This Year's Garden - Here's what I've learned

First and foremost I've learned gardening is not something that is just "in the blood." If that was the case, I would be swimming in homegrown produce by now. My paternal grandparents and my father were avid gardeners, with bountiful harvests each year. I remember picking sugar snap peas with my dad in late summer, loving the smell of fresh dill in my grandpa's garden, eating jar upon jar of my grandmother's sweet pickles, made from cucumbers they grew. My grandma grew beautiful flowers, surrounding her house. This year I have managed to:

1. Grow 1 carrot from seed. I'm not necessarily blaming myself, though, the rabbits ate most of them.

2. I've gotten 7 ripe tomatoes from my 5 plants so far. I may get more, but they are not wonderful tomatoes. And, apparently, rabbits will eat tomato plants, too. I planted 9 plants, and two were eaten. And they were very obviously eaten.

3. Grow 2 radishes from seed. I think I needed to thin them out more.

4. I have tons of jalopenos. The two plants I planted are going nuts.

5. My basil and parsley are doing great, too. I'm going to have to freeze some before they die off.

6. I grew some huge poppies from seed. And one sunflower. The rabbits ate the rest.

7. I killed a knock-out rose bush. I'm not sure how it happened, either - one day it was blooming furiously and the next day it was brown and dry. Crazy.

8. Strangled my hostas. I really should weed over there.

9. I grew a huge pumpkin patch, by mistake. I threw my pumpkin innards in the back bed last fall, and ended up with pumpkin vines growing into the lawn. I let them go, thinking I would end up with a bunch of pumpkins. Apparently I need to read up on growing pumpkins - they ripened really fast, and I ended up with 5 small nice pumpkins and 7 rotton ones I had to scrape out of my garden. I thought they wouldn't ripen until October - I was wrong.

10. I have a lot more to learn about gardening, but I am enjoying the lessons.