Garden Dissapointments

It's the end of June and by now I expect everything to be fruitful or well under way.  But as all gardeners know somethings just never go as planned.  On the last day of June here are some of my garden's under achievements.

We will start with the morning glories.  When we decided to put up the decorative lattice fencing around  the beehive to guide their flight I thought it would be cute to grow morning glories that would climb up the fence.  It would be cottage chic and additionally attract beneficial insects.  However 6 weeks of growth has given me this.  They sprouted within the first week, grew for about a week and then have just sat there in this stalled state for about a month.  I keep hoping they will take off and give me the cottage beehive I have been dreaming of.

I transplanted all of my tomatoes, eggplant and bell pepper plant all at the same time.  After 2 months the tomatoes are growing like crazy, the borage and marigolds have filled in the borders of the bed, the green beans are full, the eggplant is blossoming and the raised bed is a beautiful sight to see.

That is until you view it from this corner and see this prized beauty in the front corner.  Yes ladies and gentlemen that is what two months of growing has done for my red bell pepper plant.  You know it isn't good when the marigolds are doing better.  The first year I had very mild success with peppers.  Last year I had the same problem that the plant did not grow more than an inch and output one teeny tiny pepper that never fully ripened.  This year I gave the pepper prime real estate in the Sun department thinking that would help.  Needless to say my pepper growing days are over.

Last but not least is my Vegetable Amaranth and New Zealand Spinach.  See those tiny pinkish seedlings?  They were planted at the same time as the lettuce below on May 20th.  They sprouted within the same couple of days and then nothing, they have stayed seedlings, if you can call them that, while the All Season lettuce has taken off.  This is not a year for lettuce in our garden at all.

Those tiny seedlings are in between the two rows of soaker hose above the growing All Season variety.