Sad Season

[ElizabethB]

A very bad season for my veggies.

Started off with Horn Worms

Then Mockingbirds eating my 'maters. I don't mind sharing but please just peck on one instead of every slightly ripe tomato.

Drought while I was out of town. Stupid me. I forgot to ask the neighbor's girls to water for me. Kick me.

Monsoon season - a daily deluge. Fruit falling from the plants and tomatoes splitting.

Stink bugs YUCK I have to bat them away to get to my few remaining tomatoes.

Jalapenos usually make enough to freeze. This year - 3 plants - 2 dozen peppers.
1 bell pepper plant - 2 peppers.

3 eggplant plants - 2 fruits dropped off before maturity. I have 3 left and hope to harvest them.

3 cucumber vines produced 6 cucumbers.

I have 8 green tomatoes on the vine. I will harvest them tomorrow and have fried green tomatoes as a side with dinner tomorrow.

That is it. Some times we have a lousy garden season.

Just keep on keeping on!

Thanks for giving me shoulders to cry on.

SNIFF SNIFF

Done with that. Time for fall planting.

[gumbo2176]

We not only live in the same state, but it seems we've both had similar results with our gardens.

Just yesterday I pulled the 3 remaining eggplants out of my garden after every one of the eggplants it produced didn't make it and succumbed to rot and pests.

I put in just a few tomato plants and had 3 volunteers in my compost pile that I let grow. They produced lots of green tomatoes that were destroyed by the crazy amount of rainfall we have been getting.

Cucumbers and Japanese Yard Longs, my typical heavy producers had limited production after a couple weeks of daily picking. The vines just went south almost overnight and had to be pulled.

My normally very productive habanero plants are producing at a rate of about 10% of what they have done in the past and all the plants are very stunted for being this late in the season. Same with the bell pepper plants. I pulled 4 of the 5 I put in this spring due to them producing very few peppers that made it to maturity.

The only things that did well for me were the bush beans and soybeans I use for edamame that I put in the garden in March. They are now long gone and if facing the heat, humidity, almost daily rainfall, and pests of the summer stuff, they may have gone the same way.

For the past few years I've been telling my wife I think my summer garden needs a rest, but it just tugs at me to plant, but truthfully, it almost isn't worth it and I wind up looking forward to the fall-spring gardening more and more every year.

[thanrose]

In Florida, I have a few potted herbs, a potted fig, and many other somewhat less useful plants in pots and in ground. Squirrels were my biggest problem this year. Ate the handful of immature figs from the early crop, one by one. Ate through the few rose buds, developed a taste for new rose growth and ate down to last years canes. You would have thought it was a beaver attack, because they just chewed through the stem and let the rest drop... Dug up basil repeatedly, ate over half of hibiscus blossoms, chewed the bark off a young loquat (there's always another, so no problem really) and ate a hole in the screen on my porch, right next to the propped open door.

[Gary350]

I have read you can cover each tomato with aluminum foil that will stop birds from pecking holes in them. I have not tried that I save empty containers from the kitchen fill them with and set them all over the garden if I provide water for birds to drink they don't peck my tomatoes. Save any empty container you have, cans, coffee, yogurt, cottage cheese, butter, sour cream, jars, etc.

Lowe's & Home Depot sell yard irrigation stuff, buy a battery timer for outside water faucet, 1/4" hose, 1 liter per hour sprayers, set timer on 10 minutes per day starting at 9 pm.

[ElizabethB]

Gary,

Thanks for the tip. I have a bird bath in the yard but not net to my garden boxes. I never thought of putting out containers of water in my garden. Looking back I had the problem with Mocking birds during a very dry period. Now that we have been getting a daily deluge they have not bothered my few remaining tomatoes.

I will definitely try your tip.

[jal_ut]

Sad Season. Yes, I planted May 5 as usual, then come the first week of June it turned off cold and froze everything. So starting over a month late. Some of the corn re-grew so it looks like I will have some corn. The garlic and onions did OK so I will have garlic and onions. Everything else pretty much putted for this season. Many of the later planted seeds did not germinate.

[rainbowgardener]

I am not having the same kind of sad season, all the spring stuff did great. BUT I am now feeling very frustrated, because I can't seem to get the later plantings of seeds to germinate. My second planting of corn is making ears and will be ready soon. But I have planted seeds for the third planting of corn twice now and each time ONE plant sprouted (and the second time I did it, I planted 40 seeds). (Why ONE? Why not zero or three?) I've also been planting beans. Some of them have sprouted, but it seems like very low germination rate.

I don't know what the trouble is?

[jal_ut]

Hmmmm, it takes moisture and temperature right before things will sprout and grow. May I suggest for these late plantings to pre-germinate your seeds in the kitchen then take them out and plant them when the seeds have little tails on them? Oh, and put them 1.5 inches deep.

When planting seed directly in the garden larger seeds like corn and beans should be planted 1.5 inches deep, and press the soil down well to remove air pockets. I plant then walk on the row. Good luck.

[imafan26]

Me too. The seeds planted later either failed to germinate, only a few came up, or they germinated very late. I have been having problems the last two months. My seeds planted in June barely came up 3 weeks later in June. I usually have the starts ready to transplant out in a couple of weeks but the seedlings were barely an inch tall a month later.

[rainbowgardener]

I do know how to plant seeds as witness that all the spring planted ones did great and even the squash and second planting of corn that were planted later did great. But that was before it got really hot.

I have a couple guesses. One is that I just don't realize how fast seeds can dry out when it is 95 degrees and bright Southern sun. I tried to keep them damp, but I know there were times when I was thinking "it rained yesterday, that should be good enough," but maybe we got 1/4 " of rain.

And maybe they got over-soaked. I always like to soak seeds first, because my seeds might be a couple years old (or more) and are very dry. But I often over -estimate how much yard work I can get done in a day, especially now when the hours I can stand to work in the garden are shorter, due to heat. So sometimes I soak seeds thinking I am going to get them planted that day and it doesn't happen...

So this time I way over-planted and I planted some seeds that were (over) soaked and some seeds that were not soaked at all.

See what happens!

[jal_ut]

Try some things and, "See what happens!"

Yep, that's what gardeners do. Sometimes ya, win, sometimes ya lose. Nice thing is ya always got a scapegoat. Its the weather, the critters, the soil, the seed, etc. never the gardener's fault.