My strawberries did better this year. I have them in a large tub to keep them from running away, but I’ll probably move them into a bed next year. I only got about 2 handfuls of berries this year, lost the third handful to the ants/slugs/crawly things.
I enrolled in Horticulture 100 in the fall, our local community college has a nice greenhouse and hort school, so I’m hoping to get better at my plant propogation. My seedlings are a pathetic thing to behold.
If you have success, I will happily trade strawberry babies. I have red and yellow Alpine, and just picked up some straight up wild ones.
Garden update: My tomatoes I planted in big laundry buckets are going gangbusters and I had to obtain a bunch of bamboo sticks to tie them up and they’re covered in tomatoes with a few beginning to ripen. My three little jalapenos are going nuts too, even the runty one I got for free for being runty has about eight peppers on it, the big one has over a dozen. The yellow tomatoes I planted in the ground next to the house are doing respectably, each with a half dozen tomatoes starting on them. I might need to get a few bags of compost to throw around them to get them to really take off.
FRUIT:
VEGGIES:
HERBS:
FLOWERS:
There’s more, but this is already long. 
mad jealous. that sounds amaze.
I didn’t follow through on a lot of my seedlings, as usual d: but the cherries are blasting up. i’m terrible about watering the seedlings regularly once i’ve put the first ones outside…
raspberries were good until they got scorched, and a lot of the berry buds(?) browned out. the ones we’ve gotten have been great. also a lot of mulberries from the local trees. strawberries a little thin this year. peas ok, although I think the shopping cart is not doing it for them.
additionally, radishes and carrots struggling more this year. squirrels have been absolute assholes this year, what with chewing into our attic, making babies, and eating all my plants…
the thyme is in flower, which is great. and echinacea and lavender finally survived seedling stage.
You might want to invest in a BB gun, not a powerful one but like a daisy red rider. I’m not suggesting you actually shoot to kill the squirrels but if you take a shot at their fluffy tails the pop of the gun and the fact that their tail is mostly fluff and little actual flesh you won’t hurt them as the pellet passes by/through their fur. They will learn pretty quick to stay away. As a plus you can also shoot cans for a bit of safe target shooting if you are so inclined.
haha, we considered that (and have done that previously). It’s just illegal here and we rent.
Also before, we had a cat that would fetch the squirrels we shot (and catch some larger creatures of its own). Zulu is greatly missed…
Even if it wasn’t illegal in her neck of the woods all scaring critters off does is ensure they only devour your crap when you’re not around. In my place we huck rocks at geese from the house but with a predictably empty house every weekday the geese just devour my lawn while I’m not around. They start to skedaddle at the sight of my car.
Geese are a bit smarter than squirrels I guess. I have taken a few shots at the squirrels around here and they mostly stay away now.
Success and fails of our garden this year:
Success! James put in the drip hoses for all the beds so watering everything is much easier and hopefully nothing will die from us forgetting this year.
Fail! The automatic watering timer shorted and tried to explode, so we still have to remember to water everything.
Banana Bed
Both bananas (ice cream and apple) lived through the last Texas freeze, along with some garlic chives. We probably need to cull 2-3 of each type but they’re sooooo tall and close to fruiting that it’s hard not to be greedy and just want as many bananas as possible.
I replanted basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary, dill, sage, and some kind of mint. Found a cherry tomato plant growing in the shade, the fruit is literally the size of a big blueberry but super sweet.
Blueberry Bed
Had to replace 5 of the blueberries as rootballs were dead. Got gloriously loaded plants from local nursery and had a great harvest this year with a lot of variety in size and flavor. Currently have 3 southern highbush blueberries and 4 rabbiteye blueberries because I caved and threw another pink lemonade in a nearby pot. I love that variety so much. I planted my strawberries in here so I wouldn’t have to net off another bed. Seascape and Delizz were tasty, something ate all the white alpines that I planted. Maybe next year.
Random Bed of Volunteers!
Broccoli did great, parsley did great. Three random tomato plants and dill popped up. Two cherry tomato-type plants and what looks like a Roma tomato. Cauliflower failed to do much this year, probably planted it too late. Planted a bunch of beans in the bed as well and they did amazing! There was constantly almost too many to eat, or there would’ve been if our cat didn’t keep stealing them from the harvest bowl.
Salsa Bed
Onions didn’t do very well, I still have some seeds that I’m going to try in the other random bed I have. Tomatoes did amazing this year until the stinkbugs came for them. I try to kill as many nymphs/adults as I see but there’s so many of them. Peppers are doing well and delicious. Aside from the stinkbugs the mockingbirds destroyed almost all the big beefy tomatoes.
No melons, squash or cucumbers this year because after three years of bugs killing it (but not the neighbor’s next door) I’m done.
The literal fruit of our efforts raising a poziomki bush. It’s yielded 600% more than our raspberry bush so far.
We’re at just under 20 pounds of figs since Friday. Hopefully the dehydrator will be in today. Here’s a day’s yield:
Just sell them and make mad bank.
It’s a little tricky because their shelf life is so short, we would need to be producing a little more for a brewery or restaurant to be excited about them, but it’s also more than any one person would take. I’m going to make some amazing ice cream this weekend though.
I’ve grown plumeria for ten years and usually have 1-3 blooming during a season. This year I had close to a dozen different cultivars blooming at the same time and I found a few huge moths hanging around them at night.
I finally have seed pods! Now I just need to wait for them to mature and dry out. Hopefully by next summer I will be set up for trying my hand at seedlings.
All six of my tomatoes got some incurable virus and now I think it spread to my peppers. I’m gonna have to destroy all of them. 
next year, spray them three time a month with aspirin water. 1 325mg tablet : 1gallon
It’s not a guarantee, but it might help. Oh, and make sure to switch the soil out with something used for an unrelated plant (I usually use soil from my peas) & not compost the infected plants.
I am going to dump them down on a pile of dirt and logs I use for a target shooting backstop to keep it from spreading. I’ve never heard of the aspirin thing how does it help? And now I need to think of something to plant in my planters that will be harvestable in the fall.
I had some spider mites on my strawberry plant. The plant isn’t doing amazingly, but it’s still alive (for now). Anyway, I looked up solutions and decided to get some Neem oil extract. I was super skeptical because this was some “organic” solution, but the Amazon reviews were good.
Well, one spraying, and it totally worked! No more mites. Neem oil is the real deal.
