In 2014 growing season, this was the superstar in my garden. Do tell us which

Route 66 coreopsis, I have tried coreopsis many times before, so was skeptical. This cultivar is great.

Lysianthus grown in pot. Have done so-so inground but bloomed several times this year. still blooming.

NBJ, now that is planted in areas where it gets reliable moisture, a blooming machine.

Cayenne Pepper! (Thank you, June!)

I enjoyed many delicious veggies this summer. Unfortunately, between insects and raccoons, the latter making collateral damage of my veggie plants while digging for worms and grubs in my garden, there were not a lot of bumper crops.

That said, the one thing that produce like crazy was (and still is) the cayenne pepper. I have several cayenne plants - just could not toss those extra seedlings - but one plant in particular has grown into a full size shrub 3-4ft high and absolutely covered in peppers so densely packed onto the plant that they almost remind me of grape clusters. Literally, 3-6 of the long thin peppers growing out of the same point on a limb & this repeated at just about every node on every branch. Definitely, no shortage of hot peppers here!

The stars for me were Carrots, Sweet onions, red onions and Cheyenne peppers. Tomatoes did o.k. as well. Dino Kale did great until a %$@&&! Woodchuck chewed them up.

Dahlias galore and we still have six more weeks (maybe more) to enjoy them.

Other. Johnson grass & weeds ! ! :(

I finally admitted to myself last spring that ordinary gardening is no longer something I am able to do. So the area that was once 'garden' is now nothing but a weed patch.

Due to several years of severe drought, living on a low fixed income so unable to water, also age and health related problems, nothing has been properly cared for out doors. I have a few plants in pots, but the yard has been almost completely taken over by Johnson grass.

But I haven't given up! I still enjoy my few potted plants, I am slowly (VERY slowly) beginning to wage a war on the Johnson Grass. And I continue to read and gain inspiration here on Dave's Garden, and on a couple of other forums, too. I especially enjoy the pictures everyone posts of their gorgeous flowers and vegetables.

Several veggies did good for us.
King Aurthur peppers got huge. Still picking them. Most are now red. 6 to 8 large peppers to a plant & I have 500 plants!
Super Star muskmelons won't quit. Hundreds that will never be picked, just to many.
Planted 20,000 onion plants from Dixondale. Lots well over 1 lb. 8 varieties, all did well.
Cabbage won't quit either. Sold so many I lost track. Still a couple hundred out there. Plan to store them to sell in the winter.
Eggplant also is bumper crop.
These are nice things to have when you are a market grower.
One of our best years ever.

Hands down my zinnias were the best performers. Bloomed non stop and required no watering after the first week or two. They have been butterfly magnets as well.

Mypotted plants survived!!!!!!!!!!!

My kale was also a huge butterfly magnet - 'baby' butterflies that is! Every time I turned around, it was covered in cabbage worms, an early stage of the Cabbage White [Butterfly]. I really don't enjoy that stage so much. Argh!

I have a gorgeous perennial Datura plant that has bloomed from March through now and still going. It is just so beautiful with the big white flowers that have a wonderful fragrance in the garden at dusk until morning.

Weeds should have been one of the choices. Gene

ROTF, Gene!

Good point. I believe someone else put weeds on their list, and that's also what I usually grow in largest quantity.

This year for the very 1st time I used a small tool that you drag across the soil to decapitate tiny weed seedlings quickly and easily before they have the chance to grow. That really made a huge difference. I took about 30min a day to remove the weed seedlings; I did this in the beginning, while the veggies were just sprouting. By the time the veggie plants reached good size, I was surprised to find that I no longer needed to do any weeding at all. I enjoyed a totally weed free garden for the 1st time ever. Much, much easier to combat weeds this way vs trying to pull them once they are sizable (what I usually do).

A bumper crop of tomatoes, peppers, and even the squash lasted quite a while before the bugs took over. I've even managed to keep most of the potted plants going pretty well, but mainly because I cut way back on the number I tended this year.

Totally agree, Gene. I sometimes think I spend more time on weed control and pulling weeds than I do on the rest of the garden (veggies, perennials, and the few annuals I grow).

LOL....Gene...too funny!

It definitely was my spring planting of romaine and butter head lettuces. Had so much that i had to give some away to friends and family! :)

Sungold cherry tomatoes started producing abundantly earlier than the other maters & hasn't let up yet. Overall, this was an amazing year for all my veggies crops due to favorable weather and fewer insect pests. In 2014, I experienced the veggie garden of my dreams! I had a special friend helping with the insects; who first appeared in the cherry tomatoes.

armadillos were the stars of my "garden"....or what's left of it. :-(

i DO have a plan in place for next year....never give up! lol

Trackinsand, what is your plan for getting rid of the armadillos? We have set traps but apparently they aren't big enough and we haven't had success. Parts of the beds around my pond are looking like someone took a roto-tiller to it.

We had to get the big trap and that has worked well

I started a small package of Tiny Tim tomato seeds at the end of December to get a couple to enter in the flower show in Boston in March. I got about 15 plants. I entered my best two in different categories and got a 2nd and 3rd place on them. I kept them all growing in my sun room till time to put them outside. The first green tomato appeared on one plant inside. They grew gangbusters outside all summer and we had a tremendous cherry tomato crop from these plants. The joy is that these were the first tomatoes that I grew from seed in over 20 years. There are still tomatoes on some of them about to turn red. I am so pleased!
Martha

This message was edited Sep 30, 2014 8:34 AM

trackinsand & OutsidePlaying,

I haven't battled armadillos in my veggie garden (yet - although, they have made it to this area now. Argh!), but this past season I did have a somewhat similar battle with a group of raccoons who were absolutely determined to dig up every inch of my garden to get to the earthworms. In their efforts they managed to dig up and destroy 1/2 or more of my cucumber plants and one tomato plant before I finally found a way to stop them. Here is what worked:

I should preface this by adding that (1) my veggie garden was small, consisting of 2 large, raised beds and about a dozen 2ft D pots, and (2) the large qty of compost I had added to the garden led to a bumper 'crop' of earthworms in the soil and in turn fueled the destructive digging. The raccoons not only dug up the raised beds but also dug about 1/2 of the dirt out of the pots, in both cases shredding plants as they worked.

In my effort to block the digging, I covered the soil with cardboard in some areas and newspaper in others (some 5 pages thick). I anchored the cardboard and newspaper with large 'bricks' and concrete border sections (those scalloped things from home center stores). The 'bricks' were not the kind used on houses but the larger, heavier ones designed to stack w/o mortar to build low garden walls and such. I left gaps about 1in or so between pieces of cardboard or newspaper to permit some water to penetrate the soil. Covering the ground in this manner was not optimum for a number of reasons but was necessary under the circumstances. I realize this would be harder to implement in a large garden.

While young seedlings were developing, I covered the 2ft D pots with a type of fence material with squares about 1/2in in size, too small for even the raccoons to reach through. I bent it around the pot rim and anchored it there. I used the same fence material to make large 6ft x 9ft rectangular covers about 8in or so deep/high to cover raised beds while seedlings were emerging; these could also be used to cover sections of a traditional garden. I placed large bricks on the corners of these larger covers to help in anchoring them. I added the cardboard and newspaper only after the plants had grown large enough to require me to remove these covers.

I considered leaving the covers in place and just cutting holes where needed to allow the plants to grow through them. I decided against that for 2 major reasons: (1) I wanted the ability to grow smaller plants like radishes around larger ones in some areas and to swap out various crops as needed when things stopped producing and (2) leaving the covers in place for the duration of the growing season would make weeding virtually impossible.

Once the covers were removed from the 2ftD pots I blocked digging by placing bricks over sections of soil between plants. In a few pots where plant placement did not allow for the use of bricks and in others because I eventually ran out of bricks, I came up with a totally different method which also worked very well and which I might try in a traditional garden in the future. From a different type of fence material vs that used for the covers, this one with larger 'holes', I cut the material up to make a bunch of what were basically giant 'needles' some 5-6in in length.

I stuck these 'needles' into the ground (vertically) around the plants leaving them sticking up some 2-3in above ground. I placed them them at 3-4in intervals across the soil, the idea being to make it painful for anything to try to dig there. That actually worked. Over the growing season 2 or 3 of those 'needles' were knocked down, indicating to me that the raccoons did attempt to dig there, but they gave up quickly having never reached the soil or damaged any plants.

In a section of garden where my (fully grown) cucumbers were so densely planted as to make the above methods infeasible, I enclosed the entire cucumber row in fence wire all the way to the ground and over the top and then cut out 'hand holes' as needed to reach the ripe cucumbers. This also worked - and the raccoons had been particularly active in digging in this area before I fenced it off.

I hope these ideas might prove helpful to others battling similar problems and/or that they might help to spur other ideas. Just fyi, the cardboard and newspaper did also help tremendously in keeping the garden weed-free and in reducing the evaporation of soil moisture, and enough water did get through the gaps to keep the plants happy. I realize that armadillos are different vs raccoons, but raccoons can be quite destructive when motivated and have unimaginable tenacity in pursuit of a goal (food). Every night for about a week they dug up garden sections and every day I worked to block further damage. These are the things which finally worked so well that the raccoons gave up entirely and what remained of the garden was allowed to grow unhampered.

Glad to hear of everyone's successes.

Lucie, I have been there and cheered when all my potted plants survived too. :-)

Tracksinsand, persistence pays off, so don't let them dilly's discourage you. I am curious as to how you plan on thwarting the armadillo's in the future. Please share your strategy. :-)

I grew a lot of weeds this year on purpose, and they are doing well. What I was really happy about though, was my passionfruit.

I saw one my sister was growing, and decided that I wanted one too. I found a vine, and kept it in a pot for a couple of years, until I was well enough to plant it in the ground. I chose to plant it inside of the GH, because I didn't know any better. :-)

Oh, boy was it happy this spring. It went nuts. We harvested over 60 passionfruit from it. It was a lot of fun watching the flowers bloom, and the fruits form and ripen.
The hardest part was figuring out how to use, and preserve the fruit. :-|

Three things you can do with the fruit. You can eat it raw, make a juice out of it, or use it for flavoring. I am pretty sure you can make a jelly or jam with it too, but haven't found a recipe yet.

The current vine will die in a year or so, and I have learned my lesson. Do not plant inside the GH, if you don't want it taking over. So I'll be planting the new vines outside in a sheltered location. :-)

WIB~
SW

Black stem elephant ear, planted in ground where it got consistent moisture in a moist year- has become a total monster when all I previously saw was a struggling wimp. That, and a Brugmansia, showed me how well they can resist mites when they're happy plants! Anybody need an eight foot tall Brug in the basement for winter? me neither!

Had to be annuals . last pic does not show as colorful as it is , easy , but good ones !

Daylilies and moonbeam coriopsis. So lovely this summer.

i have had a trap set all summer. i've caught everything else in the neighborhood at least once! lol i researched on youtube on how to set a trap for dillos but even that specific way has not helped for me. you have to set 2 x 4's on their sides and make a cone shaped entrance to direct them in.

my plan is to remove a lot of the mulch and then put fencing down, pin it down and cover with a smaller amount of mulch.
i bought rolls of the garden edging/fencing and will cut them to size in the places i need them. i also have a huge box of plant markers (aluminum hair pin type) and that is what i will use to pound into the ground and keep the fence from moving.

that's my plan and i'm sticking to it.
btw, the one thing i found that kept them at bay (and i tried everything) was plain powdered garlic. i bought a case of big jars online.....grrrrrr. it works but you have to re-apply at least once a week. hopefully the fencing will be a permanent solution.

trackinsand, I hope that you find a solution. The dillos are moving further north. I see them as roadkill now when I visit the Missouri Ozark Region. I understand that they can transmit leprosy to humans. That's kind of scary.

I thought they were transient, esp if they found the area too hostile, wirh traps, lack of food, dogs, etc. I'm wondering if animal control would come to evaluate your area to see if you have a cozy den nearby.

They are prob loving the rainy weather as it softens the soil into which they dig.

We've trapped 3 raccoons and one possum in the last month. We have several neighbors who raise chickens and turkeys so when I hear them bitching about dead chickens, we take it as a cue to start trapping.

Deer have started cruising thru my yard and nibbling on my young fruit trees. Why can't there be open season on deer in suburbia????

This message was edited Sep 28, 2014 6:50 PM

also a Phlox was a superstar. I has non stop bloom even now. Unknown cultivar of perennial summer tall phlox.

greenbrain,
when i go to st.louis, i see them all over the highways. it's only a matter of time before they acclimate to illinois.

nery,
animal control will do nothing for wild animal problems...only domestic animals. believe me, they've got their hands full as it is.

trackinsand, you're probably right & I'll be the wiser from reading these posts on DG. : )