Peaceable Man Files #58: Lessons From a So-So Growing Season

Rachael cleaning the last of the Sungold cherry tomatoes

I was out in the garden yesterday afternoon clearing out the remains of this season’s crop of vegetables.

It wasn’t much of a garden this year. Aside from the string beans and the Sungold cherry tomatoes, both of which were plenteous (and delicious), we got very little else for the investment of time and money we put into the garden.

The weather didn’t help. The early part of the season was excessively rainy, and then the heavenly spigots turned off in July. It didn’t help that I was traveling a fair bit over the past month during the drought and so didn’t do the watering that was needed.

To be honest, though, I’m not sure that daily watering would have made much of a difference with our little garden. We live in a townhouse with limited space and sunlight, and I haven’t yet figured out how best to use the space we have to maximize the yield of desired veggies for our table.

Back in May, after enhancing our 12-by-8-foot garden plot with mushroom soil and fertilizer, I put in five tomato and two pepper plants bought from a local nursery. Along with these, I planted from seed a couple rows of string beans and summer squash.

At first, things looked great. The tomato plants shot up as if headed for a bumper year. I rubbed my hands in anticipatory glee, certain that this year we would get a surplus of tomatoes for the table with enough left over to freeze.    

But then suddenly the tomato plants hit a wall. Whether because of all the rain or not enough nutrients, the leaves started to yellow at the bottom. Instead of turning lush and thick the way that healthy tomato plants should, the stems stayed piteously thin and scraggly.  

The pepper plants also initially greened up nicely and then mysteriously stopped growing. Thinking the problem was in the soil, I applied more fertilizer, but it didn’t help. The potted plants languished. Of the seven plants bought from the nursery, the only one that did well was the Sungold tomato, which grew tall and produced bunches of delicious golden cherry tomatoes throughout the summer for our salads.

Meanwhile, the string beans that I planted from Burpee seed packets did great. Both the yellow and green beans produced a bumper crop this season. I ate more string beans this year than I have for years.

On the other hand, the summer squash that I planted from seed didn’t do so well. We got one decent-sized squash for each of the plants before they died off. Rather pitiful.

Yesterday, I pulled out all the dried-up plants except for one pepper, which, strangely, is staging a late-season comeback. After doing nothing for three months, the plant is suddenly greening up and blossoming. It looks like we will be getting peppers in September.

A late-blooming pepper plant

As the disappointing growing season draws to a close, I find myself wondering what happened so that I can know what changes to make next year. Was the problem with the soil? When I was growing up, my father always got the soil in his garden tested so he knew how much lime and fertilizer was needed.

I never do that. It doesn’t seem worth it as our garden is so darn small. Besides, if the problem was with the soil, why did the string beans do so well but the tomatoes and peppers didn’t?

More likely the issue is that our garden, located at the back of the house, doesn’t get enough sun to keep those sun-loving tomatoes and pepper plants happy. If that’s the case, I need to think about planting next year’s garden with vegetables that thrive in part shade.

The good news is that I have eight months to ponder all this before it’s time to plant next year’s garden. This is the beauty of life’s seasons. If we’re blessed with good health and a long life, we can replay the seasons over and over and bring our learned experience to them.

The main thing, though, is to enjoy the ride and not beat ourselves up for the mistakes we’ve made in the past. Each new season requires that we let go of hurts and disappointments of the past while learning from them.

It’s also important to be thankful for what the past seasons gave us even if they didn’t measure up to expectations. There’s always something to be grateful for, if only we look for it.

And so I say goodbye to the growing season of 2025. Thank you, beans and cherry tomatoes, for the delightful fruit you gave us for our table. To the late-blooming pepper plant: Go for it. We’d love to have some of those sweet peppers next month.

And to all the disappointing plants: Thank you as well for the lessons you taught me and for the reminders that as long as we’re alive, we’re always learning. It’s one of the things that makes life worth living.