First week in April, and instead of having the heat pump on, I’m sitting here with all the windows open, because this year has been weird, weather-wise. It’s made for a challenging gardening year.

Last weekend, I brought in the last of the pumpkins and potatoes. I picked the popcorn, and I processed a heap of sweet corn. The garden is looking bare, though there’s still lots of vegetables coming out of it.

I thought it was time for my annual post-harvest assessment.

The weather was challenging for the spring crops, because it got summer-hot in November/December. Though I kept the garden well watered, the spring crops didn’t stand a chance. The pea harvest was marginal—enough for fresh eating, but not for freezing. Despite several plantings, I never did get spinach to grow—it bolted before I’d even planted out the seedlings. And the broccoli raab and pak choi bolted so fast, we never ate either of them—they went directly to the chickens.

I thought we were in good shape for the heat-loving crops, but in mid-December, summer seemingly ended. It got cool and rainy. There were some warm days, but they were few and far between. The tomatoes, eggplants and peppers languished. Powdery mildew cut down half my zucchini plants in February. I fought slugs, slaters and mould as tomatoes and peppers rotted before ripening. Beans rotted wherever they touched the ground. And aphids were rampant all year on all sorts of plants—the predators couldn’t keep up. 

All in all, it was a challenging summer.

We ate well (and still are), and the larder is full of food, but it was hard-won.

Things that did surprisingly well:

• The volunteer pumpkins—the pumpkins I actually planted were marginal and were nailed by powdery mildew. But the two volunteer pumpkins—out on their own with good air flow around them—did well. One of them, in particular, was the most spectacular plant I’ve ever seen—the plant itself was enormous, and it produced 17 pumpkins with a total weight of 41.6 kg!
• Rosella tomatoes—This black cherry tomato has been my favourite for flavour since I began planting it a few years ago. This year it proved itself as a tenacious variety, producing decently in both greenhouses and out in the garden, where most of the tomatoes languished.
• Sweet corn—The corn got a terrible start, with poor germination and uneven growth. In mid-January, I expected to get no corn harvest. But somehow, the plants shot up after that, evened out, tasselled, and produced a gorgeous crop of big ears. Every single plant has at least two nice ears on it, and some plants have managed three. I honestly have no idea how it happened, but I’ll take the win.
• Nutri-purple carrots—I’ve struggled for decades to grow nice, big purple carrots. This was my first try with the variety Nutri-purple, and they were fantastic. Long roots, healthy growth, and no aphids (the aphids were usually the downfall of other purple varieties I’ve tried).

Things that did poorly:

• Window Box Red tomatoes—usually these little plants produce bumper crops in the pots in front of the house, but every one of them expired quickly in the cold this year, without producing a single fruit.
• Fantastico tomatoes—This was a new cherry tomato variety for me this year, and I found the plants to be unmanageable (large sprawling plants that resisted any sort of pruning or training), slow to ripen, and not terribly tasty. At the moment, the fruits are finally ripening, but because it’s cool and wet, and the plants are sprawled on the ground, the slugs and slaters are getting most of them.

Of course, the gardening season never really ends here, and while we continue to eat the remaining summer crops, the winter crops are happily growing. I look forward to tallying up the full year’s production in a few months. Stay tuned for the final tally!