Some of you have heard how damn excited I am to have grown potatoes—two 20-foot rows. Next year, that will double, at least. You may have also heard about the tomato fiasco: disappearing plants that reappeared a couple months later, and the addition, in the meantime, of a dozen seedlings.

Kinda makes “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” perhaps a new reality . . .

My corn experiment, which was transplanting the thinned stalks in the next row, was a success!

Anyway, I did have some failures:

There is one section of the garden that killed off my pepper plants, Bell and jalapeno, and also killed off the Romaine and Butter Crunch lettuces. Weird, right? I’ll try that section again in the fall, with kale and spinach, now that it’s rested for a couple months.

By the way, weeds grow there just fine. Of course.

And about that corn. It’s short. Very short. I do have some ears growing, and I’m guessing I might get a dozen. Maybe. That’s certainly not enough for two 20-foot rows.

And the cabbage. Good grief. Besides bugs, which can be eliminated, the darn plants never quite grew any heads. Just a lot of spreading leaves.

But!

Since the deer didn’t get inside that seven-and-a-half-foot fence, I had a lot of green beans, as well as kidney and pinto. And the asparagus is doing well—we’ll be eating that next year. I’m getting cukes, and three cute little acorn squashes. Yellow squash and zucchini, well, those are self-explanatory.

The strawberries transplanted from STL are actually producing, and spreading, but I still only got a few blueberries. The domesticating of the blackberries continues, and the orchard trees look good. Grapevines, too!

So now we’re at the point where, besides sweating gallons, we’re planning next year.

Besides expanding the garden, which means the removal of a huge dead tree and a few other live, smaller ones, not to mention a stump or three and a LOT of rocks, we’re going to add a greenhouse.

I’m determined to grow lettuce, one way or another.

We’ll see how it goes, but check back in the late fall to see what’s happening. It could be quite entertaining!