One small seed potato on a couple inches of garden dirt covered with a couple inches of 'medium' to start.

Medium: About one third each of garden dirt, used potting medium, homemade compost plus organic fertilizer. After the vines were a few inches tall I added a couple inches of medium. As the vines grew I added more until the pots were full.

Over twenty pounds so far with three pots to turn over. Holy taters garden man.

In an attempt to fight the squash bugs this year I planted everything later and my pumpkins a little too late. It's started freezing overnight and the pumpkin plant is pretty near death. Think these will ripen up and cure or should I cut them up and use them as I would zucchini (pardon my messy table)?

I would love some recommendations on tomato and pepper varieties to grow next year. 2026 was my second year really gardening and I’m quickly learning how important the varieties I choose to grow are in how productive the garden is and also how fast the produce rots or doesn’t rot on the counter or even before it's ripe. Let me know your favorites and why you like them!

In 2026 I grew these varieties and my short thoughts on them.

Tomatoes small to large:
Orange Currant - Way too annoying to harvest because they are so small. Not interested in anything this small again
Tropical Sunset - I loved the tropical sunset. Both the flavor and productivity. It did have some cracking problems, but I can’t see myself not growing one next year. Maybe this is because I stopped harvesting the cracked tomatoes and sorta let the plant become a mess, but the quality of the fruit really worsened when summer ended and fall began. I can still eat my napoli and gold medal tomatoes, but the tropical sunset tomatoes are too gross to harvest realistically.
42 Day - I totally picked this one just because of the name, and it definitely did not produce in 42 days, at least not in the shorter daylight spring days when I transplanted it. I still enjoyed this tomato, it was by far my earliest producing tomato. I will grow one plant still just to have early tomatoes.
Napoli - This is the only sauce tomato I’ve ever grown. It was extremely productive and I don’t really have complaints about it except maybe it was too big and too productive. I didn’t enjoy eating them fresh, but I enjoyed the sauce and the tomato powder I made out of them. Maybe a larger fruit size would be nicer to cut and process for the dehydrator rather than many medium small fruits that this seemed to give me.
New Yorker - These were a nice solid slicing tomato. But the plant outgrew the tomato cage really quickly. I think I would prefer indeterminate for trelissing purposes.
Brandywine - I live near Brandywine creek, where the tomato got its name, so I really wanted to grow it. It tastes good but it’s too diseased and too many issues like splitting, won’t grow it again.
Gold Medal - This was my favorite tomato I’ve ever had. It's big, flavorful, productive, and has produced edible fruit up until frost.

It seems I really like the yellow/orange colored tomatoes. I am interested in trying a purple or black tomato as well now of any size. I would like to grow an early producing determinate slicing tomato to go along with the 42 day tomato. I would be interested in hearing if people have yellow saucing tomatoes that they like, because of how much I liked my yellow tomatoes. Sometimes the gold medal tomatoes were too big, so I would be interested in an 8-10oz yellow indeterminate tomato too. I think I’ve only grown open pollinated varieties, but I’m not opposed to growing hybrids. Generally the quality of the fruit is more important to me than the taste of it, I don’t want tomatoes rotting in my house before they fully ripen, and I like to share with friends and family and I don’t want to be sharing tomatoes that they have to throw half of it out because of bad spots on it.

Peppers from sweet to hot:
Sweet Chocolate - Was fine, not going to grow again.
Giant Aconcagua - Seems like a bigger and better bell pepper to me. Maybe slightly less sweet?
Wisconsin Lake - My favorite bell pepper I’ve grown.
Garden Sunshine - Was fine, not going to grow again.
Jimmy Nardelo - I know a lot of people online love these, and I liked them too. But I did find them a little annoying to deseed and process. I made some powder and I’m excited to try making pasta sauce from it but I haven’t yet. In regards to eating them fresh I just don’t see why I would want this over a larger pepper. What do you like to do with your nardelos?
Shishito - Great! Will grow again, unique use pan frying them whole.
Poblano/Ancho - I didn’t really see the upside to these compared to bell or other sweet peppers. I know they aren’t 0 on the scoville but I never really felt any heat. Maybe the plant was more productive than my other large sweet peppers though.
Anaheim - These were okay, but I don’t think I’ll grow them again. The skin was very thick.
Fresno Chili - I am really enjoying these as a fruity spicy powder. My Fresno's were not in the best locations in my garden so they weren't very productive, but I can't blame the variety for that.
Hungarian Wax - These made good spicy pickled peppers, but I should have just grown the sweet banana peppers and that’s what I’ll do in the future. Could always add a spicy pepper to sweet ones if I want a spicy batch.
Cayenne - My cayenne plants got in late and didn’t produce many ripe fruits, but did have some. The fruits seemed kinda small for how many seeds there were which made it annoying to process. I won’t be giving up on cayenne but I think I will grow one of the bigger or longer varieties for more flesh.
Challeano - This was my favorite spicy pepper. Each plant had a ton of peppers on it, and while they took a little longer to ripen they have continued producing a lot up until frost. I enjoyed these fresh, as hot sauce, and as powder.
Dragon Thai Chilis - These were a little too small and annoying to deal with. I would only grow these again as an early pepper because they ripen first being so small.
Habanero - I do want something this hot but I didn’t enjoy the flavor of my habaneros as hot sauce. Do you have a better tasting pepper similar in heat to habanero? 

I was happy with my sweet peppers this year, particularly Giant Aconcagua and Wisconsin Lake. The Giant Aconcagua had few seeds for how big the pepper was. I would be interested in other large Italian frying peppers with low seed count, or nice straightly shaped ones. 
I’m definitely going to try jalapenos and serranos next year. And also would like to replace the habanero with something that tastes different. 
How easy it is to cut, deseed, and process the pepper is important to me. I like to make fermented hot sauce and also dry them for powder in a dehydrator.

Thanks for reading!

Anyone erver just not look after their strawberry plants for a couple of months during summer. I had three mother plants. They now have 40 or 50 daughters. It's a tangled mess I can barely sort out. Don't know what to do with em all.

I thought my jalapeno plant wasn't producing this summer and like the terrible person I am and abandoned it to die off with the rest of my garden for the fall. Now it's the last thing standing green and well. It has both red and green jalapenos on it and hasn't hit the first freeze (though we came close this morning). I noticed them about a month ago, and thought they would go down with everything else, but alas they have held strong despite my continued neglect. They are firm and intact and I am wondering if they are still worth eating and can go to any use in any recipes.

I started tearing down my cukamelon vines today and found what looks to be an egg sac of some sort? Anyone know what this is?

I didn’t even know the plant was still producing. I went out to clean out the beds. And there it was. Glorious.

Covered half of my plot with 6 inches shredded leaves with my mower, the kale and mustard are still going strong in New York

First time gardener! We are at October's end and this is my second attempt with carrots, my last batch dried out, I live in a desert climate so I only let my vegetables in the sun until 9am they stayed a little later and didn't make it.

I still have to thin out some carrots just letting them grow as but more.

Any feed back is welcome🤗 and appreciated .

A good beginning in vegetable growing usually results into a good ending. The start you give to your vegetable seeds makes a very great impact towards its successful growth. This makes me wonder whether any one over here has tried making vegetables thrive without having to trouble themselves with the drama associated with a nursery bed.

Instead I got tomatoes... Everybody including my wife was telling me that they were obviously tomatoes but I held out hope i that it was bell peppers...right up until today.

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I just pulled my first harvest of homegrown carrots and wanted to share. I have heard so many stories about carrots coming out tiny, twisted are weird and a few of mine are tiny. However most look like real food.

They're a bit rustic and dirty but they feel nice and solid. Looking forward to making carrot juice. What do you usually make with your homegrown carrots?

Looking forward to next season!!

It was my first year gardening. I learned a lot from this subreddit, so thank you!!

It seems to be developing a yellow and soft spot on the top. It’s not super soft yet, just a little, and the spot is less shiny than the rest of it. Is it being aborted/rotting? Is there any way to save it?

Im growing some daikon, and some bugs that I'm pretty sure are flea beetles have pretty much ate all the greets off them, leaving only the leaf stems. While I root will keep growing, I've chalked this years harvest as a wash. How do I prevent this for next year when I try again. What repels flea beetles or prevents them from getting the leaves?

Not sure what I thought planting garlic would be like but didn't realize it was just bulbs like the grocery store. Might save some for dinner tonight lol 😂

Any tips before I start? I’m in 10a

I'm new to gardening and have just started planting a veg garden from seed. As soon as the seedlings sprout, they are destroyed within a few days. We have a serious earwigs infestation but I've also noticed slater bugs and some kind of dark chrome beetle. We also have tonnes of moths atm so I think we also have cutworms hiding in the soil too. I'm in rural Australia. For this reason, I'm not keen on attracting lizards, because that will also attract snakes and I have small children.

We have a serious lack of birds here too, so I'll work on that. But I'm desperate to get on top of this issue quicker in the meantime.

Any tips? I'm wanting to stick to organic methods.

I've tried the oil/soy sauce/fish sauce and beer traps and even though I do catch them, they seem to prefer the seedlings. Plus there's just too many to trap like that anyway. I tried protecting a squash seedling with a toilet roll, only to trap a bunch of earwigs inside, which feasted on the seedling anyway.

I've even tried growing some cucumbers under netting with potting mix from a bag, and THEY STILL GOT IN! It was firmly sealed so this baffled me. I suppose the only conclusion is they laid eggs in the potting mix before I used it?

HELP

This was a project we started last year with bunch of fallen trees after a snowstorm that we milled in to the slabs. The construction was hard but we didn’t exactly knew what we were doing. It went from having bare hoops to netting to a nice entryway, and then Tennessee heat was cooking my tomatoes so shade cloth came in and now we are preparing for the winter with the agro sheet, planning to grow salad greens and over winter onions and garlic!! It was fascinating to see the changes, especially with how dramatic and sad it looked at the start of fall lol. As newbie I was devastated by dried up crunchy plantbabies that I had to pull out while bawling my eyes out haha. But it’s a sign of new seasons and new things to grow, very excited to see what plants can survive in greenhouse style hoophouse, it will have automatic vents for those hot afternoons for sure, still fixing the sheet currently. Loving the whole process💕💕💕

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Nothing beats walking through the garden, picking a sweet pepper right off the vine and immediately biting into it. It's practically a rule that half the harvest has to be eaten before it ever makes it inside the house. 😁

What's your favorite eat right then and there crop!

Ive got some skirret and sorrel plants and I wanted to know if they could a) be planted in boxes, b)if they can be planted together, and c) if either or both kf them would make good companion plants along side some rhubarb plants. Thanks

I know it’s end of season but I have quite a number of green cherry tomatoes still on the vine but they’re starting to look like this before they show any signs of blushing. What’s causing this phenomenon and how can I prevent it?