My Sad Garden

Last year, my garden grew very well. The only thing that didn't go well was that animals were able to crawl underneath by wire fence and get to the tomatoes. This year I outfoxed them by securing the fence into the ground with metal stakes.

However, this year's crop has been puny compared to last year's. I planted pretty much the same things, changing the placement of a couple plants to better maximize sun time. Here's a rundown:

• basil- i planted the seeds as I did last year, but nothing came up. I ended up buying small plants which grew very well
• toamtoes- i bought small plants like last year. All three grew and developed tomatoes, but only one of them is producing ripe product. The other two have had a couple of ripe ones, but it's as if something went wrong and their development stopped
• cucumber- grew better than last year's, but suddenly died. It looked as if it was done producing, though, so maybe that is supposed to happen?
• pepper- died before producing
• lettuce- another good early showing which yielded a few salads. But, most of it is now dead
• squash- the plants are growing well, yet there is nothing to harvest!
• eggplant- looks in good shape so far

I prepared the soil before planting, even using my own compost. The only reason I can figure things went wacky is because of the weather we had here. Very few hot days and a lot of rain, and also a lot of days with threats of rain. I think they may have gotten too much water at times, and then not enough when I thought it was going to rain.