Hilarious! A friend of mine used the same technique to get out of weeding duties for life. :-)

I suspect they weren't pollinated. Do you have bees around? If not, grab a Q-tip and make buzzing noises as you go from flower to flower.

Tried that with my finger (minus the buzzing noises) and it didn't work.

Grew my first garden this year. Mixed results.

Posted out a bed a bit shy of 20' x 30'. My neighbor rototilled it for me, and then I fenced it in (deer, rabbits, groundhogs, squirrels and chipmunks).

We got a late start to the whole process (June), and the kids put some seeds - corn, carrots and sunflowers - into pots to start. By the time we got an actual garden bed set up, the seedlings were growing too thickly in the pots. When I went to transplant them, they were wispy and barely able to stand. Luckily, the corn's done well - it's almost ready to pick.

Had to add chickenwire to the bottom two feet of the four-foot-high fence to keep out the baby rabbits, which ate the sunflowers and nibbled some other things. It's worked fine - nothing else has been nibbled.

So, this would be a learning year. Some of the things I learned:

Don't plant stuff in the gap between zucchini and yellow squash plant hills. The spacing looks great when everythings a sprout, and becomes a problem when the 4- or 5-foot radius of leaves overshadows and hides the carrots and leeks. They don't grow much after that.

I don't need to plant three hills of pumpkins - especially as I watch them spread and the tiny "whiskers" start grabbing the tomatoes and smaller plants.

Tomatoes are doing well - so well, that they grew out the top of the wire frames that support them, tipped some over, and grew so far over the others that they're basically killing themselves by bending double with the weight of the tomatoes they're producing.

Zucchini and summer squash have been fantastic - but then I got a white mildew which has killed them, as well as the pumpkins and cantelope. I (too late) read that this can be treated with a mixture of one part milk to five parts water, sprayed on the leaves frequently. I'll know for next year and catch it early.

Herbs did well, mostly - especially parsley, thyme and rosemary. I've killed at least three different window box attempts at herb gardens as an apartment dweller, so this was satisfying. Cilantro grew well, but went to seed very early. So did fennel - grew very nicely, then went to seed and I never did get to have any.

Watermelon and lettuce never went anywhere.

Anyway, I have lots of ideas for next year, and it has been satisfying to eat what has come out of the garden.

Dave

Our 2 1/2 year old son did the same. He was supposed to be picking radishes, which we planted in mass as a cover for other seeds coming up. When my wife turned around to see that he had picked several other plants - pumpkin starts for one, she about blew a gasket.

Her second planting of pumpkin seeds are now doing great, and our son is able to walk through the garden picking ripe tomatos or green beans - snacking on them as he goes - I think that's a pretty good way to raise a boy these days.

fried fried an pickled okra

If we were growing all our own food, we'd be dead long ago.

Although we got a good harvest of tomatoes and zucchini, the root crops all failed this year. Also, we learned that we really need like 2 acres totally clear land for enough sun. And there's no way we could grow enough grain here.

I simply didn't have the time to properly tend the garden as it was, at least the peas came in fine.

Indeed, it's very humbling.

Well, it's not a survival garden*, but the raspberry patch I planted this spring is coming along nicely. I'm glad I planted some "ever-bearing" varieties, because some of those are producing already! That's what I missed most when I moved a year and a half ago. I had a really nice raspberry patch, but I forgot what I planted 15 years ago. Now I'm keeping track of what I planted. I also put in a lot of effort amending the heavy clay soil.

* unless maybe you count surviving the sticker shock of raspberry prices in the store.

"...zucchini..."

Oh yuk. Don't make me tell you why I hate that stuff...