Garden plan v. Garden reality

Today I pulled out the spring/summer garden plan that I created and
compared it to my July 1 garden. Many squares are empty or filled with
plants that are not doing much.

It's been a warm winter, early then cold spring, and now a very dry & hot summer. If my family truly depended on the bounty of our garden's harvest, then we would be in really bad shape. We have an outdoor watering ban - odd number houses can water on odd days and even number houses can water on even days. I'm sure the rain barrel water is exempt.

The garden seems to be in survival mode rather than thriving mode. The pepper, eggplant, and tomatoes don't seem like they've grown taller than when they were transplanted from the nursery, though they are setting fruit.

On the upside, I have 16 open boxes out of 59 (17 are perennials) and the volunteer tomato in the strawberry box is the best looking tomato of them all. So, I look forward to topping off my squares with compost and fall planting, which will begin in a few weeks.

Love the title of your post! So true! I've got lots of "empty" squares - well not so empty because I've got weeds growing in them, or else the birds have eaten my seed out of the others. But the drought is causing me to rethink my garden priorities, so a few empty squares is not a big deal.

Gardeners can realize depth of your title. It is real fact after plants growth. To solve this problem, we need garden maintenance tips to grow plants according to our plan.

Me too--my spring garden did amazing, we ate tons of spinach and lettuce from that garden. Then came the raccoon, and I had to replant 2/3 of my main bed after evicting the critter. Now it's three solid days of pouring rain after weeks and weeks of heat and drought, so all my tomatoes are cracking, though the baby seedlings are thrilled! Nothing I've done has kept the slugs off the kale, so all my kale is more hole than leaf. The jalepeno plant is producing WAY more than we can eat, while the sweet pepper plants are barely producing anything.

My main goal is to save enough money in veggie purchases to pay off my bed (it cost about $100 including seeds). I think there will be no problem in that respect so I'm not too worried, there are plenty of things that *are* growing well. We've eaten tons of salads, some kale, spinach, chard, one head of broccoli, two tomatoes, green onions, tons of pesto, a few cukes and enough beans for two batches for our family of 5.

I'm keeping a half-a** journal for next year. I throw in quick comments (like "plant more sweet peppers") and am hoping it helps in the future!

My plans never seem to turn out the way I planned--sometimes for the worse and other times for the better. I keep a notebook of what I do but even that is sometimes not all that useful. Last year I had great green beans, peppers and eggplant and lousy tomatoes and squash. This year I have no peppers, the green beans got eaten up by beatles, the eggplants are meh and my tomatoes and squash are fantastic. What did I do differently? Nothing.

I've gone ahead and given up on my peppers and am getting ready for the fall. It is okay to call some squares a failure and plant something else in it. Who knows, the next thing might work out perfectly.

I'm trying to line my boxes this week to keep out the voles. They and I both love beets and it's time to plant some.

Heidi

Ditto. Last year the collards and kale were fantastic. This year not even tulle and bt could keep them from being decimated by bugs.

Kay