Afraid no, frustrated yes. Corn for one. Bush beans for another. But my cukes were insane! They're still growing!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure!

I'm not going to try and grow cucumbers anymore. This year I grew pickle cukes and while they had a good start, I never had enough fresh at the same time to make a batch of pickles! I think I'll try the farmer's market instead and use the space to plant more zucchini. I had very good luck with eightball zucchini this year and would like to add more round/small squash - most likely oneball and patty pan - and I would also like to try some bush beans.

Oh, I should probably mention that I grew these in hanging 5 gallon buckets to get them away from the resident woodchuck....

While I didn't have great luck with cucumbers, I did get maybe 20 out of 3 plants before the beetles got them - next year i'm going to "attempt" to grow some pickling ones, but we'll see.

Zucchini did well before the SCB got them, one day I picked 20+ pounds of zucchini all at once!

That being said, I will never ever try broccoli or any sort of cabbage again. The cabbage loopers around me are horrible, and at least for this year I won't have hoop covers to keep the stupid moths off of them.

I actually did have 3 broccoli heads mature, but my wife was so disgusted with the tiny green worms all over the place, that we just threw them out.

There are things I no longer try to grow due to local pest/disease conditions that have me spending way too much time trying to keep them healthy.

On the topic of cukes though, a good choice for pickling or fresh eating is County Fair. It's hard to find locally, but can be mail ordered from a few places. It is the only cuke with resistance to bacterial wilt caused by the cuke beetles. For me it is a reasonably good yielder and I have only ever lost 2 plants to wilt even though the cuke beetles are so numerous that they form thick swarms. It's the only cuke I grow any longer and I highly recomend it for those challenged by the cuke beetles.

I think every gardener finds things that are frustrating to grow. Mine are melons, spinach and carrots. I am going to try melons for a third time next year. I just want to succeed at it. The spinach & carrots I've given up on. I found that chard makes a great substitute for spinach.

It sounds like you had a lack of pollinators for your cucumbers. Try hand pollinating.

Also cucumbers and squashes don't like their roots to be disturbed. I suspect your squashes were too big when transplanted.

I had various pest problems with my zucchinis and cucumbers this year. I had cucumber beetles, squash vine borers and squash bugs! This is the first time in 8 years I've seen squash vine borers and squash bugs!

Try, try again. What works one year might not the next and vice versa.

This was only my second year with a vegetable garden, so I'm not going to give up on anything just yet, but until I get more space, I'm not going to grow broccoli again. It was a huge space hog, and by mid-July it hadn't even begun to form heads. The other thing I may not grow next year are onions. The first year, I tried growing from seed, and they didn't even form heads before the first hard freeze. This year, I planted sets, and a few got decent sized, but most were closer to golf ball sized, and required a lot of weeding, and they flopped all over the place. If they tasted much better than store bought, which they didn't, or were an expensive veggie, I would keep trying, but I think I will use that space for more peppers next year. Have you seen the cost of colored bells lately?!!!

Bonnie

I have such limited space that I'm afraid to try something that has been a dud for me in the past. And yet, I keep trying to grow spinach even though I've tried at least eight times and never succeeded.

I agree with booberry about every year being different. This year all my vines (pumpkins and winter squash) were a complete disaster. If it had been my first year growing them I probably would have figured I couldn't grow them.

I started one kind of my squashes too early this year. I planted them when the package said to, which I thought seemed to early but I trusted their advice. By the time I planted them outside they were stunted and a few plants barely grew and didn't produce anything all year.

Last year I had lots of really good spinach. This year I had nothing but problems. My first crop came up perfectly, but then we got lots of rain and it all died. So stupid me I decided to plant more right next to that bunch which the same thing happened to. My third planting I planted in a completely different area that stayed drier. Well it was too hot when I planted so not many came up and those that did didn't do to well.

I suggest that if something doesn't do well one year do some research (all vegetables like and don't like different things) and try again next year.

If you decide to grow cucumbers again you might be ok if you make sure the roots don't get distured. If when you pulled your radishes your plants started to die then that may have been the problem and you can remember that for next year.

For onions, make sure you get the correct variety for your area (ie: short day or long day) I finally got that one right this year!
Also it is a good idea to look into companion planting. Some things just don't like to grow close to other things and if you keep planting them together they will never do well (learned that one the hard way!)
What's that old saying? ... If at first you don't succeed, try try again. and then when all else fails, pile a bunch of chicken manure on it!

had I not had such a good year for pumpkins last year, I would maybe have given up with the result I had this year. Also, last year cukes were so many and this year hardly any. I agree, some years good, other years not so good.
I would say, unless you have had miserable failures with a particular vegetable AND you've tried a few different varieties, then maybe the space would be better used for something else. Otherwise, if I really want something to grow, that WILL grow in my zone, I won't give up.
Here's last years pumpkins.
{{gwi:22346}}
And this years.
{{gwi:117673}}

I won't do onions again, just because of how much space they take and they're still in the ground. I really had trouble w/ all of my vines, zukes/cukes/pickling cukes/water melon/2 kinds of pumpkin I got about 2 cukes and 2 picklin cukes out of the garden. A fwe more cukes got left too long or picked too soon. I had 3 pumpkins last for about 2 months but they just turned to rot. I'm not giving up, but am going to try SFG and trellising them next year.

In answer to the original post - no, I don't usually let a single failure discourage me. I tend to push the envelope anyway, so I am accustomed to a certain level of failure each year. I might try several different techniques, and quite a few varieties over several years, before I decide that a particular vegetable is not worth the time & space devoted to it. Failure itself is not always a bad thing, if it teaches you lessons that can be applied next year.

Sometimes, persistence pays off...

Eggplant, okra, and lima beans are difficult in my location - they prefer summers with more heat. After a lot of failures, I found two eggplant varieties ("Casper" and "Diamond") that were early, disease-resistant & reliable. Same goes for okra; after years of failures, I finally found one variety ("Pentagreen") that will tolerate my cooler Northern weather. Lima beans are iffy here... but if small-seeded pole varieties are started as transplants, they will usually succeed - sometimes overwhelmingly.

Squash is also difficult here, due to insect problems. Left to fend for themselves, SVB, squash bugs, and cucumber beetles would kill most of them. Had a lot of bad years, sometimes with 100% loss of some varieties. But when I began covering the young plants with floating row cover until they outgrew it, I was able to cut the losses to 1-2 plants per year. And replacing the problem-prone zucchini with Tromboncino (which is SVB resistant) gave me almost trouble-free summer squash.

Cucumber beetles & bacterial wilt make cucumbers difficult for me. Too many years of pickle farming nearby. But I finally found a variety which is resistant (not immune) to wilt. Again, I only lose a plant or two each year.

But there are failures too great to overcome...

I experiment with a lot of heirloom vegetables, many of them from the tropics. Some of these are photo-period (day length) sensitive, and will not bloom or form tubers until the days approach 12 hours in length - which is mid-September, two weeks before my average frost date. Yacon, winged beans, rice beans, hyacinth beans, some yardlongs, water spinach (for seed), chayote squash, and Malabar squash all fall in that category. Short of growing them in a heated greenhouse, they will never succeed here. It was fun & educational trying, though.

Like Justaguy, there are veggies I choose not to grow, because they are too problematic for my area...

Potatoes don't like my high-pH soil, and attract Colorado potato beetles to the garden. I could cover the potatoes with row cover, but then the beetles would just attack my eggplant instead... so I gave up on them.

Just as potatoes are a magnet for CBP, cantaloupes are a magnet for striped cucumber beetles. I always have them anyway... but when I grew melons, the population skyrocketed. Had to give them up, which was hard, because nothing is sweeter than a fresh-picked melon.

Cole crops don't like Midwest summers. Most of them (like cauliflower & broccoli) will often bolt in the heat. Then there are the cabbage loopers, which require spraying with Bt every 10 days or so, to keep them worm-free. More hassle than I am willing to deal with... although I may yet try growing them under cover. Some local Hmong gardeners seem to be having good luck with cabbages, so I guess I still have something to learn in that area. ;-)

But as gardeners, there will always be both successes & failures... often in the same year. Because of an unusually cool Summer this year, my cowpeas did poorly. But my runner beans (which like cool weather) prospered, and had their best year ever. In rainy years, or dry years, or hot years, some things will do well, while others do poorly. It all goes with the territory. Every year brings its own challenges.

My heart goes out to those who lose everything due to severe weather. Sometimes, all of the planning & care in the world just isn't enough. When that happens, know that you have friends here.

There is a prayer that I will paraphrase: grant me the strength to change what I can, the grace to accept what I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. Gardening is a lot like that. We just need to analyze the failures, and decide when something difficult is worth trying again - and when to give up on it. There's plenty of help here on GW.

Same here as zeedman...I have had rotten luck the last few years with peppers and was going to throw in the hat but at the last minute couldn't resist...guess what...bumper crop...they have never been better. I think that is really part of the fun, it's always different.

Yes, I have been afraid, very afraid to plant jalapeno peppers again. Our next door neighbor, Juan, is macho. Not an act, he really is! I grew jalapenos, which are very prolific, and offered him some. He was thrilled! Yes, he wanted some fresh, home-grown jalapenos. We personally hadn't sampled any of them yet, but they sure looked good. Later in the week his wife told me, very confidentially, that Juan took one bite of our jalapeno and nearly screamed. Tears coursed down his cheeks and he ate a half-loaf of bread to take the burn away. And this is a man raised on the little greenies! For some reason our peppers were really, really hot. I won't grow them again because I could lose a good neighbor.

I feel your pain. I absolutely adore fresh broccoli. Ain't happenin' - at least not in my garden. No matter where in the yard we've planted them, they will NOT grow. Even the cabbage loopers got disgusted and left them alone! And cantaloupes are just as bad. The biggest one we've ever gotten was about the size of a softball and mealy and tasteless. These were "Hale Jumbo", so I don't think it was the variety's fault. We are going to try one more time, but if we don't get something better off the vine next year, they won't get planted again either. Then there is the stunted corn, the cukes that were almost non-existant... But don't give up after just one or two years; last year we grew zucchini and got maybe 2 squash; this year we tried again and now we have several bags in the freezer. And that in spite of the invasion of the Squash Bugs (looked like something out of a nightmare!) As far as zucchini is concerned, I think you are better off planting seeds rather than trying to transplant started plantes. At least, that's been our experience.

Good luck to you!

Not me. I believe in try and try again till you win the race.

ediej1209 sounds like you may be starting your plants too early that could cause stunting. It doesn't sound like your location is the problem.
This year I had alot of left over plants. I let them sit around for a while and then decided to plant them in large pots. Well they didn't do much of anything for months and didn't produce anything.

I won't grow Beans!! Bush or Pole....at least not in the Spring. For the last 3 years I haven't got a single bean and I just cannot figure it out. Each year seeds are planted in a differet place in the garden, but the same results. Good plant growth but no beans.
Only problem with growing them in the Fall is that I have other Fall crops to grow and there is not enough room for the beans.

Two things I won't grow again out of fear. Big dinner plate dahlias and squash. The first time I grew the dinner plate size dahlias I lived a a place where Japanese beetles were a plague. As soon as the blooms began to open they became a seething mass of beetles. I was horrified and the thought prevents me from growing them again. Although I've moved and the dahlia growing may be a problem primarily in my mind, growing squash is still a fear of mine no matter where I'm located. Squash bugs creep me out to no end. Especially the little nymphs. It reminds me of something out of a bad horror movie. Pretty much all other vegetables and flowers are ok by me. I do get frustrated but not fearful.

This is an interesting thread. Thanks for bringing it up.
Cindy

I haven't had much luck with peppers. This year the plants were huge and tons of flowers (still), but everything happened so late I've just picked a few very small ones. I'll leave them in til we get a frost. But I'm not very optimistic. Same with the eggplant.
Zuccini has just withered after flowering for the last couple of years. Same with crook neck.
My cukes gave me just enough this year. I got a couple that cross pollinated with some lemon cukes nearby! They were yellow and very tasty! Nancy

ninjabut, if you're interested in trying eggplant again I can heartily recommend a variety called "Casper". I'm growing it for the first time this year, as a transplant from the nursery, and it's covered in developing fruit about 6 weeks after I got it into the ground (with more flower buds waiting to open). There's one fruit nearly big enough to harvest, I'm just giving it a few more days for best size.

Compared to last year's eggplant (some generic purple variety), which took MONTHS to even flower and then more months to set fruit, this plant has really impressed me! Even if it runs out of steam after this first lot of fruits, it will have done way better already than last year's attempt. I don't usually see eggplants listed by early or late maturing varieties, but this one definitely seems to be an early-maturer, and worth trying if you keep losing your eggplants to the frosts before you get fruit off them.

{{gwi:117674}}

The best spinach I've had are those that overwinter in the ground. You can sprout them in the fall and let the young plants be covered with only snow cover. They are amazingly hardy (I am in zone 3) and will start to grow in the spring as soon as the weather is right. They may drop the old leaves, but the the new leaves will grow quickly. My snow often sticks around until mid-April or later, and I have huge delicious spinach by the end of May. I don't bother trying to grow it in the summer because of the heat, but fall seeding for the next year is the way to go for me. If you can rig up a plastic cold frame with lathe or hoops in the spring to give it a heat boost while the ground is still extra cold, so much the better.

The thing I'm most obsessed with growing,tomatoes, has been the toughest thing for me to grow. I keep trying though and have begun to have success. I have made some concessions. I find I probably won't get much yield, if at all, if I try to grow the big, late season varieties. I tried Stupice, black cherry, Rutgers, and Eva Purple Ball for this Fall and I have had pretty good results--especially with the Black Cherries and Stupice. Some crops are just harder in some areas and require precision and care.

Next Spring, I'm going to put down black plastic in raised beds in order to heat the soil and get my tomatoes going strong early so they have an opportunity to set a lot of fruit before it gets too hot here in Texas. Spring beans have also been a challenge because of the heat. I also have a tough time with Spinach, but Mustards and Kale grow like weeds. I have great squash for about two weeks and then the bugs demolish the plants. I'm hoping to get some tromboncino seeds for next year.

My big hit last year was cucumbers. I had a couple plants that must have put out 100 cucumbers! The bees were an army. I was picking a plastic grocery bag of cucumbers every other day for a three or four week period and my mother-in-law made a bunch of bread and butter pickles.

So I haven't been afraid to try again necessarily, I just may have not wanted to go through the trouble or have found a worthy substitute. I won't give up on the tomatoes though.

Pete

More like annoyed, rather than afraid. I'm just not a good vining crop grower. Cucumbers, squash and melons have just not generally worked for me.
That being said, at some point, I'll always try again!

This is a great post! I got a lot of good ideas for next year.

As for me, the hubby and I moved to this house earlier this year, so the veggie seeds and plants were tossed into empty flower beds and sort of left on their own. While the harvest was poor, we learned a lot for next year.

We know now that the soil is beyond bad, so we are doing SFG gardening with the recommended soil mixes. We can garden on one side of the deck (after soil amendments) but not the other side. The other side just did not get enough sunlight, even in the middle of summer. We will probably put ferns along the deck on that side instead.

We also have to dog proof the garden better. They didn't dig, but they sure liked the canopy from the runner beans and made a nest there when it was hot out. I'd probably would have had double the runner beans if they had gotten half ripped out during a play session.

But between settling the house and my new job, it was a worthwhile experiment.

As for the original question, zucchini was always problematic in the Midwest. Here in the south, I not only had the SVB, but some sort of a mold as well. I'll probably give it another year or so and I might go with something more adaptable to our yard and hot, humid days.

My eggplant the first year got nice and big. Since then they are small and not worth trying again.

My onions were small this year. I bought them at the local ACE Hardware so I assume they were the right type for our area.

My cukes did not produce much this year. But I'll still try them again next year, they are a staple food for us.

My tomatoes were awful this year. All 12 plants did not produce as the previous years.

My snap peas crapped out after only a few weeks and turned brown. I found out my soaker hoses were not working on that bed.

I had two huge pumpkin patches this year, first time to try them. I got 9 tiny pumpkins the size of soft balls. What a waste of space.

My sugar baby watermelons stayed small like a soft ball. I never picked them. What a waste, I was waiting for them to get big like the ones we see in the store. That was also a first for me, I had never grown them before.

Brocolli. I'm sick of seeing worms on my plate. I dont know if I'm growing them next year. 2 years in a row with worms. I sprayed sevin.

The zukes and pumpkins had white squash bugs. I bet they went into the ground and will reappear in spring. I will try zukes again, I am not sure about pumpkins.

My beets stayed small and only were ready about September or October to harvest. First time I had to wait so long for tiny ones. Mine are usually big and start to be ready for harvest in July.

Dont know what happened here except the master gardener down at the county feed store sold me fertilizer and lime stone. He said my soil needed it, according to the soil test I sent into the university.

Next spring I am not adding anything. My garden was a huge disappoinment this year. I went all summer with nearly zero tomatoes.........that was the worse! And they tasted awful.....

YES I was afraid to try tomatoes again here in the PNW after this disasterous season. Got over the fear in about 5 minutes and ordered seed for next year. Fear is a terrible thing as it keeps you from moving forward. I feel that I lost 5 minutes of my life but then again I wasn't doing anything important except for overcoming fear..
Jim

I've had my share of failures but, in most cases, I follow the sports fans' philosophy of "wait'll next year!".

I have permanently lost interest in trying to grow artichokes here though.

Jim

Hey Zeedman- I had great luck growing Yacon in tires. I was told there was no way I would get flowers, but I did, they look like little sunflowers all over the plant. Actually quite pretty.

I only got one eggplant (off of 4 plants) this year. Last year I couldn't give them away fast enough!!

laughaha
We grow Yacon in 4 large pots and always have a nice crop even when nothing else here in the PNW does well do to weather.
Jim

For those of you having troubles with cukes and squash, you might want to inter-plant with nasturtiums next time, try it!

My garden in 9b is just going to be one year old, or should I rather say, I will be celebrating one year of being the garden's loving custodian....so I have lots of troubles.

In march/April I had a jungle of brassicas (both rapas and oleraceas). I had this green explosion and almost ran out of room in the freezer. Turnips, kales, collards, bok choi, beet greens, you name it. When it got warmer the harlequin beetles attacked them and they all died, after I had hopes for their perennialization (a word?). The Harlequin proceeded to suck the jalapenos and the tomatoes, ruining several tomato plants too. I was (am) so afraid to put brassicas on the ground again, until I realized I need to give them sacrificial crops. This started to work to some extent last year, and my fear was that sunflowers would not sprout at this time of the year. Guess what? they did! I now have sunflowers growing and I just planted some kale and mustards near them. Not sure if nasturtiums will do the trick for brassicas but I put them in too. We also got some brussel sprouts trying to germinate in a protected environment (terrarium), I think I will use the plastic cylinders from soft drink bottles that grandad from Louisiana is showing on the cole crops thread. So glad I overcame my fear of trying brassicas again. I still have to successfully grow cauliflowers and broccoli though. We will see how the brussel sprouts do and think about it, my cauliflowers never flowered last year, but the leaves were good....LOL

In the mean time, the amaranth is still producing as many greens as I need. They are tougher leaves now that the plants are seeding, so I just cook them longer and they are still acceptable. Whatever tries to attack them gets in turn eaten by a large collection of lady bugs that seem to hang out near them a lot. I am encouraging more lady bugs by planting more and more cilantro. When they reach their end I will still have several dozen pounds of frozen green in the freezer from the spring. After that I hope the cole crops will be ready to harvest, and the harlequins somewhat controlled. So I hope anyways. I was so furious when i found out they are an introduced species! grrrr.....and no predators either, not even chickens will eat them.

Anybody knows of other sacrificial crops to deter bugs from cole crops? I will need something after the sunflowers run their course, but I suppose since now I know they will grow at any time, I can keep planting more and more sunflowers. A very handsome looking sacrificial crop at that.....