Garden failed this year?

[caspernc]

Anyone know about flee beatles? My maters really are suffering. Seven is not the answer.

 

[redhen]

Yep.. my garden sucks this year too...
Seems the only thing growing good is my cucs..
Do you have ANY idea how SICK i am of cucs??

Although tried a new type of cuc this year, Lemon cucumber, its pretty good! But its still a cuc..

Got a few green beans and peas... enough for like 2 meals... not enough to freeze..
My pigs ate half of my tomatos.... the rest arent turning red..
Only got like 4 yellow squash...
The pigs also got to my zuchini.... none of those made it....

*sigh* Hey! Maybe i'll make bacon!!

 

[GYPSYFARM2]

I've been having the same problem with my garden this year. I grow completely organic. I amend the soil every season with the year before's compost..my ph is spot on..I've done nothing different for the past 6 years or so.But for some reason EVERYTHING is either dead or dieing..I had a good spring lettuce and spinach crop but tomato,pickles,corn,peppers etc..are all in terrible shape. On top of that I have been dealing with a groundhog that got the few 'almost' ripe tomatos that I did have..(I have tried everything you could imagine to trap and/or deter the little pest, but he's a smart little bugger! I don't like to kill anything (I even catch and release spiders and bugs from the house! ' I know..I'm a dork'..anyway, I got so mad that he got them tomatos I got out the shotgun and waited for him to enter the garden..and when he did..I just couldn't take the shot lol. I don't know what happened this year..all the rain? The weeks of 100deg weather? ..no clue..I'm hoping that my fall lettuce,spinach and broccoli raab crop does well or this year was a complete waste of time...total bummer

 

[GhostRider65]

Fred's Hens :

I would highly suggest you take soil samples and get them appraised as to the contents, minerals and ph of your soil. This is a service provided by your county extension office and it is low cost or free. Best to start there.

i AGREE I would do this as well, even though we got a really late start up here my garden is crazy wild I been picking Tomatoes, eggplant,peppers,cabbage,cuces beans, onions everyday I can hardly keep up. Maybe there was a bad batch of seeds, I don't trust the seed companies to not re-date the seeds they get back that did not sell. I have heard some awful stories about that.
I use Baker Creek organic/Heirloom seeds for 5 years now and never had any bad crops. When I bought my last Walmart batch of seeds 6 years ago, I had bad beans, that blighted out, and my lettace never came up, that's partly why I switched to baker Creek. There seeds are wonderful.. We do organic, and use our horse/chicken poo as fertilizer, plus mixed in our composted wood chips/ grass chippings, leaves.
My garden is awsum every year and if you are coming up North anytime soon, I would gladly fill your trunk, I do have more than I can possibly can, I haven't even used up my frozen stuff from last year, or the dehydrated veggi's either. I will have to can my extra frozen veggi's or eat them up quick and there's alot left over from last year.
So Sorry all your hard work was for nott...... it's so totally frustrating when things go wrong, especially if you planned on feeding your family with that in this god awful economy. Where you at in Il.? I have a friend in Rockfalls, are you close to there? We might go down to visit her on vacation next week, we just haven't finalized it. Let me know. Hugz Kim​

 

[Carols Clucks]

When I refer to my chickens and my garden, it is really my moms But at 87-Mom....you know who does the digging and hard work.

We had a bunch of volunteer pumpkins come up and a few zucchini, best I can tell they cross polinated and we got some odd shaped big orange zucchini

Mom got the little pots mixed up all over for the squash so I we have an odd variety. With tons of spaghetti squash. Oh and hoards of pumpkins

our cuc's did better this year than last, but still not great

our tomatoes are busy busy busy, but no idea what happened to the cages cause they all fell over.

Our tomatillos...not so good

our peppers are busy too

Corn is still coming, our 12 year old sunflower seed we planted last year, came back again and was about 15+ feet tall.

Our onions, garlic etc....not so good

and our fruit trees, well between the bad pruning job we did last year, the wind and rain knocking off all the flowers and a fungi that my mom thought was normal, those did not do so great.

Of course the evil persimmon trees seem to have managed to set yet another bumper crop so I know what I will be doing all october, picking and giving away persimmons. November will be cut down a couple of more persimmon trees

I am planning on turning under our winter garden tomorrow and getting it ready to plant. We added about 4 wheel barrow loads of compost to it so hopefully that garden does well. I do need to dig around the whole thing and put in some screen cause we have some FAT gophers visiting us!

I am also going to make a small green house for mom. We have a table that I am going to use for it with a pvc frame and some left over plastic.


I also pruned the passion fruit like the book said....thinking the book was wrong but bet next year I get a bumper crop again!

 

[The Chickeneer]

me to

 

[EweSheep]

Ghost Rider, thanks for the offer! I can get it from the stables for some sawdust manure type of thing. Need to add a bit of greens from lawn clippings however the ground is so dry and brown.

We are about a good two hour and half away from Rock Falls, IL.

A farmer neighbor friend of mine, her crops failed this year too despite of watering daily, common pests but insects are not as common as we thought it would be. She thought the cicadas would be responsible for the mess but I doubt that. Missing the numbers of crickets and grasshoppers......They used to be numberous last year but the chickens took care of it.

Waiting for cool weather to come before I make a futile attempt to plant cooler weather plants such as lettuces and maybe beans.

I was hoping to can some tomatoes but not this year. Now I have to scout out the stores for tomato sauces for my recipes.

 

[teach1rusl]

My tomatoes actually did pretty well this year, although the leaves began to wither and die while the fruit was still actively ripening???? Corn (other than our feed corn, which is doing well), eggplant, peppers, beans, peas- did VERY poorly. I didn't know about the soil testing, so I'm gonna' contact our extension office to find out about that. I'd just blamed it all on a terribly WET early spring, followed by basically a drought w/horrible baking heat. I'm with everyone else in that the weeds sure thrived.

Viney stuff - cucumber, cantaloupe, watermelon - produced some fruit, but the vines began dying before much was produced or finished maturing.

 

[woodmort]

Those of you having problems with tomatoes may have "early blight" it is a fungal problem with both tomatoes and potatoes--actually the cause of the Irish Potato Famine. You need to get rid of this year's potato and tomato vines and leftover fruit/tubers--send them to the dump if possible--and plant as far from the spot as you can next year. Also there are a few tomato varieties that are immune to it. Really a problem when it is wet.

 

[Illia]

Another helpful way of getting rid of it is the same solution to the Potato Famine - Plant MORE and different varieties! Mono-cropping, even in a garden at home, is a serious invitation to diseases and pests. There's hundreds of varieties of Tom's out there all waiting for more people to try 'em out.

Even if you only want a couple varieties, try something different and uncommon in your area. I doubt many people are going for colorful heirlooms like Pineapple, White Tomesol, or Paul Robeson - And they're really, really missing out!