Main garden:
"Early jalapeño" (May 26th) (Seems like normal jalapeños but they come ripe 5 days sooner than normal jalapeños) 4 plant pack, one plant had two sprouts in one chunk. (June 7th: the 2 sprout plant going a bit slower than the others. Peppers planted near onions also coming in a bit slower than the one that is over by the lettuce and the peas.) All peppers came in with no spice whatsoever. :-(
Czech black pepper (May 26th) supposed to be earlier than jalapeño, more prolific, prettier, not quite as hot, very fruity and flavorful. We'll see. (It's going like gangbusters) (June 7th: First purple flower, and it is indeed very pretty) (June 30: first pepper harvested, haven't tasted it yet) Good but not notably good
Capperino cherry peppers: (May 26th) http://www.abcgrow.com/peppers/capperino These guys got crowded out by the tomatoes, got hardly any peppers from them at all. Tasted like a good red pepper, but very small, probably that was also due to the crowding.
BIG sweet red bell pepper I got at the farmers market June 7th. It already has peppers on it, let's see how it does. Wonderful having these periodically available.
Strawberries: all from crowns, probably planted them too late. Three varieties. (June 7: starting to get flowers on some of the plants) Squirrels ate the plants before the strawberries grew.
Blue Jade corn: 3 foot stalks, many small ears per stalk, sweet blue corn, heirloom. I planted them quite dense, sq foot gardening style, in a 2x6 bed, 4 plants per 1 foot square (4 inches apart, in the middle) I planted 2x4 on may 26th and plan on planting the remaining 2x2 the same way in a couple of weeks as an experiment to see how minimal I can get. (June 7th: it's about 6 inches high, and I did plant the last 2'x2' plot today as well.) We went on vacation and somebody stole all of it while we were gone.
Arugula. New seeds did great. Old seeds came in straggly and late. (next year: just rip up and eat the arugula when it looks good, wait one or two days too late and it bolts like the dickens. Also, an all arugula salad is quite good.)
Carrots: older seeds, not as many germinated as I had expected. The upside: very little thinning to do. Carrots tasted amazing. Took a very long time to germinate, I guess that is normal with carrots.
Beets (doing very well, but I really should have thinned them earlier) (thinned June 7th) These produced wonderful leaves and almost no beet roots at all.
Chard (crowded out by weeds, oops) (weeded June 7th) (older seeds not germinating as well as the beets) Worked well but got crowded out by tomatoes
Radishes (harvested May 26th (and June 2nd)) (next year plant more!) The white finger radishes were good, yes, next year plant more.
Green beans:
Beans in a sack labeled "green beans" of unknown variety, origin, or date, have failed to come up at all.
Yellow beans (mid-may, 2013 seeds) coming up spotty, but we had some quite cold weather after I planted them. Added three more plants June 7th. Squirrels ate most of the plants, kids ate all of the beans.
Roma II planted May 26th (June 7th: doing great) Turned out to be a vine plant instead of a bush plant! Disastrous.
Tavara (good sized patch planted June 7th) Who knows, the kids ate them all
Old dill: failed to germinate at all (but lots of volunteer dill from last years dill crop -- just not where I wanted it planted!)
Sugar snap peas: old seeds did well, so did the saved seeds from last years crop (although those came in smaller and later than the others) (June 7th: flowers on the peas!) Kids ate nearly all of them, before they were even ripe most of the time
Tomatoes:
Sungold (May 26th) Prolific
Black Prince (mid-may) Good but not amazing
Two varieties I got from the local nursery, I have no idea (May 26th) Grew up fast and then the tops blew over in a windstorm and broke the plants
one more I have to check the tag (Northern Sun maybe?) (mid may) A wonderful, thick, meaty slicer
Black Cherry Tomato from the farmers market. (June 7th) Not great
Many volunteer cherry tomatoes Not bad
Cucumbers: "Pickling": three vines in one pot. Three cucumber plants is just about enough to keep a family in cucumbers but not enough to have anything for pickling
Shallots: my first time growing them, I just bought a pack at the hardware store. One failed to come up entirely. One came up VERY late and looks a lot weirder than the others -- I may have planted it too deeply. The rest seem do be doing well. Just wait until they are done and dig them out of the ground, amazing flavor
Garlic: going great, can't kill it.
Green garlic: Worked great in a stir fry sauce instead of green onions
Onions: Simple red, white, and yellow starts that I got at the gardening store. Planted at different times because the garden unfroze at different times. Other people at this point in time have ENORMOUS onions -- I can only imagine that they have some sort of cold frame in place. The growing onions turned out very good but small, as predicted.
Green onions: yellow, red, and white types.
Kohlrabi: Grand Duke Hybrid (purchased plants and planted June 7th) These got to be enormous and they tasted great.
Lancinato kale: (June 7th) (love this stuff)
Lettuce (from seed, v. early) (crowded by weeds, shaded by peas and tomatoes, not doing well) the planting of this just didn't work out, it got yellow and wilty from lack of light
Lettuce (as plants) (June 7th) very bad idea, by the time it was large enough to eat it was far, far too bitter
Herbs:
Rosemary (planted June 7th) Did great
Thyme (planted June 7th) Did great
Cutting celery (June 7th) -- small mound of greenery that tastes of celery when you cut it. Hoping it gets a lot bigger because it tastes good Good but my wife used it in everything and it's a little stronger than celery so I started to kind of get sick of it.
Italian Parsley (June 7th) Probably would have been great if we would have remembered to use it.
Cilantro (June 7th) This was great while it lasted, fresh is much better than in store. And when it went to seed I made Coriander, which was NOT worth it, it tastes good but it's a lot of work, next time just buy coriander at Penzey's, it's cheap
Cinnamon Basil (June 7th) Good. Notably different (but not better) than straight sweet basil
Thai Basil (June 7th) VERY good, and distinctive.
Sweet basil experiments. I got all of the sweet basil on June 7th. What it better when putting it in this late. Little compact sweet basils that can grow? Or big tall leggy ones? What if I get the leggy basils and trim them down after I transplant them? Right now I have two leggy plants in and one compact one. Need to trim down one of the leggy ones. Keep the leggy ones, let them grow out, cut them way back, then the smaller compact ones will be ready a few weeks later, use those, then the first ones will be bigger again.
Containers:
Moroccan mint (put a layer of composting leaves at the bottom of the container, probably a bad idea.) (But the mint doesn't seem to care) I tried to overwinter it but failed miserably because the kids ate most of it
Some variety of lavender My wife liked it
Nasturtium (old seeds, cold cold weather, only three sprouted) (June 7th: added "whirligig" nasturtiums that I got at the farmers market.) Farmers market nasturtiums did great, the kids ate most of the flowers
Chocolate mint (this variety of chocolate mint smells slightly better and has much narrower leaves than the usual chocolate mint I try to grow) (The kids loved this one so much they ate half the plant a couple hours after I transplanted it.) Kids continued to eat this constantly
Oregano (accidentally didn't get watered one hot day and it's in a small pot. Came back half the size.) The pot was really too small and had problems with consistent soil moisture all summer
Three Sisters garden:
20x20 plot. Shady, rocky, generally poor soil. Chose this garden type to try to make it relatively maintenance free, NOT based on how suitable it was for the growing conditions.
5 rows of 18" mounds, alternating between corn+beans and squash. 2.5 foot inner border all around to give the squash some room, but I might plant melons there, not sure.
All along the back: Russian Mammoth sunflowers, planted 18 inches apart (coming up spotty, old seeds (sigh)) (only 3 came up)
4 rows: Bon Jour sweet corn hybrid. (Coming up v. poorly, probably going to have to buy a ton of bean poles at this rate) (Discovered why it's coming up so poorly, something has been grazing on the new sprouts)
1 row: Oaxacan green dent (seeds) (Coming up AMAZING, even in the rockiest, shadiest spot in the garden, I regret not planting more.) (second round of Oaxacan Green Dent not doing nearly as well, then I discovered that something ate the seedlings down to the ground)
Beans: Two kinds so far: True Red Cranberry and Cherokee Trail of Tears.
Squash: Waltham Butternut and ...