In the past, I proudly posted photos showing my tiny greenhouse. I just went out to take some final shots, and things look so dismal, I’m embarrassed to show you. So, here … in brief … is a final report on my first growing season with a greenhouse.
To recap, low nighttime temps prevented me from planting anything or bringing in any started plants until Memorial Day Weekend. We’re letting things continue as long as we can, even though it’s getting cold again. I’m hoping that the few hangers-on will continue to grow at least a little.
Here’s what produced and what didn’t. Clearly, I have a lot to learn:
All 3 tomato plants did fine. We were never inundated with tomatoes, but we had a good amount. I would have preferred more.
Both pepper plants produced 5-6 medium peppers, but that’s it. The bell pepper plant became completely infested with aphids and began to struggle.
The basil did great, but it went downhill fast at the end of summer, so I have very little left to dry for winter.
The parsley finally came up (on the second try), but it never really matured. I’m going to try and keep it going inside over the winter.
The rosemary is doing great. I’m also hoping to over-winter it inside, but I don’t have much hope. It never does well in the house.
I have maybe a half-dozen cucumbers still growing. They are pretty small, but we have hope of one decent salad.
We ended up with a couple handfuls of pea pods and a few dinner’s worth of green beans, but that’s it.
The carrots grew, but are tiny, tiny, tiny. I’m going to pull them soon and make a microscopic salad or something.
The beets are still growing, but they too are very small (about the size of a small plum). I’ll also pull those soon and eat them.
The radishes all died. Don’t know why.
The arugula never got very big and went quickly to seed.
The lettuce pretty much never came up.
The rhubarb did great early on, then really struggled. I’m not sure it will come back. If it does, we’ll keep it in the greenhouse early, then drag the pot outside … maybe it’s too humid in there for it.
BUT, perhaps my biggest, most embarrassing failure?
Squash … I’m perhaps the ONLY person on the planet who cannot grow squash. The plants got big. They produced flowers, but only MALE flowers … no female flowers … ever. And, without female flowers you have no squash. No zucs, no pumpkins, no acorn squash … nothing.
So … if any of you are vegetable gardening experts, let me know if you can figure out what I did wrong. Thanks!
That’s probably it on the lettuces, etc. I wonder if spinach would have trouble too. I like to have lots of salads in the summer.
You know … I saw that book at Home Depot recently and thumbed through it. It definitely seemed like a good method for my tight space. Since mine is enclosed, I probably wouldn’t need the covers.
I’ll add it to my winter reading list, for sure.
I’m no gardening expert but I do have a small veggie garden at about the same elevation as you do. As for your lettuce and arugula, I’d bet that it was actually too warm for them in the greenhouse. They like cool weather. I grow those in 4′ square boxes using the “Square Foot Gardening” (name of a book) technique, and they do great even in our climate. Radishes do great in our climate (no greenhouse). Carrots have been slow growers for me but they’re about 3″ long this year.
You have to have covers on the boxes or critters (including birds) will eat everything (I used hardware cloth from McGuckins to make my box covers using directions from the book). I’d highly recommend the Square Foot Gardening book.