Worst Growing Season Ever

My garden was a huge failure this year. I changed out much of my raised bed fill in the spring. Russ made sure there was never a weed. I gathered seedlings from the farmer’s market, gentleman farmer friend Iain Sanderson, and from my master gardener plumbers the Whaley Brothers.

So my garden was good, my plants were superior and it went down hill from there. We had the hottest and driest six weeks in May and June. Then we had record rains in July. I got a few tomatoes, a few cucumbers, 1 zucchini, many peppers from two plants and none from eight others, a good amount of Japanese eggplant, one round of green beans and a ton of basil.

It was by far my worst harvest in my long history of growing vegetables. I was feeling like a total failure. Granted I was away working during lots of these horrible weather events, not that I could protect anything, but I wasn’t around to hold their hands.

Monday I had reason to call my plumber John, who is now retired (boo hoo). After discussing my plumbing needs in the future and who I was to call he asked me about my garden. I practically broke into tears to confess to him my total failure.

He said his results were worse. Out of 12 plants not a tomato was harvested. I was heart broken for him, as he is usually able to grow a years worth of food each summer, but I felt vindicated that I was perhaps not at fault.

I know that when it gets over 90° tomatoes won’t fruit, but I was hopeful that a cool evening once in a while might have made a tomato. NO.

Now I have no guilt leaving my garden untended. It is like a Halloween horror house. Rather than tearing out the half of plants I still have I should just leave them until October and give out candy from the garden and scare the hell out of kids.

Farewell growing season. I’ll plant some arugula in September.