The Yays! and Uchs! of the Vegetable Garden This Year

It's been a weird year in my vegetable garden. Wins where I never get them and failures all over the place. So yes. It happens to me as well. It happens to me all the time. It happens to everyone!

This isn't the whole garden, but a look at some of the good and bad things going on at the moment. In fact, I'm keeping this opening paragraph short so that I can quickly get to the garden today to see what I can do about fixing some of the Uchs that have popped up.

Here's the quick tour:

The hoop house with insect netting above is protecting my broccoli plants from cabbage moth. How well did that work? You'll find out.

Broccoli

Once it starts to form a head, broccoli grows quickly. It can grow to harvestable size in 1 week.

Yays.

This brand new variety, Purple Magic, grew big, beautiful plants. I've only harvested one head but it was a good size with very compact florets.

Uchs.

I decided not to spray the little broccoli plants with BTK after planting them under the hoop house. I looked for and found a few cabbage moth larvae that got on the plants while they sat in my backyard waiting to be planted out.

I didn't get them all obviously because when I harvested my head of broccoli it had larvae in it. That means all 16 plants under cover probably have larvae on them.

I sprayed the plants with BTK this week. A mere 60 days too late.

Cucumbers

Experimental, parthenocarpic (they do not need to be pollinated to produce cucumbers) are under the big green hoop house, and pickling cucumbers grow on trellis netting.

Yays.

I'm in the midst of testing the cucumber forms I bought! They get terrible reviews, but I had to try them anyway. I'll have a whole post dedicated to the results of the cucumber forms later in the summer.

I discovered you can also use these on zucchini so if they DO work (I'm going to try it this week) I will be forced into buying this other zucchini form which is in the shape of something indelicate.

Flower, heart, star and rectangular cucumber forms on Amazon Canada

Flower, heart, star and rectangular cucumber forms on Amazon US

Uchs.

I accidentally broke the growing tip off of one of the parthenocarpic cucumbers, and have had to pull up 3 of the pickling cucumbers because of bacterial wilt from cucumber beetles. I expect the rest to die off over the next few weeks because that's how cucumber beetles and bacterial wilt work.

Cabbage

I only use cabbage for this old fashioned coleslaw I make and for cabbage rolls. The thought of eating it as an actual vegetable on its own confounds me. I have no interest in it, lol.

Yays.

Also growing under row cover, the cabbage is completely clean and free of cabbage moth.

Uchs.

The cabbage I grew out in the open is a mess. This demonstrates how important protecting your brassicas from cabbage moth is. But if you INSIST on planting cabbage without any kind of row cover protection make sure you grow red cabbage. It isn't nearly as attractive to cabbage moths as green.

These two plants are growing side by side. The red cabbage is basically clean. The green cabbage is being eaten alive. But don't worry. I have a plan. More on that in another post.

Garlic

The garlic started off strong this spring, but around July it started to show signs of yellowing top leaves and slowed growth.

Yays.

I got a lot of garlic scape pesto made out of the garlic scapes and all of the garlic has been harvested.

Uchs.

The yellowing leaves turned out to be mosaic virus which stunts the growth of the plant and the bulbs. Since the photo was taken, I've harvested all of the garlic and quite a few of the heads had just 2 or 3 cloves, and the rest were smaller than they would normally be, but none of them were rotted.

The garlic affected by the mosaic is fine to eat but I'll have to get all new garlic stock for planting this fall.

Zucchini

This year I experimented with my soil amendments.

I amended one zucchini row with my homemade garden compost.

I amended the other row with store bought composted sheep manure.

I was not expecting the results I got.

Yays.

The garden compost plants took off immediately and are huge, producing enough zucchini for me to start giving it away already.

Uchs.

The sheep manure plants are stunted, tiny, and have produced 1 zucchini.

Floret Zinnias

Floret zinnias are a new range of colours in zinnia never seen before. Pale, soft colours, plus a mix of brighter blooms in more complex shades than regular zinnia.

Yays.

I had a very high germination rate, and the colours are all genuinely beautiful. All of them mix well together. They're just starting to come into their own and I'm leaving them as long as possible before cutting so I get bigger, fluffier blooms.

Uchs.

No uchs from me, but some readers who bought the seed reported poor germination.

TIP: All those little yellow flowers you see in the centre of the zinnia will produce flower petals. You'll also notice tiny tubes in the centre. Those are the petals about to emerge. If you see these, leave your zinnia to grow more before you cut it and you'll have a much bigger, fluffier flower.

Dry Beans

I'm growing standard black beans (turtle beans) which are all destined to become canned black beans and canned refried black beans this winter.

Yays.

I direct seed my beans and these have all done really well. Only 1 or 2 didn't germinate and the plants are healthy, just getting ready to set flowers. There is a random bupleurum growing in the centre of them.

Uchs.

No uchs yet!

Onions

I planted on March 29th from sets. They were mature and ready to harvest 3.5 months later in mid July.

If your onions don't do well it could be because you're planting them too late. Especially from sets. Onion sets need to be planted in March (around this area) when it's still cold otherwise they're prone to bolting, flowering and plain old not growing.

Just a week before I planted the ground was covered in snow.

Yays.

It was a seriously good onion harvest this year. Grade 1 onions.

Uchs.

Exactly when the onions were ready to have all their tops pushed over to start the curing process we had torrential rains. End of world, sewer grates exploding from the roads, submerged cars kind of rain.

The onion necks became mush. I'll be lucky if they cure properly. If they don't cure properly, they'll go rotten before fall hits.

Also I've noticed these sets seem to produce more bull neck onions (which don't store well) and split/double headed onions.

Next time we'll look at the Yays and Uchs of green beans, kidney beans, corn, tomatoes and more.