather was too wet then too dry the too wet again. The garden didn't enjoy it and neither did I. While it was generally a poor year for the veg, it wasn't a total failure. I'll start with the successes.

Garlic

This was actually an unexpected surprise. I had planted the garlic just for the scapes. I planted two types, only one of which grew (and I don't know which type that was since the labels faded away). I harvested the scapes too late and they were woody. So, that was a fail on my part. I just left the rest of the plants in the ground. Well, lo and behold, when I pulled up the dried out stalks at the beginning of August, there were beautiful little bulbs of garlic on them! I put half of the cloves back into the garden this fall and we've been enjoying the other half. They are lovely and hot.

Surprise! Garlic!

Tomatoes

The experimental Burpee direct-sew tomato seeds were a success. They grew well and set a lot of fruit. The Groundswell beefsteak produced one truly massive tomato (1.7 pounds!) along with a fair number of smaller fruits and the Rain Drops cherries produced by the cascading fist-full. Too bad that when the rains came again, the tomatoes burst on the vine and started rotting before they could be picked. I suppose that saved us from being overwhelmed by fruit, but I still wasn't happy about it.

One massive tomato.

One massive tomato sliced.

Many lovely little tomatoes.

Corn

The Glass Gem ornamental corn came in fairly well despite the uneven weather. It produced about a dozen pretty little ears with beautifully colored kernels. They made a nice addition to my autumn decor.

Stalks all dried out.

Pretty glass gems.

Pumpkins

I'm a big fan of blue pumpkins so this year we planted Jarrahdale seeds. Even though we only got two pumpkins, one per vine, I'm calling it a success. They too became part of the fall decor before being eaten. I think I still have a few seeds in the packet to plant next year.

Jarrahdale on the vine.

Jarrahdale on the porch with purchased pumpkins and glass gem corn stalks.

Morning Glories 

The biggest success in the garden was, unfortunately, not anything we could eat. It was the morning glories. Back in 2022, we planted the entire garden with flower seeds. Along with the bulk mixes, I put in a packet of morning glory seeds. I had never had much luck with them growing in the past and, on that occasion, maybe two or three of the seeds actually grew. But those that did grow dropped seeds at the end of the season. From those seeds came more plants that dropped more seeds that made even more plants. Now, three years later, they are edging on invasive, popping up in most of the garden beds. Rather than just weed them all out, I moved a bunch of the seedlings to the garlic bed (since half of the garlic didn't grow). They ended up making a beautiful screen on the garden fence. I'm sure I'll be enjoying them next year as well.

Glorious.

The rest of the garden was a mixed bag this season. The rattlesnake beans were fairly productive - enough for one batch of baked beans at least. The turtle beans made lots of pods but when I went to shell the dried beans they were tiny and dull. The tricolor bush beans were a bust. One plant of purple ones finally grew and only produced a handful of beans. The chard was very productive, as always, but it got spotty and unappetizing. Only one of the two zucchini plants actually produced fruit - which I'm grateful for as I love zucchini - and the two yellow squash plants just withered away. The peppers set some wonderful large fruits but most of them were consumed by blossom end rot before they ripened. We did get a couple peppers, which were nice, but it was still disappointing.

Zucchini!

Beautiful until they rotted.

There was only one major garden disaster. It happened late afternoon on August 24. We were enjoying a summer thunderstorm while sitting on our screened back porch when we heard a crashing sound. From where I was sitting, I could just see the southwest corner post of the garden. It was waving furiously. My initial thought was that the storm had sent one of the dead trees on the property line crashing down onto the garden fence, but that wasn't the case. Once the rain slowed a bit, I dashed out to try to figure out what had happened. And I saw this:

Oh no!

Earlier in the year, we had extended the garden fence upwards to around 8 feet to keep the deer from getting in as they had the last couple of years. Well, apparently, it wasn't enough. A young buck (perhaps the one we call Bonehead, though there are a couple of them who frequent the neighborhood) had leapt into the garden then panicked and smashed his way out right through the garden fence. He and a doe stared at me from the back of our yard as I surveyed the damage. We pinned everything back together as well as we could and plan to make better repairs next spring.

After the frost hit, I cleared out the garden beds, as I like to do, and that's it for this year. The seed catalogues have started arriving now and I've started plotting next year. I think it'll be an experimental year. I already purchased some Oaxacan green corn and skunk beans to try. I'm envisioning variations on the Three Sisters theme with a few more different types of squash, pumpkins, and beans. I'm also hoping to keep up better with my updates here. I don't know if anyone else out there in the universe reads these posts, but I enjoy looking back on them. 

There were so many angry chipmunks this year!

The Garden Today

For weeks I've been meaning to write an update of the garden's progress, but I don't feel like I have much to report. The garden has been doing its thing with little interference from me. I've pulled some weeds, supported some vines, harvested some veggies, the usual. So, finally, for the sake of keeping a record, here is a general overview of how it grows.

Droopy pumpkin vines on the back fence. (left side)

The weather this season has been less than ideal but the plants are still soldiering on. Those in the squash family seem to be having a particularly tough time. They didn't like the soaking rains early on and now that it's turned hot and dry, they have a tendency to droop during the day. The leaves on the pumpkin vines were particularly limp this afternoon (see above), but they have set fruit (see below).
 

One of a few small pumpkins starting.

The zucchini have had a rough time of it. I put out two plants this spring and both died. When the first one died, I planted a few seeds in its place. When the second one died, I replaced it with a plant from the local grocery store. As of right now (knock on wood) both are doing okay. The plant from the directly sown seeds is actually starting to produce tiny zucchini. It feels like it's late, but I'll take it.

The first tiny zucchini.

The yellow squash are also struggling. One plant seems to be doing okay and has a teeny tiny little bitty squash started. The other is a wilted flattened sad specimen at the moment.

Poor sad little yellow squash.

While the cucumber plants also look overwhelmed by the heat, that has not kept them from making fruit like it's going out of style. We are deep into cucumber season - one of my favorite seasons of the year - with bags of them in the fridge and plans to start giving them away, maybe, if my 2-3 cucumber-a-day habit gets tiresome. 

So many cucumbers.

My husband and I joke that the only thing that loves the heat and humidity here in our river valley is the corn. Ours is no exception. I've never grown decorative corn before so I'm not sure what metrics I should be judging for its success. It was over knee high on the 4th of July, so that's something. It looks happy and we'll see how it goes.

A pretty little insect of some kind on the corn.

Corn and beans make fine neighbors.

Last year we planted the shell beans in the same bed as the corn and pumpkins. This year, with the smaller beds, the corn and beans became next-door neighbors with the pumpkins more down-the-street neighbors. As always, the rattlesnake and turtle beans are happily growing along with little-to-no trouble. The turtles are sending up more climbing vines than they have in the past. I just encouraged them to join the rattlesnakes on the trellis and all seem happy.  

Oh how I love happy beans.

Our other beans have not had such an easy time of it. I got a sack of tricolor beans this year - yellow, green, and purple - and planted the seeds so that I would have two plants of each type. Well, early in the season, something decided to come along and pull up all but one of the plants. I think it was a crow, or other bird. They weren't dug up or eaten, just plucked from the ground and laid on the dirt to wither and die. (sad, no?) I planted more seeds, unsure of which color had survived. The next round of seeds did grow, but not very well. The one plant from the original batch is now producing beans - green ones - and I've decided to be content with that. I'll still hope the others catch up too.

Our bed of Bright Lights chard.

As usual, the chard is one of the stars of the garden. I've only done one picking so far and made lovely chard, mushroom, and goat cheese tarts. I really have to get in there and harvest more. The more I pick, the more it'll produce and it freezes very well.

Experimental tomatoes.

When I was back in the planning phase of the garden last winter, I came across some Burpee direct sow tomato seeds. The promise was that, when planted directly in the garden just before the last frost date, the tomatoes would grow and produce at the same rate as tomatoes that had been started early inside. So, I thought I'd give it a try. I planted enough seeds directly in the garden to have two each of the cherry tomatoes and the beefsteak ones. One of the cherry tomato plants died about a month in but we were able to replace it in the garden bed with a mystery tomato plant growing out of the compost bin. The other tomato plants are doing very well and have started setting fruit. I haven't checked to see how that compares to tomatoes we have grown in years past but, so far, the experiment seems to be a success.

The first of the direct-sow beefsteaks.

I also planted some slightly experimental pepper plants. The experiment, or more properly, mystery, is that I don't know what color the peppers will be. The pack had four different types - red, orange, yellow, and purple. I'm hoping for a variety of colors but we're still in the waiting phase. At least I know that they are not ready to pick until they are no longer green.

One pepper waiting to reveal its final color.

I think that's all that's going on in the garden now. We harvested all the pak choi, arugula, and radishes. We got three garlic scapes that had turned woody before I picked them. Oh yeah! And our peas are currently making peas. 

As for my herb garden just outside my back door, it's exactly what I had hoped for. I can pop out the door, grab some herbs and barely miss a beat while I'm cooking. The deer sampled some of them early on but they bounced back. The dill had some sort of caterpillar infestation, so it's been stripped of nearly all its fronds and flowers. I did let a few rogue dill plants stay in the main garden, though, so I still have them for my recipes. Overall, I'm very pleased with my patio herbs.

My lovely herbs.

And all around the yard, the other plants and flowers are doing their thing. I'm happy to see that the mondarda and orange butterfly plants are still drawing in the bees. I'll have to do a separate update post about the wild seeds I planted over the winter. It's been a mixed bag with them. And then there's the Subaru tree to write about too. And an update on the luffa plants. I guess I do have some stories to tell still even as the garden plods along.

Bee being busy.

The Little Pumpkin That Could(n't)

Last fall, I bought a wonderful white pumpkin striped with orange and green at a farm stand near my job at the time. I had never seen anything quite like it. I got it just for decoration rather than for eating, so at the end of the season I bashed it apart on my concrete patio and put the pieces along the tree line at the back of our property as a seasonal treat for the deer and other woodland creatures who frequent the area. I saved a bunch of the seeds for myself with the hope of growing my own lovely, unique pumpkins.

When I started my herb seeds this spring, I put three of the saved pumpkin seeds in the starter tray. I learned that this variety was called One Too Many, which seemed like a good sign. Out of the three seeds I started, one plant grew. Boy did it grow. It was the reason I needed to keep raising the grow lamp. I also planted three Long Pie pumpkins seeds, with one actually germinating too. But Long Pie is just a side character in this story. One Too Many is our protagonist.

May 5: One Too Many on the left, Long Pie on the right.

May 23: One Too Many on the left, Long Pie on the right.

I had really good feelings about my pumpkin seedlings when I transplanted them out into the garden on Memorial Day weekend. Of the two, I gave better odds of survival to One Too Many. Long Pie was a nice seedling but kind of spindly. I know pumpkins can be resentful of transplanting, but I was confident that sturdy One Too Many would be fine. 

May 25: One Too Many in the center of the bed in the background. Small but proud.

I planted arugula in the bed with One Too Many. I like to put fast spring crops with larger later plants. I put Pak Choi in the bed with the zucchini and radishes with the beans. There is also a sweet basil plant in the corner of the bed, which grew beautifully and made tasty pesto but has little bearing on this tale. 

I feel like the arugula may have somewhat overwhelmed One Too Many. As the little spicy leaves flourished, the pumpkin just kinda sat there, not growing much but not giving up either.

June 22: Arugula making a run for it and going to seed with One Too Many at the left.

June 22: After the arugula was harvested giving One Too Many some breathing room.

I will admit that at this point, I was a bit concerned. Pumpkins have long growing seasons and One Too Many was pretty much the same size as it had been when it went into the garden a month earlier. Would there be time to make fruit? I considered adding something else to the bed to use the space. Each year I have to decided how to best use the very limited space I have. I don't like empty ground in my beds. But I decided to give the little pumpkin a chance and in just a few weeks, it was really doing its thing.

August 11 - One Too Many filling the bed.

August 11: A pumpkin!!

August 18: And another! (certainly not one too many, though)

I was excited to find the first tiny pumpkin. Then another larger one appeared a week later. After finding the second, more robust pumpkin, I debated taking off the smaller. That would funnel more resources to the larger and give it a better chance of growth. That made some sense, but I didn't want to limit the pumpkin potential. All your eggs in one basket, etc., etc. So, I left them both be and the plant ended up self-selecting the larger pumpkin anyway.

August 31: Looking fine.

The pumpkin began putting on weight and its stripes began to develop. It was slow and steady for weeks as I watched over it. By mid-September, I began thinking about when I should pick my one and only One Too Many pumpkin. It was not growing any bigger and the orange webbing on its white skin had really darkened to a lovely shade. One of the many squirrels in the neighborhood (the bane of my garden, which haven't really been too terrible this season actually) had sampled the pumpkin. It was only a little nick, though. I could bring it in now but I didn't want to cut it from the vine too early. There were still several weeks left in the season. So, I left it where it was.

September 21: Look at those stripes!

Spoiler alert, I should have picked it. This last week was very rainy. There weren't any torrential storms, just near-constant rain and perpetual gloominess. I did cursory checks of the garden each day. I picked a bucket of grape tomatoes on one dryer day but otherwise did little to the other plants. The sun finally came out at the end of the week so I could do a more in-depth inspection. When I looked at One Too Many, I did not like what I saw.

September 29: hmmm

The squirrels had been sampling again. While frustrating, it wasn't the end of the world. We weren't planning on eating this pumpkin. It was just for display. The missing chunk was unsightly but maybe it was still salvageable. Looking closer, though, it seemed like the pumpkin had sunk slightly into the ground. Perhaps it had rained heavily enough for the dirt underneath it to wash out. Well then, I had better pull it out of the mud and put it back on solid ground. So, I gently lifted it up...

Sad trumpet sounds.

Well crud. The pumpkin hadn't sunken into the soft ground. The underside had completely rotted and it collapsed. So much for One Too Many's lone pumpkin.

I hate to leave a story on a sad note. Remember side character Long Pie? Our spindly little friend produced three pumpkins. We plan on eating them. And I still have a bag of saved seeds from last fall's decorative pumpkin so I can try again next year.

Three Long Pie pumpkins just waiting to be part of the fall feast.

Not the nibbler but still a squirrel (photo from last summer)

Our August Garden

My middle name is Augusta. Or at least it was until I got married many years ago and the Social Security Administration decided that I could only have one middle name so now my maiden name is my middle name. In my heart, it's still my middle name, though. It was a good choice for both sides of the family - my mother's maternal grandmother and my father's mother were both named Augusta. One would think that I would have some sort of special affinity for August because of my name but I don't. I actually didn't even think of the connection at all until this last week as I considered writing an update on our garden here. 

Anyhoo, the garden has been doing well. It's starting to remind me of an autumn garden, though. We had a cold snap last week that has me ready for fall. That may tint my view a bit but the garden is starting to peter out. It's been a couple of days now since we picked any cucumbers. That had been a half-dozen-a-day thing for a couple weeks. The plants are still setting fruit but they look like the last hoorah - tiny and super prickly. The leaves are starting to give up too.

The cucumbers' leaves are getting crunchy.

Overall, it's been a very fruitful season. There's never a huge amount of any one thing at a time, except for the cucumbers, but we've enjoyed a steady stream of fresh veggies. (Look for another post coming soon telling what we did with our produce.)

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

The snap peas had a nice long run and are now providing support for some morning glories that seeded themselves from last year. 

It's fun seeing the peas and morning glories intertwining.

Underground, we had a nice daikon crop, which my husband pickled. We also had a handful of two different types of beets. They are all entirely finished now.

Just one of a dozen or so daikons.

Can't beet this!

On the topside, both the yellow squash and zucchini produced well. I would have liked more zucchini. Maybe because I like it so well, it didn't feel the need to overwhelm us, as is so cliche for zucchini. There are still a few small squash on the vine, so we'll probably get a couple more this season.

Yellow there!

Um...I can't think of another pun. It's a zucchini.

The tomatillos put on flowers like crazy but have only made a few fruits so far. The tomatoes, both beefsteak and grape, have put on fruit like crazy. They're just both taking their sweet time turning red. We've started bringing them in as soon as they start to blush so our lovely summer rainstorms don't make them explode before we can pick them. I think they still taste just a good (much better than store-bought, at least) when they ripen inside rather than out on the vine.

At least the tomatillo plant is pretty.

Tomatoes ripening inside...

...and more still waiting to go.

The Three Sisters bed has been doing it's thing mostly untouched all season. The rattlesnake beans grew well as always. They're just starting to dry on the vine now. Similarly, the turtle beans in a different bed put on tons of beans and are now slowly drying before we can shell them. The popcorn seems a bit odd, making two or three ears in the same spot. I've never grown it before, so maybe that's normal. I'm just glad that after being flattened during several thunderstorms, the stalks straightened right back up again. We're just waiting for it to all dry out now. The Long Pie pumpkin vine has woven its way happily between the corn stalks and up the bean trellis. We've picked two them already and there's a third still on the vine.

I love that shell beans are fairly self-sufficient.

I hope the popcorn is doing as it's supposed to. It looks nice.

Two Long Pie pumpkins curing in the dining room.

One more still hanging out.

I'm not sure if our One Too Many pumpkin plant is actually going to have time to do it's thing. The strong seedling we transplanted in June struggled to establish itself. Perhaps it was a bit resentful. The vine finally had a growth spurt just a couple of weeks ago and has filled the entire bed. It has even put on a couple of pumpkins - one the size of a ping-pong ball and one like a baseball. I'm hoping we've got enough warm days ahead so that they can grow and prosper, but the days are getting noticeably shorter. Like with all the garden, we'll have to wait and see.

Finally, our resentful teen pumpkin is becoming a better-adjusted young adult.

You grow little pumpkin! I believe in you!

Not all has been happy fun time in the garden, however. Somehow, a deer or multiple deer, found their way inside. I'm guessing they accidentally hopped the fence while cavorting in the back yard. The yard slopes slightly so the fence on the north side is shorter than on the south side. Once inside, the deer stomped around in most of the beds, ate many of the leaves off my purple snap beans, and decimated the chard. It wasn't a very good year for the chard anyway. It didn't grow very well, I think because the location I chose for it was a bit shady and damp, and then it got leaf miners and I didn't make an effort to remove them. So, we haven't harvested any of it yet and it looks like we might not get much at all. I guess that's the compromise we make when our neighborhood is filled with deer and we do little to discourage them from getting comfortable.

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.

It's kinda nice just hanging out with the local baby wildlife.