It’s hard for me to believe the days were sunny and warm and my flowers were blooming only a week ago. Deep snow covered my garden on Monday morning. The snow melted, but it’s snowing again this morning.

I shared those flowers, the snow and a review of garden related books in my vlog the other day:

There’s not much I can be doing in my garden right now. April in Wisconsin is often still a planning.

Last month I shared my favorite aspects of 2022’s garden and mentioned how considering what worked and what didn’t helps me plan for the next season. I shared what worked in that post and I want to share what didn’t today.

Gardens are particularly complicated in regard to what works and what doesn’t. Nature has a mind of her own. Constraints due to a garden’s situation… space, sun/shade, soil quality, climate, weather, diseases, insects… so many factors come into play.

Each individual garden space is unique.

In good ways and bad.

And like each garden, each gardener brings her own unique set of experiences, preferences and ideas (mixed with challenges such as budget, available time, energy…).

Thinking about all of these variables fascinates me.

After last week’s post pondering perfection, I kept thinking about how concepts like “perfect” and “best” pertain to the garden. I know I will never have a perfect garden (and I don’t want one), but I do strive to have a better garden each year.

The plants I’ve decided not to grow again this year aren’t bad. They just didn’t work well for me or were frustrating or challenging in my circumstances. Being able to change what we grow and how we grow it is all part of the process.

Plants I’m Not Growing in 2023:

1. Above and Beyond Rose

Japanese beetles* have gotten worse and worse each year. The roses are always hardest hit. I’ve dug up many of my roses because of this and now I’m letting go of Above and Beyond, too.

It’s a beautiful rose when it’s in full bloom. But that only happens in the spring. It repeats sporadically. The rest of the time it grows. And grows. It’s a monster of a plant, full of thorns.

In the right place, without the beetles, it would be beautiful.

2. Pixwell Gooseberry

Growing beside Above and Beyond is a Pixwell Gooseberry bush (I could not find a good photo of it). I grew the same variety in Cleveland but it never got as big and unwieldy as this one.

Each year I try to hack it back into submission (without much luck as it always grows back even crazier than before). The plant is very thorny and the berries are hard to harvest.

Last year it was nearly defoliated by what I discovered were gooseberry sawfly caterpillars. Then later, the fruit was attacked by what I think were gooseberry maggots.

Like with the rose, it would be wonderful in the right place, but this spot in my garden isn’t it.

3. Collards

I grew collards for the first time last year. It seemed they were everywhere in all of the catalogs when I was ordering seeds. My plants grew to be HUGE, bullying their neighbors in the garden. None of the recipes I tried them in did much for me. I like kale so much better. As a plant in the garden and as food on my table.

4. Minnesota Midget Cantaloupe

I was so excited to grow this last year. I planted it in a pot because it was described as a great container variety. My plant was never very vigorous. I think there must have been either something wrong with the soil or not enough drainage in the container I used.

My plant only produced one melon, which was super fun to harvest and eat, but it tasted pretty bland. Reading reviews from other growers (who got multiple, tasty melons from each plant), makes me want to try again. But not this year.

5. Summer Squash

Summer squash is hit or miss for me. Some years I get mostly male flowers and very few fruits. Some years the plants struggle with blossom end rot and the fruit falls off before ripening. Three years ago I grew a variety called Cube of Butter. The plant was huge and healthy. It took over the garden bed where I planted it and was so productive we couldn’t keep up eating the fruit.

I took two years off and then last year tried a variety called Golden Star. I grew it in a container and it struggled like the melon. They were in the same type of pot and the same area of the garden, so I think the issue was definitely either drainage or soil or both.

I’m skipping summer squash again this year. And plan on drilling more holes in those two pots before using them for something else.

6. Malabar Spinach

A vining, heat-loving alternative to spinach with decorative flowers and seed pods? Sounds great!

I grew it last year and it was a lovely, vigorous plant in the garden. I’m not sure I’d say it tasted like spinach, but it tasted ok. I added it to various dishes I made and in small quantities it was fine. But it had a slimy (mucilaginous) texture and adding too much was distracting.

Add to that, that the Japanese beetles didn’t mind the texture at all and it’s a miss for me this year.

7. Sungold Tomatoes

I go back and forth about Sungold. They taste so good, but crack so easily. It’s not a terrible problem because they’re so productive, but it feels wasteful. And is messy.

Tomatoes are my favorite thing to eat from the garden and there are so many different varieties to try. I’ll most likely grow Sungold again, but not this year.

Plants I’m on the Fence About:

1. Swiss Chard

I always grow Swiss chard.

I love adding a variety of greens to my salads and chard is one of my favorites, but I’m thinking about giving it a miss this year. Some years it grows beautifully. Last year it didn’t.

I’m planning on growing beets and figured I could use the greens as a substitute for chard. I think it will all come down to space. If I have room I’ll probably plant some. If not, I won’t.

2. Wild Bergamot

I grew my wild bergamot (Monarda, also called bee balm) from seed. It was the one plant growing in my garden for reference when I painted the collection of illustrations for Kickapoo Meadery’s labels.

I love growing anything that provides food or habitat for wildlife and although I’m not focused on only growing native plant species (I don’t have enough room to grow everything I want to grow!), I understand their importance and try to include some when I can.

Wild bergamot is beautiful, but my two plants take up a lot of room and overshadowed other things in my garden last year. They’re also prone to mildew and end up looking sad as the season progresses.

I don’t think I’ll pull it all out this year, but I’ll probably remove some of it. And I’ll cut it back during the growing season to try to keep it under control.

3. Agastache

(Also called lavender hyssop or anise hyssop). I grew this one from seed, too. It grew to be a lot larger than I thought it would be and I ended up pulling out and moving some of the plants last year.

It’s beautiful and smells nice and is attractive to bees and other wildlife. I’ve never tried using it in tea, but I’ve read that it’s a lovely tea herb. Unfortunately, Japanse beetles seem to love it as much as the bees and butterflies.

I see it coming up in the garden and I haven’t decided what to do yet.

4. Radishes

I love radishes and plant them every year, but they’re not always successful.

It seems as if our weather is often too cold for too long and then suddenly gets hot. If the temperatures are too warm, radishes won’t form nice roots.

Last year I tried to work around that by planting rat tail radishes. They’re grown not for their roots, but for their seedpods. They were tasty, but worked well only when small. The larger they got, the more stringy and tough they became.

Looking at the garden harvest photo makes me want to grow radishes again. If our weather improves I’ll probably stick some seeds in the ground.

I love to experiment in my garden. I love to try new things. I have so many favorite plants, too.

That’s one of the joys of the garden. We get to try new things. We get to experiment. We get to change our minds (and then change them again).

What are you growing in your garden this year?

Are there plants you’ve decided not to grow? Are there plants you can’t wait to try? Are there favorites you can’t wait to see again as the season progresses?

*In this post and in others, I’ve mentioned frustration with Japanese beetles. The problem of Japanese beetles is complex. They don’t have many predators and they quickly decimate your plants (especially their favorites).

I deal with them by pulling them off the plants and drowning them in containers of soapy water. It’s a constant, time-consuming job because more always appear. After killing hundreds and hundreds of beetles each day there comes a point when I just can’t do it anymore.

Milky spore is one natural control of Japanese beetles. On the one hand it sounds great, but from what I’ve read it’s a bit tricky to get the timing right when applying it. I’m also doubtful it will do much good. Our neighborhood is overrun with Japanese beetles and even if I get rid of all the beetles in my garden, others happily come over the fence from elsewhere.

Beetle traps are another option, but my space is so small and I don’t really want to be attracting more beetles into it.

I’m curious about your experiences with Japanese beetles. Do you have them in your garden? If you do, do you have an effective control for them?