How is your garden this year? What are you growing? Any big successes to share or disappointments? 

It’s been an interesting year for our garden. It seems like everything came on slow and was very slow to ripen. Our tomatoes are JUST starting to ripen, about a month later than usual. But they are plenty! 

It’s been a great year for peppers here, but we’ve had a hard time with carrots. 

Other veggies we have growing are cucuмbers, green beans, eggplant, beets, watermelon, corn, pumpkins and candy roaster squash. 

The fall garden is going in soon with a variety of brassicas and greens. 

We’ve been making lots of pickles and will be soon canning a lot of green beans and beets. We like to freeze sauce, diced tomatoes and peppers, and we freeze dry the salsa. 

The candy roaster squash is an excellent keeper. A couple weeks ago we used up the last of last years crop. It gets sweeter the longer it stores so it was wonderfully sweet. 

I wasn't feeling up to a big garden this year so all I planted was potatoes and jerusalem artichokes ( sunchokes) and just let them go.
Harvesting, potatoes now -they are all medium to small. No real large ones like I had in past years, but like I said I didn't fuss with them much. Want to try those candy roaster squash for next year!

I wasn’t up to all the digging, hoeing, etc. this year. (Arthritis) But I do have a nice supply of fresh dandelion greens, chives, zucchini and yellow squash, and several pumpkins from last year are growing.  The crab apple tree is looking like I’ll get some applesauce or pie in September.  I had lots of wild blueberries earlier, but not many blackberries or raspberries.  
Last week I found a hybrid squash.  It was about 18” long and zucchini shaped.  The outside was dark green with orange undertones.  I cut it open to find a rather fibrous light orange flesh that tasted like a zucchini with a touch of pumpkin.  Obviously, the zucchini and pumpkin were cross pollinated.  I cooked it down well and canned two jars.  I have a number of slices marinating in leftover pickle juice, and pan fried a half dozen thin slices to eat as is.  
I set aside some seeds to see if they’ll grow anything next year.  It could be that they’re sterile or will only grow a stem and leaves, no squash.
I’ll use them if any more appear, but I don’t recommend them because they’re too fibrous.  Possibly, they’re a natural regulator for those with constipation!  
A friend (RIP) many years ago, grew something similar in her compost pile, a combination cucuмber and pumpkin.  It was also fibrous, tasted slightly of pumpkin, and had the consistency of a tough, but watery cucuмber with huge seeds.  If I recall, she fed it to the chickens.  It was too tough and had a bitter aftertaste, not fit for human consumption unless starving.
I can’t decide whether to call mine a zuchin or a pumkini.  Not delicious, but certainly edible if well cooked and in something, sauce, soup, stew, or pumkini muffins!  
My friend’s was a cucuмkin or a pumcuмber!  

Anyone else ever find a surprise in their garden?  

The horned worms got our tomatoes this year..

Your comment brings back a memory of seeing a large horned tomato worm crawling across a woman’s back collar during Mass.  People directly behind her scooted over on the pew.  I was behind her but at a diagonal.  I could see the worm was going to have no choice but to crawl into her neck, so I reached over two people, pulled it off her collar which sent the people to the left of me sliding over into the aisle on the Gospel side. The woman felt it when the worm was removed and had no idea what was going on or why someone in the pew behind her had touched her collar, or were sliding over on one side and getting up on the other.  She scowled briefly and went back to her prayers.  Everyone moved out of my way as I slid over myself and exited the church via the door to hall and cry room.  The window was slightly opened in the cry room, so I tossed the worm outside.  It felt kind of cool and plump, squishy if I’d killed it.  It would have been disgusting to mush it on the floor, so I returned it to nature.  
When I returned to Mass, I saw my missal and Rosary on the end of the pew against the armrest and the space I’d occupied filled up.  The woman seated on the end shook her head when I indicated I’d like to kneel down.  I could see her staring at my hands, to her, obviously defiled.  I took the hint, my belongings, and moved myself to a folding chair in the back.

When I went to Communion, I thought how if it were the novus ordo, I’d be placing Our Lord in hands that had handled a tomato worm!  🍅 🐛  Thank God for reverent Communion kneeling and on the tongue!

I wasn't feeling up to a big garden this year so all I planted was potatoes and jerusalem artichokes ( sunchokes) and just let them go.
Harvesting, potatoes now -they are all medium to small. No real large ones like I had in past years, but like I said I didn't fuss with them much. Want to try those candy roaster squash for next year!

I have never had Jerusalem artichokes. What are they like? 

Anyone else ever find a surprise in their garden? 

Yes! Well, our surprises usually comes in our front yard. When we first moved here we put many different types of pumpkins on our porch for fall. We aren’t always the best at hauling our pumpkins off. Well, that year when they got old we just kicked them off the porch.   Behold! The next year we had a nice stand of volunteer pumpkins. We couldn’t bring ourselves to kill them so we put some mulch around them and nurtured them. We got some really neat pumpkins! We’ve done the same every year since and the pumpkins get weirder and weirder looking.  Each year one of our children has proclaimed the pumpkin patch “their garden” which has worked out very well. It’s a gateway into their own little garden patch that they will plant next year. All of our girls (besides the baby) are avid little gardeners and they all began in a volunteer pumpkin patch. 

I heard that there is a special light you can go out at night to find them with. They are SO hard to find because they blend in so well.

Yes, it's any kind of ultraviolet light ("black light"). You can get them for pretty cheap on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A5KLUG2/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B01A5KLUG2&linkCode=as2&tag=httpwwwchanco-20 />

You can get smaller ones than that too -- they just don't light up as much area, or as bright. That $13 one is a pretty good middle of the road option.

Our area has lots of scorpions -- they really glow in the dark with a light like this. We actually bought the flashlight for scorpions. Its use in the garden was an added bonus.

My oldest daughter has a pretty large garden (she does most of the gardening around here) and we were just out there a couple weeks ago picking off the tomato hornworms (wearing nice thick leather gloves so I don't have to feel the "squish" of the worms) and dropping each one into a bucket of water with a couple drops of soap in it (to facilitate drowning).

It's best to catch the critters before your plant is half gone. They are masters of camouflage though. Without the "blacklight at night" technique, it's hard to get them all.

I have never had Jerusalem artichokes. What are they like?

I think they are actually weeds but the roots are edible - dense and high caloric . When the bolsheviks were starving the Ukrainians back in the 1930’s , they stole all of their harvests , especially all of the potatoes . Apparently the Jerusalem artichokes were wild so the bolsheviks didn’t steal them or dig them up and many Ukrainians survived on them . There is a problem with storage however - I leave them in the ground until just  before the first frost and put them in buckets and cover them with sand - weird , I know but it’s the only way to keep them.the plants also have pretty yellow flowers at the end of August . Mine are about 6 feet tall.
Actually they taste good , but are pretty gassy! I think it’s a common complaint . I look at them as survival plants . They just grow and grow like weeds