Garden debrief

There are some photos of the various items here and here.  Unless otherwise noted, all plants are grown from seeds I bought from Territorial Seeds.  And I think most are organic.  I don't earn a dime from Territorial, but I have linked the individual seeds if you're interested in purchasing your own.

I'm too tired to alphabetize, so let's start with zucchini.

Zucchini
Patio Star - this actually grew much much bigger than the photo on the website.  It was a heavy producer, and I really enjoyed the taste of the veg.

Black Beauty - I think I only harvested like 7 zucchini from this huge plant.  Patio Star will be my zuke of choice for next year.  The plant is below.

Carrots
Romance - yeah, but mine didn't look a thing like that.  Part of it is where I planted.  It's pretty shallow, but we (I) already have plants for increasing the depth of the planting area next year.  Just you wait!

Yaya - decent.  I've planted some in the fall garden, so we'll see how they do in really deep soil!

Pumpkin
Small sugar - pretty plants, and decent sized pumpkins.  I had 3 plants, and netted 7 pumpkins that are ripe, and 2 more than are ripening.  After a late night of canning pumpkin, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be only planting two plants next year; I did 3.

Beets
Chioggia - Meh.  "Nough said.

Bulls Blood - YUM.  'Nough said.

Tomatoes
Brandywine - always a winner even if it takes 1,000 days to ripen in the Pacific Northwest "Summer".

San Marzano - a stinker in my garden.  Will never plant again.  Got so much blossom end rot, and I probably only harvested about 15 all summer.  From 2 plants.  It's probably great in other climates.

Heinz - fantastic (and I need to apologize because I labeled it a stinker in this post.  And it wasn't.  I had the wrong tomato).  Great yield, and a super deep tomatoy tomato.  Yep, that's right.  A tomatoy tomato.  It gave my homemade tomato soup a very deep color, and the flavor was great.

Indigo Rose - a rose by any other name would suck as much as this plant.  Like the Heinze, it could definitely be my garden and our summers, but I hate this tomato.  It didn't taste any different than any other tomato, and it took forever to ripen.  Oh, and you only know they're ripe if the bottom of the tomato turns pink.  But if you move the tomato a bit to see if it is ripe, the stupid thing falls off the vine.  I'm pissed at myself for wasting space in the garden for TWO of these plants.

Flamme - this is from the farmer's market, and is hands down my favorite tomato ever.  It is the first to ripen, it never splits, the flavor is amazing, and it tastes delicious in anything and everything.  Sadly, I can't find these seeds anywhere, but the lovely lady at our farmer's market sells the plants 3, for $12.

My cucumber plants never sprouted, but that is my fault for trying to plant the seeds directly in the ground.  I'm so starting them in seed beds next year.

I also screwed up and planted my fall seedlings too late to actually get in the garden beds, so I had to purchase all my seedlings from a hardware store.  Oh well, next year shall be different.  That is what I tend to tell myself every year.  It's either optimism or insanity.

Only time will tell which one.

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