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So how did my garden grow in '97?

This
>Why don't some of you tell us about your harvests and suggestions for next
year so we
>have something more to talk about?
was a darn good suggestion!

Tomatoes:

My 'Brandywines' did much better than in '96, though nearly all of them
split their skins.  We had a very dry summer and plenty hot.  I watered
virtually every day, esp. during the high-90's temps in July.  I promise to
water less and more deeply next year.  This was my first year with raised
beds, and they seemed to be draining at the speed of light....

'Mama Mia' paste tomatoes did well, but would benefit from staking as I did
in '94 and '95.  (Seeds have been saved; if you're on my recipient list,
I'll be mailing them out pretty soon.)

'Cherokee Purple' all had concentric ring splits ("radial cracking" is the
term Keith Dowling Mueller, tomato-guru extraordinare, uses for this
phenomenon).  They also got rotten really fast after harvest.  I don't think
I'll bother with CP next year.

'Howard's German,' a German heirloom, produced very few fruit and they all
had radial cracking at the top (stem) end.  It's off my list for next year.

'St. Pierre,' a French old open-pollinated heirloom, did well and tasted
good and tomato-ey.  The Saint will be appearing in my garden again in '98.

For people who need hybrid vigor due to space requirements and also disease
resistance, I can't recommend 'Park's OG [for Organic Gardening mag.]
Whopper' enough.  The Park's folks worked to improve their old Whopper
hybrid in time for OG magazine's 50th-year anniversary celebration a couple
years back.  This new POGW is the result, and it performed outstandingly for
me.  Lots of 2.5-inch-diameter fruits and NO cracking and NO skin splitting
on plants that showed NO blight or insect damage.  Flavor isn't as great as
Brandywine, but it's way ahead of supermarket toms.

'Pruden's Purple' didn't germinate hardly at all and the seedlings were
spindly an died on me before transplanting.  A unique and and bad result.  I
did OK with PP in '95.

'Balsam Silvery Fir,' a Russian heirloom, wasn't worth any effort at all.
The ferny foliage looked kind of nice in a container, but the plants
produced few and quite small fruit of an uninteresting orange color.

Varieties from '95 that I will replant next year:  'Dona' and 'Carmello,'
both strong-flavored hybrids.

Eggplants:

'Vittoria,' an Italian elongated hybrid, did pretty well.  I only had 2
plants and got about 6 fruits with a couple half-grown in the garden now.

We didn't really eat them--I gave all but two away and my spouse sauteed the
remaining air on the grill.  They were flavorless.  I think I'll skip
eggplants next year.

Sweet peppers:

A very problematic season for peppers in the greater D.C. area (many other
posters here and in rec.gardens recorded crop failures).  I grew a
half-dozen plants from Park's Rainbox Mix, but they basically didn't make
any damn peppers.  One really puny black pepper came off one plant.  The
rest are pretty small and bare.  The Park's freebie 'China Bell' did nothing
also.

I got a handful of smallish light yellow peppers with a maroon blush off 4
plants of 'Yellow California Wonder.'  Initially, these plants mystified me
in their fruiting habit.  They each pointed a single fruit, bottom up,
toward heaven and didn't put out any more blossoms at all.  Only after I
harvested those initial singles did the plants smarten up an pop out with
more blossoms.

The fruits were smoothly shaped and good looking but small and thin walled
with very little flavor.

The green bells I grew (regular 'California Wonder' and 'Big Bertha') were
thin walled and significantly misshapen, mostly long and skinny or twisted
all around for no apparent reason.

The paprika peppers looked very good on the vine but instead of getting
"cracked and leathery" as Doreen Howard said they would, they got saggy and
rotted.  I think I have enough to make *a little* of the paprika I promised
people.  But somehow in attempting to follow Doreen's directions about
waiting, I think I overdid it.

The cooking pepper 'Italian Gourmet' produced 3-4 cylindrical not-hot
peppers apiece that were good in sandwiches.

On a lark I grew the hot pepper used by the McIlhenny folks in making
Tabasco-brand sauce.  The leaves of these very small plants were dark purple
and the very small fruits (less than 1 inch long0 were virtually black.
They did *nothing* until mid-August.  I haven't eaten any of them and may
just decide to put them into white vinegar to flavor the vinegar.

My spring was exceedingly cold and wet; here in the mid-Atlantic everybody
who put their tomatoes into the ground before May 20 lost everything.  I
couldn't even seed my spinach or lettuce until April 23--unthinkably late in
view of how it gets real hot suddenly here.

I had a hodgepodge of 2 different mezclun mixtures going, plus 'Merveille
des Quatre Saisons,' 'Buttercrunch,' and 'Rouge d'Hiver' ("red winter"
lettuce) and 'Melody' and 'Tyee' spinach.

Overall, the lettuce grew well but tasted bitter after about June 20.  The
spinach performed admirably, and we'll restrict ourselves pretty much to
spinach in future.

Cucumbers:

Very poor results from 'Vert de Massy' (a little Frenchie used over there
for making cornichons) and SMR some-number, an old open-pollinated variety
from Wisconsin if I recall correctly.  Some blight on the vines, and just a
very small number of well-shaped fruits.  Sounds like pollination trouble,
but there seem to be plenty of bees in my garden area....

Asparagus:

We planted 9 'Jersey Knights' this May in a deep, manure enriched trench.
They all made very nice vegetative growth and a couple even poked up spears,
which we judiciously left alone.  For a seedless variety, though, these seem
to be producing some very suspicious pods.

We'll pick lightly in '98 only and then expect full production in '99 and
for approximately the next 100 years.  Considering the price of asparagus in
the grocery store and its incredible longevity if properly sited and
composted, everybody should try to make room for it next season.

Melons:

Tried the old heirloom 'Jenny Lind' and got 2 vines to live.  Collectively
they produced one (!) melon.  Many flowers were called, but apparently few
were chosen by the bees.  Actually, a second fruit appeared just last week,
but it's not going to get far with our cool nights now even if frost doesn't
get us before the normal date of around Nov. 1.

Edible-Podded Pea:

Tried the heirloom 'Sugar Ann' from direct seeding and got high germination
with short vines that climbed the pea fence willingly.  We didn't do much
with them, I'm afraid.  I really would prefer a completely flat
oriental-style snow pea and probably won't grow 'Sugar Ann' again.  My
husband (the pea-eater in the family) did say he liked the taste of the ones
he sampled, but then we didn't get around to cooking nearly all there were.
Productivity was good and no real sign of disease appeared.  I did
pre-inoculate the seeds to help with the cool weather and too-wet soil
situation here.

So, how's by everybody else?

--Janet Wintermute
USDA zone 7, Adelphi, MD
------------------------------------------------------------------
Janet Wintermute             jwintermute@ids2.idsonline.com

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