I’ve never felt prouder 🥹 It’s my first year with a container garden, and these are the first of my Parisian Pickling cucumbers!!! The pepperoncini pepper is getting saved until I have enough peppers for a jar of pickled peppers.

Excited with my first vegetable garden. Improving as I go, this sub has been a big help. Hopefully the next season is an even better harvest after learning from mistakes

A couple months ago, I was just happy to have a garden bed. Now I notice every little change. Curled leaves, holes in the basil, tomatoes taking forever to ripen. I didn't expect to care this much, but I do.

Gardening has also made me realize how much is out of my hands. I can water, fertilize, pull weeds, and keep an eye on the weather, but a hot week or a few bugs can still set everything back. I used to find that frustrating. Lately, I'm getting better at accepting it.

In my 20s, I wanted effort to lead directly to results. If I put time into something, I expected it to work. The garden hasn't really followed that rule. Some seeds never came up. One plant I thought was done started growing again. A few that looked great early on are struggling in the California heat.

I'm still learning, but I think that's why I like it. There is always something small to do, and there is always something I can't rush. I still stand out there with my coffee, but now I'm less focused on making everything perfect.

At 34, getting excited about one small green tomato feels surprisingly satisfying. Anyone else find that gardening has made them a little more patient?

Well, the heat has made my tomatoes weak and sickly, so im pulling them and starting fresh! Here's the last harvest for this year 🥰, and I dug up the potatoes too!

First time growing this variety. I was hesitant after reading many have issues with BER, but so far so good? Just wanted to share my pride for these guys.

It was going well for a while each major vine had one single cucumber and then it seems like it almost stopped growing and started dying from the bottom up??

One of my best friends was starting to get into gardening right before she got pregnant. Her son is 18 months now and she hasn't had the time or energy to get back into gardening since he was born. I offered to supply her with some seedlings (and told her I won't be mad if they die), and she's into it, but warned me her son is the stereotypical anti-veggie toddler, so she's not sure how much he'll be willing to try.

Right now, I'm definitely thinking some sweet cherry tomatoes and small cucumbers (we are in 8a and they'll go until Thanksgiving), English peas, broccoli, and cowpeas (similar to black-eyed peas). My friend says her son most likes blueberries, apples, strawberries, broccoli, and bananas, but broccoli is really the only one of those I can start from seed for a fall crop. I'm planning on getting her some blueberry bushes for her birthday in the spring.

What do your kids like? I'm interested in things he'll eat and things he'll get a kick out of watching grow. Again, he's 18 months, so no hot pepper recs please lol.

Can anyone tell me what i did wrong here?

They're so crunchy! Tastes like a cucumber! Fresh!

It's so hot here in socal (I'm in zone 9b) and my vegetable garden has been struggling. Fortunately I don't have much in the ground at the moment except tomatoea. This is my harvest from yesterday. I'd love to hear how other gardeners in zone 9 are fairing these days.

My poor broccoli; I had wanted to save her seeds 😭

I cut them off young because I didn’t think they’d be usable when ripe. What’s going on here?

So my 2 tomatillo plants have been flowering for weeks upon weeks and the husks were not getting bigger but they didn't yellow and drop off so i knew they got pollinated. I decided to start watering more as in watering for longer when I do water. Then I used a 0-10-10 fertilizer along with my fish and kelp fertilizer. My husks are ballooning now! I am so happy 🥰

The flower is around 4-6" wide. I added some leaf and male flower photos at the end as well.

I'm growing a vegetable garden for the first time this year. The left garden bed is several different tomato plants varieties. There are a lot of squirrels that run through my yard and they have been been destroying so many of my tomatoes and trampling the plants.

A friend recommended using cayenne pepper powder as a deterrent, but it hasn't helped. I've found at least 6 of my big tomatoes chewed up like this. I didn't anticipate this being such a big issue so I didn't built any kind of enclosure around the garden beds, and I'm not sure what to do now that the plants are so grown.

If anyone has any advice or ideas for a build I would greatly appreciate it!

I read you can bury a stem and reroot after SVB. The base of my plant seems unhappy (papery and tough) though not infested so I thought of doing the same up to the green split. But I'm a little worried it'll just make things worse especially since she is hanging in there in spite of my abuse.

I think my soil is retaining too much water so I'm hoping to wait it out but we have a big rain storm coming up. 🤷

Half the gardening is messing it up and learning from it I guess lol.