The Victory Garden clings to life.....

With the autumnal equinox on us, I went out to the garden today to take a few pictures.

While most of everything has been in decline for a few weeks, my monster marigolds have finally taken off. I saved the seeds from the first time I planted these 3 years ago and planted them again this May. Finally after about 20 weeks they are in full bloom. Yes, that is a 4 foot fence in back. These are not your mothers marigolds! They smell great and also are supposed to keep away pests. I think it worked. I need to get an earlier start on these next spring, maybe a March planting. I'm going to save a bunch more seeds this fall when the flowers die. If you're interested in planting some in your garden let me know and I will send you some seeds. The plum tomatoes are surprisingly strong with a few greenies still ripening. These two plants have given our family more than enough fruit we could eat all summer! Actually only Andrew and I like tomatoes so it was enough for both of us. I think next year I will only plant the Roma variety and add a third plant in hopes of making some homegrown salsa! The 2 Brandywine plants died rather early right next to the Roma. I tried to plant a 3rd plant to replace one and it died also. I guess I wasn't destined to grow Brandywine. I'll stick with the Roma. The pepper plants were a bit of a pain too. Out of the 2 Anaheim, 1 Sweet banana & 1 Big Jim varieties, only one of the Anaheims were productive. I left the last few on the plant and you can see they have ripened to a bright red. They were slow to grow in the beginning and never really took off, even when there was fruit, there was only one or two peppers at a time.

Other things that didn't go as planned.... The peas got fried out in the hot sun; I didn't plant enough green beans so whenever some were ripe there was really only enough for one person at a time. But they did make a nice fresh from the garden raw veggie snack while doing lawn work!; The cucumbers, zucchini & watermelon never got past a few flowers. Looking back I think I definitely had some water issues. The combination of the late start, poor layout and a very hot South Carolina summer made for some very water stressed plants. Next year I plan to make some raised beds with a center trough for watering, similar to the ones here. An earlier start would also extend the growing season into milder temperatures when the plants can establish themselves better. One good success story I had was some Butternut Squash plants I found at a garden center late in the spring. They were selling them cheap because they had outgrown their seedling pots. I planted them in the early summer and now we are about to have tastey roasted squash with carrots!

I would love to hear about your gardening experiences this year. Make a comment or send me an email. I also like to swap seeds of flowers and vegetables, so if you're into that then let me know. ttfn.