If this years experience is any indication, I am not the "gardner" I thought I was. Let me explain.
When we were on active duty in the Army and moved an average of every two years, gardening was not a high priority in my life, but there were times when I did plant various crops. But, some error on my part always made the effort less than satisfying...albeit I adapted. Like the time when we were living in Northern Virginia when I was assigned to the Pentagon on the Army Staff, and that being a four-year tour I had time year by year to try different crops in the backyard. One summer I wanted to plant green peppers...the "bell" type. But, I instead purchased the jalapeno variety, because I did not pay that much attention to the name on the plant's container when I bought a dozen or so. A "pepper was a pepper" was my comment at the time. They grew like crazy but when I saw they did not have the familiar "bell" shape, I realized my mistake. So, we adapted and produced many jars of hot pepper jelly that summer...but no home-grown bell peppers on our salads as desired.
Flash forward to late May 2011 when I bought cucumber plants...three small pots, each with nice sprouting plants waiting to be located into the newly tilled and mounded soil in our garden. Like the jalapeno peppers of long ago, they grew like crazy and I got lots of pretty yellow flowers which would surely turn into nice green, tender sweet tasting cucumbers. But it was not to to be. I got the flowers on long bright green, healthy looking vines, but the only cucumbers which resulted were a sickly light green to white color, and 80% were too bitter to eat. So yesterday I gave myself an "F" in raising cucumbers this year, and pulled three large mounds of long, tough to remove vines out of the ground, and then lifted the heavy mass into a wheel barrow, pulling a muscle in my lower back, which only added to my disappointment of having received a failing cucumber grade.
A grade of "B" or better for our tomatos this year would be good, but that grade is still undetermined. Meanwhile my sore back is slowly improving.
