gardening blues...

Oh my, but what an odd gardening year it is. Late spring and early summer were SO DARN RAINY, and while it's not quite as bad now, we're still getting more rain than is normal here. It's taken it's toll, that's for sure. All the heavy rain washed away or drowned so many seeds and seedlings. We're going to have pathetic harvests of some of the things we've never had the slightest trouble growing before. Like kohlrabi--we're usually inundated with it, but this year the rain inundated them. We're only looking at getting maybe half a dozen (if nothing else goes wrong). Same with carrots. The cucumbers didn't come up at all, but we've since replanted them and they seem to be growing strong now. Only about a quarter of the onion seedlings survived, and an even smaller fraction of the cauliflower and broccoli.

But the worst, worst, worst thing of all is the tomatoes. Last year, I canned about 60 quarts of tomatoes, not to mention about 30 pints of salsa. This year, I'm going to be surprised if I can any. :( At this point, we've got lots of green tomatoes, but the plants themselves look utterly pathetic. We're babying the hell out of them, hoping they'll hang on...but honestly, I don't think either of us is too hopeful.

On the bright side, as Chris mentioned last week, the abundance of rain seems to be making the peppers happy. We've got loads of jalapenos and cayennes growing, and loads more flowering. Hopefully some of which are sweet green peppers. (We got all my pepper seedlings mixed up when planting them, so we're not sure what is where. :P )

As I said, our second planting of cucumbers seems to be doing well. And I'm tickled to death about how the cabbage is doing, especially as it's something completely new for us. And the zucchini--well, you know zucchini, it's going gangbusters. I've been baking away, and freezing some as well.

The lettuce is still feeding us abundantly.

The celery (another new-to-us crop) seems to be doing well, looking a little more celery-like all the time. And though we got our green beans in the ground a little late this year, they seem to be doing well too.

So yeah, it seems to be a year of ups and downs in the garden. We're trying hard not to be too disappointed in the "downs." After all, every bite of fresh-grown deliciousness we get is an "up" worthy of celebration!

I'm not sure if Chris is going to have a chance to get up a Saturday Farmers Market post today, but be sure to check over there for more garden goodness!