Well my tomatoes overall were a miserable failure this year even though I have managed to keep a fair supply coming into the house.

One thing that has done really well for me this year that I was skeptical about is DeCicco broccoli. In the past brocolli has been a bit disappointing for me. I can't remember years past which varieties I grew but seldomly harvested more than a medium size central head and then little more. DeCicco is doing really well and has been producing since June plenty of side shoots. Lots of tasty broccoli being eaten lately :-)

It has been many years since I've grown a Calabrese sprouting broccoli, Greg. I may have gone in the wrong direction. I went for earlier, then earlier again.

Premium Crop proved to develop buds just as the hot weather really set in. It had a very short harvest season. Packman was a little quicker to mature and I get a week or 2 more out of it than with the PC. What got me started in this direction was Green Comet which has very limited seed availability these days.

A broccoli harvest is a distant memory right now. Perhaps I should have stayed with a variety that can tuff out summer heat and produce during the fall, hmmmm?

Here's one that I hope I didn't have bad things to say about earlier this year (sorry about the quality of the picture):

This is Santon charentais - a French melon that is supposed to be a type of cantaloupe. The charentais melons really do taste like cantaloupe (a very good cantaloupe, IMO). But, they don't look much like what we may think of as cantaloupe!

These are little guys and I've just harvested them. These are the very 1st of the season! The group of them together only weighs 5 pounds. Maybe they are supposed to be that small but the cool start to the season probably stunted the vines and the fruit, as well. I'm just glad they didn't all die!

That happened to me with this variety of charentais one year. I grew them for about 4 years or so but one cold June, all of the vines died. You may remember this picture from a few years ago:

These are Honey Girl and I guess I can still order the seed from Burpee but I didn't know that since they no longer feature them in the Burpee catalog. I was just delighted with these melons! But . . . they might have all died in my garden this year if they'd been around to set out. Santon did not die in June. However, the Honey Girls would ripen at the end of August/1st of September. Here it is the end of September and I am just getting the Santon! It could be much worse, of course: The plants could have died in June or . . . we could have already had a killing frost!

Or, the Santon could have turned out like the Edonis charentais I grew last year. They had all of September in the garden, also. However, Edonis never ripened!

I'll need to try the Santon one more year before I can fully estimate their value. (Maybe I can get a few Honey Girl vines along with them. Right now -- I'm just glad I've got these melons and a few more still out there!

Steve

This year it is tomato 'Green Grape'. Tried it a couple years ago after many years in CA growing it. Didn't work. Tried again this year in a big pot against the fence - enough heat - and now in shorter days getting ~1 dz a day.

I'm going to look for another var. of charentais as we liked 'Edonis' so much this year. Yuh-uhmmmm.

Dan

Steve,
Overall it has been another very bad year for tomato growing here. And that has went for everyone. No tomatoes at the farmers markets. Year 4 of a drought and record setting heat for a very extended period. Due to the extreme heat actually fewer disease issues though. Heat stress was terrible and fruit set was low if any. Fruit size was smaller than normal till it started cooling off a little. I had very good early fruit set and then a hail wiped out all the fruit and most of the early plants on May 24th. And by that time we were already reaching 100 or close most days. Some withstood the heat and are setting and producing well now. Two of the new varieties I tried this year have been among the top 3-4 producers. Jet Star hybrid has been the top producing variety over the whole season. Beefy Boy Hybrid is producing heavier now and in second. Sungold and Sweet Treats both hybrids have been the top producing cherry types. I have some cherry types just starting. These were plants that the hail beat up that were still in the hot frames and it took them a long time to recover. I have some of them and also some of the larger types that recovered in containers. They are setting well now and I will move them into my lean to in a few weeks and try to keep them going till December. The 2 op varieties both new to me this year that has been the most impressive is Grandma Suzy's beefsteak and Randy's Brandy. Both are OK varieties. And being grown in OK might be the reason they seemed to take this climate better. The former is a nice pink beefsteak type. The plant isn't tall. But real wide and bushy. Whether that is weather related or the normal habit of this plant I'm not sure. It has 60 plus fruits on it now. I just picked the first one and it went 8 ounces. Will taste in a few days. Impressed so far with this variety.
Randy's Brandy is a Brandywine selection from a grower in OK. It has been a very heavy setting variety. I would say easily 80 plus so far. Fruit size has varied a bit. I blame some of that on the weather conditions. The size has been mainly from 2-4 ounces. Pink and the best tasting Brandywine type I've grown along with being by far the heaviest producing Brandywine type. I'll be saving seeds of both for those who might want to try either. I'll have a complete review of all varieties after the first frost and also my 2012 growing list. I won't be trying many new ones next year. Mainly growing those which have proven to have at least some success here.

Now to Dagma's Perfection. I grew it several years ago. It didn't like this climate at all. Only set a few fruits. They were pretty and very good but won't grow again due to the poor production and that was a good year. From the growers I've communicated with it does better in areas that are milder temp wise than we usually are. It might be ok if planted real early here. Glad it has done well for you. Jay

I also strongly agree with finding the right varieties. Some things will grow ok if they are not quite adapted right, but others it is usually a dramatic hit or miss.

That is why i'm starting to really warm up to Josephs landrace method. He had a huge success with his cantaloupe landrace in utah this year, and i guess is starting to have some other good success too. It's too bad he's not active on this forum, but he has a website, facebook page, and is active on the Homegrown Goodness gardening forum.

This year i attempted a landrace experiment with watermelons. I actually had some mild-moderate success this year! keep im mind that i've tried watermelons 3 times before, and it was always a failure. This year was pretty awesome. I seemed to get mostly really good tasting yellow-fleshed watermelons. It makes me wonder if the yellow ones are able to ripen better in out climate than the reds. I did get a few good red ones, but it took much longer for them to become ripe. In a somewhat short season, crops that grow fast are better than ones that take longer usually.

Anyway, the landrace method is basically where you get as many different varieties as you can, and throw them all together. Basically whatever survives is the best adapted to your climate, and whatever dies was nowhere near adapted. It seems like a very good way to create a large amount of genetic diversity too, which provides opportunity for them to cross and keep adapting. I look forward to trying this with other crops, and look forward to seeing if my watermelon landrace will actually produce something adapted well to my yard and conditions.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://garden.lofthouse.com/adaptivar-landrace.phtml