Share your frustrations!

[hendi_alex]

Here are some of mine in no particular order.

1. Tomato disease, more specifically interruptions in having a continuos supply of tomatoes from spring to frost. Efforts to solve this involve or have involved succession planting, wide selection of varieties with inclusion of resistant varieties, planting in sterile soil, bottom watering, mulching, pruning, shading, spraying with natural products.......
2. Breaks in production of cucumbers and squash from spring to frost. Mostly fight this issue via succession planting.
3. Over run with leaf footed bugs on tomatoes and squash.
4. Aphid infestation on greens. Once established, the are difficult to eradicate.
5. Deer damage.
6. Root not nematode damage.
7. Competing against oak tree roots.
8. Losing the battle against squash vine borer. I fight this pest by using screened covers on younger plants and by succession planting to keep young vigorous plants at different stages of growth.

[Lindsaylew82]

Hornworms. The end.

[hendi_alex]

For us hornworms are pretty easy to manage by hand picking. One seldom does much damage before being. found and squished. Hand squishing works only marginally for leaf footed bugs as they are quick to fly. I did find this year, that early in the mornings the bugs are sluggish and pretty easy to harvest. As with most pests, the key is in aggressive control before the second generation eggs can be laid.

[rainbowgardener]

The biggest one for me is the squash vine borer. Everything else chews or sips on plants and it takes a good while and probably a pretty big infestation of them before it does serious damage. ONE SVB larva eating through the circulation channels at the base of the squash plant can completely kill a big beautiful plant practically over night. I hate them. Basically have given up growing zucchini because of them.

Lower on the list is squash bugs, stink bugs, and critters (deer, raccoons, groundhogs, etc). But the critters are managed pretty well with the deer netting.

Hornworms don't even show up on my list, because they are so well controlled by the braconid wasp parasitization.

[Lindsaylew82]

I never did anything but handpick them as control, but Lordy LORDY! I handpicked my honey off! A lot of parasitized cats later in July, but before that, it's an all out battle.

There's really nothing I cando to prevent SVB... We get them bad here, but by the time they get to the first plantings, the plants are large enough to withstand the damage for quite a few weeks. We had frass on adult squash and zucchini plant that were producing heavily for 3 weeks. Then the SVB and pickle worms start boring into the fruits...and then the squash bugs show up...

But we got hornworms ALL season last year! I've NEVER seen them like that!!! Ever!

[hendi_alex]

We tend to get hornworms in waves, two the times per summer. Last year was very light, maybe lightest ever. Guess they were all up in the Greenville area!

[Lindsaylew82]

Haaaaa! I put a hurtin on the wee beasties!

[imafan26]

1. Slugs and snails eating my seedlings
2. Birds eating my seeds right out of the pots and every slicer tomato, and now they are after the cherry tomatoes too.
3. Peach scale. It is resistant to pesticides so now I am resorting to culling the worst plants and cutting off branches and a toothbrush.
4. Thrips-- they are so ubiquitous and I don't want to spray and then be stuck having to spray
5. Weeds, everywhere
6. Weed whackers. I hate the things, they do the job but they are heavy and I get tired trying to get them started, and then there is the spool that never wants to cooperate.
7. This crazy weather. Rain is good I don't have to water as much, but it is bad, the weeds grow into monsters in no time. Strong winds (less than hurricane force enough to knock down a few trees though), rain flooding my pots and wind drying them out too fast. The annoying drizzle that starts everytime I want to do something outside, but stops just when I decided to give up for the day.
8. Erineum mites and white flies are seasonal annoyances
9. Mosquitoes that appear 3 days after it rains and makes staying outside a real challenge.

[hendi_alex]

And here I was thinking that Hawaii is paradise!

[imafan26]

It is a paradise for bugs and weeds, no off season or winter to slow them down much.

It is why disease resistance and heat tolerance are important in selecting cultivars. Now, the hard part is finding ones that also taste good.

I don't envy you snow.

I am such a procrastinator , sometimes the garden it just has to take care of itself.

[pepperhead212]

Like Rainbow, my #1 frustration is the SVB. I have tried every trick I have read, to no avail, getting maybe one or two usable squash, before the plant is on its way out. Last year I tried isolating a parthenocarpic zucchini - Cavilir - in an Earthbox, by totally wrapping it with fabric, and it worked. No SVB the entire time, but not many good squash, which may be due to the variety. Pepper maggots used to frustrate me, but I have since found out how to control those, by growing prone varieties under cover until the flies are gone for the season, about a week into Aug. Though I have not seen anything about this, I have a suspicion that SVBs infest a native plant, much like the PMs, which is why it is always in my garden, yet friends not too far away have never seen them.

[applestar]

WCB's, SVB's, TRM's and TLM's

...OK OK...

White Cabbage Butterflies, Squash Vine Borers, Tomato Russet Mites and Tomato Leaf Miners.

...yes most of these are Lepidoptera and I *could* use Bt... But I'm trying to get Monarch Butterflies to come back to my garden after they were devastated by the Mexican winter habitat disaster a couple of years ago, so that is not an option.

...I think I did witness recovery of TRM affected plants later in the last season so hopefully, my Garden Patrol has been reinforced by appropriate combatants to deal with this new menace.

GroundHOG incursions are still a problem, and I lost the nylon deer netting that blocked span bordering the woods in the back last year, so definitely new defense plans are in order for this season.

...I hear you about the mosquitoes, though I suppose what I consider a swarm may not compare to what you get in tropical Hawaii -- is it anything like what attacked Pleakly?

[catgrass]

SVB's and Stink bugs, stink bugs, stink bugs!

[imafan26]

I occasionally have stink bugs but they don't cause a lot of problems. What do they do?

[Voices30]

1. Tomato Hornworm

2. Neighbor getting upset about the massive pile of compost I have near the edge of the property... "snakes could live there and come into my yard"....

You would understand if you visited my neighborhood. It's not sub-urban... it's rural.. we live in the woods. It's crazy to worry about that pile, there are snakes everywhere! My land is small, only 1 acre, but my neighbor lives on 90....really....