Garden Curve balls
Ok, so gardening and farming is so fun and rewarding until the curve balls come. Every year throws you a curve ball of some kind, but some years are worse than others. This seems to be the year for bad luck. Between my gardening partner and I, we have about 20 years of experience in growing food. Most years we have so much produce coming out of the garden that we are overwhelmed and up to our necks in canning and drying and freezing.
This year started off amazing. Our seedling were doing great and we perfected our seeding starting mix. Our peppers grew so fast and big that by May first they were already producing fruits while still under grow lights.
We prepared our beds and got locally made compost and spread it on the beds and added amendments. Then we planted out all our warm weather crops and crossed our fingers in excitement: melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, squash and pumpkins, onions and more.
The weeks passed and things were growing but not like they normally do. By July we still didn’t have a tomato to eat. All the plants were just hanging out as if suspended in time. So we decided flood water and see if it was a water issue. That helped all the plants in the high tunnel. They were finally going. But then our potato crop started to finish up in early August! The potatoes shouldn’t be ready until October! Next we thought, soil issue. What had we don’t that could cause stunted plant growth or early maturity. Lack of water (hello drought) and the compost. It would seem the compost we brought in may have had an herbicide in it from some ones lawn. As we learned from doing some panicked research, this is actually a huge problem now. So gardeners be aware and know where you are getting your compost and where they are getting their raw materials to make the compost. Here’s a great example from Charles Dowding.
We are now nearing the end of the season and the grasshoppers have moved in with vengeance due to the dry conditions. We caught and killed 85 in one session. They really do extreme damage to crops. We’ve harvested a fraction of what we normally would. Needless to say if this was a survival situation I’d be very worried for winter. And if mystery herbicide, drought conditions, a plague of grasshoppers weren’t enough, there is a deer who insists on breaking through every barrier I make to eat the tender leaves from my blue berry plants. It even nibbled off the growing tips of my tomatoes…
How are your gardens growing? Any better luck in other parts of the country or the world?
