Just harvested our purple sweet potatoes. Second year growing them. 3 slips were transplanted early May. The yield this year is 14lb. All of them seem full size - not small ones like I harvested last year. We only got 2 lbs last year from the same bag. Seems like a joy harvesting tubers, you never know what you will find until you turn over the bag and start pulling things out.

Bucket grown carrots - one was absolutely humongous for some reason!

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.

First time growing corn since I was 10(17 years ago)lol. Unfortunately the spot I was allotted for gardening only gets around 3-4 hours of direct sunlight so I expected the cobbs to be small. The 2 larger ones were grown in a pot with full day of sun but obviously it had pollination issues. Also had to harvest a little earlier than I wanted because the stalks were getting filled with ants harvesting aphids. Still proud of my lil harvest, already ate one of the cobbs and it was very delicious. Will try again with a dwarf variety to see if I can get better results:)

I think these two are the tigger melon. They are fuzzy right now. There is also the banana melon.

I planted them in Mid August assuming we would have a hot Fall. Which to be fair we have but my timing did not quite work out.

I gave up on the plants late sep when I saw nothing but of course while none of my hand pollinated buds have fruited melon I have a few surprise ones. Would love at least one melon for my work.

Worth watering and seeing how it goes or just fill the garden now?

Northern Missouri Southern Iowa 5b. Current temps are days on the high 70s nights in the low 60s but of course daylight hours are declining.

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!

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)?

Beginner gardener with a very specific pepper question here! I grew peppers for the first time this past year and the family loved it - my Hungarian wax were the favorite because I was able to pickle them! We used to live in China (I am not Chinese) and I tend to like to cook a lot of Chinese food at home. While we never lived in the Sichuan province, far from it actually, my family does certainly enjoy Szechuan food. I get dried red peppers, whole or sometimes crushed, from the Asian supermarket in my town and I’d love to try and grow èr jīngtiáo or something similar so I can make my own. I asked the supermarket folks and they said they cannot get seeds from China. I’ve also only ever grown peppers from pepper plant starts from my local nursery.

Anyone of you fabulous experts here have any good resources for finding reputable seeds or even nurseries with these kinds of peppers? I am in the northeast US, Zone 6b. Picture is of a previous harvest for fun. TYIA!

Hello!

My question is basically the title, how do I get the most out of my pea plants/how to plant them so I can use my space efficiently. I have a decently large backyard… well, for Alberta. However, most of it is covered in rocks. Rocks people out there on purpose. Rocks that have been poured on top of some of the thickest weed-suppressant matting I’ve ever seen. Over the rocks is a layer of grass that has grown up around the rocks and through the weed-suppressant matting because I don’t know if everyone knows this, but weed-suppressant matting doesn’t work.

I degress…. For this reason, I only have so many beds set up for growing and I’m only allowed to dedicate so much of the yard to growing food because I have kids and I guess they should have play areas too or whatever (jk y’all). My backyard is essentially SW-facing. The beds are narrow metal ones with the shorter width facing SW. I don’t know how else to say that. The face out length-wise? Rather than width-wise? Guys I haven’t slept a full 8 hours in 1.5 years. Please bare with me… bear? 🐻 something.

Because of the position of the beds, I noticed that if I planted tall, vining plants along the middle, the plants on the west side of the bed don’t get enough sun, or get far less sun. now, we eat a LOT of peas during the summer. It’s like the only veg my son and daughter will eat raw.

What strategies do you all use to grow the most peas? How would you try to maximize pea growing if you had my overgrown-a*s yard?

Ps. Im sorry for the poor photo. It’s cold and snowing and I refuse to go outside. Also I have a large wooden U-shaped bed to the right of these, but I wanted to use them for corn.

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.

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 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.

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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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 .

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

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.

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