Blame it on the rain (and snow, cold and heat)

Being a gardener can be a humbling experience. As the name of my Web site, www.gardening-guy.com, says, I fancy myself a gardening guy.

Some years I struggle not to think of myself the czar of zucchinis or the King Tut of tomatoes. Not this year. This year I've had a lot less than perfect success. But I try not to focus on mistakes and failures.

The season started off with weeks of rain, soggy soils, grey skies. As usual, I started my seedlings indoors in early April. But I couldn't get them in the ground as early I'd have liked -- my garden was often swimming. Even though I use raised beds, the ground stayed cold and wet through much of June.

Eventually I planted, but by then some of my plants had decided this wasn't their year, and just dozed all summer. The sun often hid behind a mask of gloom. Even in midsummer we never had any real hot days, the kind people like to complain about.

By mid-September, I still had too many unripe tomatoes, and frost was looming just over the horizon. I won't be making ketchup this year, or much sauce.

All the

My Sungold cherry tomatoes produced fairly well, but kept dropping unripe tomatoes on the ground. And my peppers? Forget about them. Even my mildly hot Hungarian wax peppers that usually produce in huge numbers (in the comfort of my unheated hoop house) produced very little.

I remind myself that I am not the only one who has had a bad year. At the farmers markets of the region, gardeners have been seen buying zucchinis. Lurking around, whispering furtively, "Hey man, you know where I can score some zukes?" I haven't heard a single zucchini joke this year. And people aren't locking their cars this year to prevent friends from depositing bags of those large green missiles in the back seat.

Pumpkins? I don't have one decent carving pumpkin, and just a few cooking pumpkins. My cukes look like half-inflated balloons: full diameter at one end, scrawny at the other.

So, what has done well this year?

We had a bumper crop of blackberries, and blueberries have been splendid. Those successes can be attributed, I think, to plenty of rain following a mild winter. Fruit buds are set the summer before, and cold weather in winter can kill those buds. Maybe global warming is not such a bad thing. Maybe I should buy an SUV.

And potatoes have done quite well for us. We have harvested almost four 5-gallon pails of spuds from 35 feet of potato beds. Not great, but we won't suffer.

Broccoli, cabbages and lettuce have done well. They like cool, moist conditions, and sunshine is less important to them than some other veggies.

On July 29, I planted red meat radishes, a mild fall radish with a pink interior, and they have done well. These radishes (available from Johnny's Select Seeds, www.Johnnyseeds.com or (877) 564-6697) stay tender and tasty even if they get as large as baseballs, and I will let a few do just that.

I planted purple cauliflower from seed, one that I got from Renee's Garden Seeds (www.reneesgarden.com or (888) 880-7228) and it produced gorgeous heads. Not as tender or large as traditional cauliflower, but it's worth growing just for the added color in the garden.

Flowers this year have been okay. The season started in February with snowdrops popping up around Valentine's Day. I cut the buds, tiny though they were, and brought them inside to use as arrangements in miniature vases. Get some now, and plant on a south-facing hillside where the snow melts early, if you wish to have an early-season morale booster.

I planted some double snowdrops last fall thinking that they would be extra special, but was disappointed: since the blossoms look down, they really don't look much different than the singles, and not worth a premium price.

By the first week in August, I recorded that I had 75 species of flowers in bloom (including about a dozen annuals). But some were struggling. The blankety-blank lily leaf beetles, those bright red lily terrorists, had started to win: hand picking twice a day was not enough. My Oriental and Asiatic lilies were being devastated.

I give up. From here on in, I'll not be buying anymore lilies. I will continue to pick the beetles next year, and maybe with different conditions, I will hold them off.

Zinnias, on the other hand, are sure winners, no matter what. I grew the Benary's series, both the mixed colors and the lime green one. These zinnias are 3 to 5 feet tall, bloom from midsummer till frost, and are long lasting in a vase.

So if you're discouraged by your gardening efforts this summer, don't be. Blame everything on the weather. All of us suffered some defeats, and more this year than most. Focus on your successes.

Send me an E-mail or letter if you like, and let me know what worked for you (or what didn't), and what you did to make your garden grow better. Next year has gotta be better.