Sorry to hear you feel this season was a little turndown. But I guess that's the way it goes in gardening, one year, everything goes fine, and the year after you end up with calliflowers the size of a golfball, tomato plants that have all died, zucchinis that look promising but die once they are the size of a finger, carrots and beets so small it isn't even worth to bother to clean them,... (all happened tp me last year.)
I was wondering: did you say you grew your spinach inside the greenhouse? If I'm not mistaking, you can't even grow spinache outside during mid-summer. It's a 'colder-weather' veggie. Maybe it got too hot for it in the greenhouse...?
I've never been able to grow spinache myself. For some reason, it always dies before I can harvest, so I simply gave up on trying :0)
On the bright side: look at those pumkins and squash (i'll never know what the difference is in the English language. In Dutch we call the all varieties of pumpkins. I have no idea which one to call a pumpkin, which one to call a squash... and then there's gourds too. They're all pumpkins to me, lol) They look really nice and ymmuy.
With a little luck, you learn as you go along. That's why keeping a gardening journal is important: to remember things like not to crowd up gardening space, and which veggies work together and which are not. Which ones turn big and should be put in the back, because if not, the veggies behind it won't get enough sunshine to grow properly (look at my pathetic Brussel sprouts this year. Who would have know the broccoli in front would just keep on growing, giving my sprouts no chance to grow at all.
I don't keep a gardening journal and I find myself making the same mistakes over and over again. I assume I'll learn someday, lol.
There's a famous quote that says:
" There are no mistakes in gardening, only experiments."
I did grow the spinach in the greenhouse. I didn't have anymore space created outside. Next year I will have more room but at the same time I didn't know spinach was a cold weather loving plant.
I am quite happy the things that grew successfully. The way I see it is I failed the plant so to speak. It is definitely a learning curve and it is just as the quote says it. I mean I could read and read and read on plants and not retain a thing. I have to do it in order to learn from it. My husband always says look it up on google. I roll my eyes at him most of the time. I love interacting with people as I enjoy the conversation, hear what people have to say and what worked for them. It is more real to me.
I think for the pumpkins, everything is a squash.Pumpkin is just the name of that type of squash. Zucchini to my knowledge is a squash too. The other thing I have been calling a squash is because I can't remember what kind of squash I planted lol. I don't know if it is a spaghetti squash or butternut squash. It could even be another pumpkin plant that grew lol. By the looks of it, only 1 pumpkin plant grew from the few other seeds I planted. I am quite proud of those. There is always success in every experiment, pass or fail. :)
I also like to wing it in the garden, @foxyspirit. But I do have Google as my best friend. Of course, I'm gardening in my own, lonely garden, no other gardeners around to talk with, so I have no other choice than to talk to mister Google, lol.
And indeed, making a mistake is not a failure, it's a lesson - if only I would remember those lesson until the year after, I wouldn't be making the same mistakes over and over again 😎