What did you plant in your garden this year?

[BigFatMeanie]

How I've done so far...

• Spinach - Not really worth the bother, but I planted a bit late in the year. We ate some.
• Lettuce - Even less worth the bother, late again. We ate some.
• Bell Peppers - Got a few of those, smaller than I had hoped for, but more of them than in previous years.
• Jalapeño Peppers - Got a bunch of them and there will be more. I've made several jars of pickled jalapeño rings. Plenty strong enough.
• Roma Tomatoes - These have all been rather weird shaped, small and long, but they taste good.
• Cucumbers - Hard to find them under the leaves, until they're big. Picked a couple so far.
• Acorn Squash - It was supposed to be acorn, but it's butternut. Getting a bunch of those from that one plant.
• Onions - Harvested two dozen yellow onions and a few of the two dozen red onions. Apparently I'm good at growing onions.
• Red Potatoes - Had a pretty good harvest of those too. For some reason potatoes do well in Idaho.

It took until August for most of my flowers to look good, but most of them do now. Next year I might just plant a zillion zinnias and will have a beautiful flower garden starting about August when they finally bloom. Oh yeah, the California Poppies have done well and are still blooming.

Good update.

Here are my thoughts on your garden:

I agree with you on spinach and and lettuce. The juice ain't worth the squeeze.
Bell Peppers - I agree that it's hard if not impossible to grow the massive size bell peppers that you can get in the store.
Jalapenos - We pickle these as well. We usually only plant them every couple of years because pickling a crop will last us a couple of years
Romas - these are especially vulnerable to blossom end rot and are harder to grow in the soil of the Western US. Romas are good for sauce/canning but there are better varieties for our climate/soil in my opinion.
Cukes - Pro tip: put a tomato cage over your cuke plants and let the vines grow up the cage. The cukes hang off the cage and are easy to spot/pick and they stay off the ground and are less susceptible to insect damage.
Squash - squash of any variety is foul and evil, as is zucchini. Why anyone would plant squash is beyond me. Plus you attract squash bugs which you have to be on the constant lookout for. Squash is just wrong.
Onions - like spinach and lettuce, the juice ain't worth the squeeze here. Homegrown onions don't taste any different than store-bought and it's a waste of garden space and effort.
Potatoes - I don't bother with these - easier/cheaper to just buy a 10lb bag of Idaho potatoes at the store. I think it would make even less sense to grow them in a home garden in Idaho but "when in Rome.." I suppose.

No corn? No peas? No beans?

[Pelado]

I didn't do a garden thus year, but I have done corn, peas, and beans in the past.

My understanding of corn is that it requires a fairly large area and that the outer edges don't typically produce that well since they depend primarily on wind for pollination.

For peas, the growing season here seems very short. By the time the plants have germinated and blossomed and are ready to produce, it gets too hot and the plants wither. As such, growing from seed doesn't produce much crop. They pretty much have to be started from a plant (more expensive than seed) or in a greenhouse/indoors (what a hassle).

With the right variety (which i always forget), green beans do well here and can produce until it gets too cold. Among the best garden crops locally. And, since I'm a big fan of fresh green beans, the primary reason I even bother with a garden (in years I do it).

I've also had really good crops of cucumbers.

When I've had good tomato production, it has come pretty late in the growing season. So not a lot of ripe tomatoes harvested before it got too cold, but tons of green tomatoes that had to be harvested before the first freeze that I guess I'm supposed to fry (not sure if I'm supposed to cook up some people along with the fried green tomatoes).

[Scott R Nelson]

Here are my thoughts on your garden:
[...]
Squash - squash of any variety is foul and evil, as is zucchini. Why anyone would plant squash is beyond me. Plus you attract squash bugs which you have to be on the constant lookout for. Squash is just wrong.

I actually feel pretty much the same except that Acorn squash are the one exception. But the nursery gave me butternut labeled as acorn. I'm a bit annoyed about that.

I've done peas and beans in past years. I tried spinach, lettuce, and potatoes just to do something different. At least now I can identify a field of potatoes when we drive past the farmer's fields, which I couldn't do before.

[BigFatMeanie]

I didn't do a garden thus year, but I have done corn, peas, and beans in the past.

My understanding of corn is that it requires a fairly large area and that the outer edges don't typically produce that well since they depend primarily on wind for pollination.

For peas, the growing season here seems very short. By the time the plants have germinated and blossomed and are ready to produce, it gets too hot and the plants wither. As such, growing from seed doesn't produce much crop. They pretty much have to be started from a plant (more expensive than seed) or in a greenhouse/indoors (what a hassle).

With the right variety (which i always forget), green beans do well here and can produce until it gets too cold. Among the best garden crops locally. And, since I'm a big fan of fresh green beans, the primary reason I even bother with a garden (in years I do it).

I've also had really good crops of cucumbers.

When I've had good tomato production, it has come pretty late in the growing season. So not a lot of ripe tomatoes harvested before it got too cold, but tons of green tomatoes that had to be harvested before the first freeze that I guess I'm supposed to fry (not sure if I'm supposed to cook up some people along with the fried green tomatoes).

Your understanding of corn is correct. You generally do need to plant at least 4 rows. Fortunately, I live in a relatively windy area and I have sufficient garden space so I don't usually have a problem with my corn pollinating. Corn also requires lots of water and fertilizer. But picking sweet corn and eating it the same day is hard to beat. The payoff is worth it with corn and tomatoes.

You need to plant your pea seeds really early - as soon as the ground can be worked - like late February or early March. Peas are very cold-hardy and can handle a hard freeze. We also plant our peas in an area that gets lots of shade and that keeps them producing longer into late May before the June summer heat comes. We get a great sugar snap pea crop every year. (shelling peas aren't worth the effort - way too much hassle to pick and shell peas - sugar snap, where you can eat the shells, are better in my opinion)

Lots of green been varieties will do well in Utah and Idaho - beans love the heat and don't seem to mind our cruddy soils too much. Kentucky Blue pole beans are my favorite as they are mostly stringless and I hate stringy beans.

Tomatoes are very finicky. They hate the cold and the heat. They hate too much sun and too much shade. They can't tolerate any frost at all and if temps are regularly low (e.g. in the 50s) tomato plants are stunted and won't grow well. If temps are over 90 they don't blossom, as well as drop any existing blossoms. Utah and Idaho summers are really too hot for tomatoes to set blossoms in the summer which is why you get a bunch of tomatoes at the end of the year. Tomatoes are finicky about water, they suffer from blossom-end rot in Western soils, they're highly susceptible to diseases and pests. Basically tomatoes are a huge pain in the butt. But no store-bought tomato can ever compete with a home-grown one so the payoff for tomatoes is totally worth the effort.

[BigPiney]

I think my favorite lunch is going out to the garden, finding a ripe tomato and going inside and making a BLT.

teleworking has been great for that.

[Mormon Red Death]

lot's of peppers. Including Carolina Reapers. been mixing my peppers with most of my meals (except the reapers as you have to handle them with care) and its been delightful.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I need to take a photo and post it, but this year we put up some fence posts and wired on some heavy gage wire fencing material and planted our cucumber plants. They naturally climb up the fencing so it is super easy to find and pick the ripe cucumbers and it is more space efficient. We love it.

[clackamascoug]

I think my favorite lunch is going out to the garden, finding a ripe tomato and going inside and making a BLT.

teleworking has been great for that.

That new job still working out - I mean besides BLT's and everything?

[Pelado]

A couple varieties of green beans, bell peppers, and sweet corn.

In the flower beds, I've got bleeding hearts, violas, columbines, coleus, and hydrangeas.

[Northwestcoug]

Reaping where thou hast not sowed...

The house we just bought on Vancouver Island has a ~20 X 20 foot (or 6X6 meters!) fenced garden which was pretty well thought out. It has a liner covering the ground with mulch and a bunch of raised beds, some of which have staked fencing for peas, squash, etc. Anyways, we weren't expecting it to be planted this year since the owner was moving, but she had kept it going until we moved in July. So we moved in with peas, various lettuces, squash, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, peppers, beets, carrots, basil, chives, and probably a couple of other things I'm probably forgetting. Outside of the fenced garden we have raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, a cherry and a few other fruit trees that I'm not yet sure what they are. And, get this, grapes and kiwi on the corners of the garden fences! How cool is that?

So we immediately got to work, which included cleaning up after a deer massacre when we forgot to close our front gate . Peas, lettuce, beans, peppers, and tomatoes were chomped. Because we would be one and done in Central Oregon after a deer incident I thought I'd need to start over, but with the magic of a 9a climate zone things started growing back again. I mean the tomato plants look kind of wonky but after a couple of weeks I have fruit growing.

In a few short weeks we have converted to a homestead vibe (Mrs. NWC has 5 chickens and a duck on her plate). But man, it is work. Work that I'm enjoying now, but I am spending an hour or two each day tending everything that seems to spontaneously grow here. We're also struggling to find out how to eat all the stuff that we're growing. We can only eat so many berries, eggs, zucchini bread, and salads. And the tomatoes are still due...

[The_Tick]

Reaping where thou hast not sowed...

The house we just bought on Vancouver Island has a ~20 X 20 foot (or 6X6 meters!) fenced garden which was pretty well thought out. It has a liner covering the ground with mulch and a bunch of raised beds, some of which have staked fencing for peas, squash, etc. Anyways, we weren't expecting it to be planted this year since the owner was moving, but she had kept it going until we moved in July. So we moved in with peas, various lettuces, squash, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, peppers, beets, carrots, basil, chives, and probably a couple of other things I'm probably forgetting. Outside of the fenced garden we have raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, a cherry and a few other fruit trees that I'm not yet sure what they are. And, get this, grapes and kiwi on the corners of the garden fences! How cool is that?

So we immediately got to work, which included cleaning up after a deer massacre when we forgot to close our front gate . Peas, lettuce, beans, peppers, and tomatoes were chomped. Because we would be one and done in Central Oregon after a deer incident I thought I'd need to start over, but with the magic of a 9a climate zone things started growing back again. I mean the tomato plants look kind of wonky but after a couple of weeks I have fruit growing.

In a few short weeks we have converted to a homestead vibe (Mrs. NWC has 5 chickens and a duck on her plate). But man, it is work. Work that I'm enjoying now, but I am spending an hour or two each day tending everything that seems to spontaneously grow here. We're also struggling to find out how to eat all the stuff that we're growing. We can only eat so many berries, eggs, zucchini bread, and salads. And the tomatoes are still due...

Call your local Bishop....

[Northwestcoug]

Call your local Bishop....

Ha! There is one ward in the valley here, and if the members here are anything like the pioneer stock I'm used to, they are producing a lot of crops in this favorable climate.They don't need my meager contribution

[Jeff Lebowski]

Reaping where thou hast not sowed...

The house we just bought on Vancouver Island has a ~20 X 20 foot (or 6X6 meters!) fenced garden which was pretty well thought out. It has a liner covering the ground with mulch and a bunch of raised beds, some of which have staked fencing for peas, squash, etc. Anyways, we weren't expecting it to be planted this year since the owner was moving, but she had kept it going until we moved in July. So we moved in with peas, various lettuces, squash, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, peppers, beets, carrots, basil, chives, and probably a couple of other things I'm probably forgetting. Outside of the fenced garden we have raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, a cherry and a few other fruit trees that I'm not yet sure what they are. And, get this, grapes and kiwi on the corners of the garden fences! How cool is that?

So we immediately got to work, which included cleaning up after a deer massacre when we forgot to close our front gate . Peas, lettuce, beans, peppers, and tomatoes were chomped. Because we would be one and done in Central Oregon after a deer incident I thought I'd need to start over, but with the magic of a 9a climate zone things started growing back again. I mean the tomato plants look kind of wonky but after a couple of weeks I have fruit growing.

In a few short weeks we have converted to a homestead vibe (Mrs. NWC has 5 chickens and a duck on her plate). But man, it is work. Work that I'm enjoying now, but I am spending an hour or two each day tending everything that seems to spontaneously grow here. We're also struggling to find out how to eat all the stuff that we're growing. We can only eat so many berries, eggs, zucchini bread, and salads. And the tomatoes are still due...

That all sounds really fun to me.

[Northwestcoug]

That all sounds really fun to me.

Fun might not be the best word, but it sure gives me a sense of peace to putter around in a quiet outdoor setting.

[Bo Diddley]

Fun might not be the best word, but it sure gives me a sense of peace to putter around in a quiet outdoor setting.

It sounds like you're spoiled, moving from one gorgeous area to another.