Your 2024 Garden

[tripletfeb]

Have you ever just had a failure year in the garden? That was 2024 for me. I still got some produce, but not nearly as much as usual. I got behind on planting and weeding during my 2-week vacation in June, had a really busy summer, and never truly caught up.

The highlight of my garden this year was probably my first-ever harvest of garlic, which yielded me 20 nice heads of garlic. But besides that I feel a bit ashamed to even call myself a gardener with how many weeds are in my garden right now. Has anyone else had a year that went this way? I think I'm just venting here lol.

My beans were hit and miss this year. And I had to replant my carrots. I never have issues with either but this year was very dry. And we had a lot of hot days, still having them. The weeds in my garden are now taller than all my plants and I dread having to pick them. But it needs done, bad

 

[Sally PB]

Butternut squash used to be my no-fail crop. 3-4 years ago, that changed, and I don't know why. This year I didn't plant any. The last 2-3 years, I said that I wouldn't plant any, but planted a few hills and was very disappointed. So this year, I decided I really and truly wouldn't plant any. And since I was expecting zero squash, I'm not disappointed.

I don't know if that qualifies as a failure...

 

[CatInTheHenHouse]

Have you ever just had a failure year in the garden? That was 2024 for me.

I agree, 2024 has been rough. My salad greens bolted very early, my potato harvest consisted of two little golf-ball sized tubers and a bunch of smaller ones, nothing I’d really consider eating size…the bugs have been chewing on everything. Carrots were disappointing this year. Onions from last year didn’t bulb up or go to seed as far as I can see (I’d have been happy with either), and the bunching onions I seeded this year haven’t done much after sprouting. No strawberries.

I’ve had some minor victories but it feels like I’ve had to fight tooth and nail for those. One pea harvest - but thanks to some building maintenance the second one is going to be cut in half, at best. It seems like I’m going to get a decent number of seeds from a number of plants (mostly herbs I put out for the bees, I was very pleased at the variety of pollinators this year), I got two moderate harvests off my tarragon this year and a little one off the variegated sage (the normal sage I started by seed shuffled off the mortal coil as did the thyme) that I could have taken more from but I’m leery of cutting it back too much before its first winter. I will tentatively get a tidy harvest of cayenne peppers; given the number of seedlings I started this spring it’s still on the low side but enough for a few pizzas or several cans of soup because the plants that did produce, produced well. I also got two teeny tiny garlic bulbs from the cloves I planted in spring, (the cloves I planted fall of last year having rotted in the ground ) but nevertheless a victory as that’s the best I’ve ever gotten garlic to do.

I’ve been trying to map out where I went wrong and where I can improve for next year. But all in all I’m glad I’m not depending on this for my food supply!

 

[Sally PB]

No strawberries.

I got maybe half a dozen. I am giving up on them and ripped them out. I'll think about it again in a couple years. Strawberries are not a good crop for me, unfortunately. They have never done "really well," and at best did only sort of maybe ok.

 

[NanaK]

Have you ever just had a failure year in the garden?

Yes! This year was tough for me too. Others in my area have said the same.

I went to harvest my carrots this past spring and voles had tunneled in and consumed about half the bed.

I got the summer garden planted early. It started out great until the rain stopped for about a month. It was so difficult to keep everything watered as the heat started to get bad.

The next month it rained almost everyday and was just too much water. Green beans and tomatoes gave up much earlier than normal. Just too wet. I did can/freeze some but usually have fresh until Oct. Not this year.

I've also had a few choice words for the bugs I could not seem to get under control on my purple hull peas this year. I did get some but threw a lot of buggy ones to the deer.

I spent last week planting out some broccoli, collard and cabbage plants. Hopefully the rain we are getting this week won't be too much for them. On a good note, the mustard I direct seeded is sprouting!

I say sometimes I'm going to give up.
Come spring, there I'll be seed packets in hand still planting.

 

[HenriettaPizzaNolan]

Oh wow, thank you guys for sharing the stories about your garden "failures" this year. It makes me feel at least that I'm not alone. I guess it's okay to have a bad year like this, because it seems that it just happens sometimes. Let's all keep trying!

I think I may even just throw in some fall crop seeds in the ground the week to see if I can get anything going before the winter. Maybe I'll gain back some of my lost hope if something grows.

 

[fuzzi]

A couple weeks ago we had a new roof put on our house, including a gutter across the back. The downspouts were supposed to be installed at the same time but only one was in stock, so the north side just has a hole in the gutter while we wait for the second one. I placed one of my rain barrels underneath the hole.

Today we got a couple inches of rain from a tropical disturbance and it overflowed that 55 gallon barrel!

Once the second downspout is installed I will set the barrels up on blocks and connect them so water overflow will move to the second barrel.

We will then have a source of water for the gardens even when we have our dry spells.

(cross-posted from my personal thread)

 

[Nomadicus]

Have you ever just had a failure year in the garden? That was 2024 for me. I still got some produce, but not nearly as much as usual. I got behind on planting and weeding during my 2-week vacation in June, had a really busy summer, and never truly caught up.

The highlight of my garden this year was probably my first-ever harvest of garlic, which yielded me 20 nice heads of garlic. But besides that I feel a bit ashamed to even call myself a gardener with how many weeds are in my garden right now. Has anyone else had a year that went this way? I think I'm just venting here lol.

This was our worst year ever for tomatoes, potatoes, and sweet potatoes and even the sweet corn was nothing to write home about. Part of the problem was dealing with a new type of soil and weather. The sweet corn lack uniformity of maturing. Part was ready early and part never made ears. Planted right, thinned right, irrigated when it didn't rain. Some stalks grew tall and some didn't get waist high. All had the same care. Didn't get our money back for seed on several things. Our peppers and eggplant were a huge success. Roma II beans did quite well also while pole beans were a total failure. Sweet peas were awful while our summer southern peas did very good. We managed to get enough corn for a few months in the freezer because we planted enough to feed several families. We canned and froze a lot of our zipper cream peas and now our pink eye purple hulls have little peas on them and are covered in bloom. We've managed to can some sweet potatoes like we used to just didn't have enough. There are just to many diseases to plant some things here. It looks like tomatoes and sweet bell peppers are two of them. Hot pepper in a separate plot did very well.

 

[Sally PB]

I got enough tomatoes to can. I don't know how the taters did; haven't dug them yet. What I've seen looks promising.

Collards were a total bust. Peppers were disappointing. The hots are totally not hot! The bells, as usual, did poorly, and I'm going to stop planting them. The banana peppers did well.

The second planting of chard, zucchini, and beans is doing much better than what I planted last spring/June. Zero beans from the June planting, zero chard, 4 zucchini from 4 plants.

 

[fuzzi]

Planted peas and turnips on Saturday.

Guess what's already sprouted?

Purple Top turnips!

And snap peas!

I bought from Seed Savers this time.