Fed up with the garden

[masseyrider]

What a #^*@( f S--t show this year.
Got a few zucchini early in the week. Went out 2 days later half the plants collapsed and are done for.
Water melons and cantaloupe have been in for over a month and have hardly moved same with cukes.
The different squashes seem to have gotten powdery mildew.
Potatoes were looking good and now have an invasion of potato beetles.
Corn appears frozen at about a foot.
Tomatoes have gotten a blight and are dying from the bottom up. Same with the egg plant.
Beans? Don't even ask.
Only thing doing well are the sunflowers, over an acres worth. I like the flowers and the birds get into them. All sorts of yellow finches every year.
But the edibles are all doing poorly.
Haven't done anything differently.
I rotate the location of the garden plot every year. Never had a problem where it currently is.
Neighbors plots look good.
Looks like I'm going to be shopping at the local market this year.


But... what the H E double hockey sticks.

 

[CalG]

commiseration:

We have a few peach, plum, and apricot trees. A typical year is over 250 lbs of fruit.
This year... NOTHING!

We had fresh shell peas for supper last night though ;-)

 

[Thomas]

All the wife's $$$'s cuke tomato lettuce going like weed.

 

[scootr]

Buddy in KY said the same. Too dry early then too wet. Very little yield this year.

 

[masseyrider]

Buddy in KY said the same. Too dry early then too wet. Very little yield this year.

same. Didn't mention cherries. Every year the birds are a challenge. This year also had rain, rain and rain when they were ripening. What the birds didn't eat split and rotted.

 

[ericm979]

So far it's not looking like a good garden year for us. It's been colder than usual all spring and summer. Your weather's likely been different.

One problem we have had in the garden was using horse manure as fertilizer. Most horse manure now contains herbicides! It's from the horse's feed. In our case it was aged manure and it still had enough herbicide to stunt some plants but not others. The tomatoes took it particularly hard.

 

[masseyrider]

So far it's not looking like a good garden year for us. It's been colder than usual all spring and summer. Your weather's likely been different.

One problem we have had in the garden was using horse manure as fertilizer. Most horse manure now contains herbicides! It's from the horse's feed. In our case it was aged manure and it still had enough herbicide to stunt some plants but not others. The tomatoes took it particularly hard.

Imagine what it's doing for the horses.

 

[5030]

Buddy in KY said the same. Too dry early then too wet. Very little yield this year.

How the field corn here is going to play out. Planted, germinated and then a long dry spell so it rooted shallow. Once it matures and develops cobs (which will probably be on the small side), the weight of the cobs and stalks will cause it to fall over as the plants are shallow rooted and incapable of supporting them. the issue with that is of course, no combine can harvest the corn with the cobs laying on the ground.

Gonna be a bad year here for row croppers growing field corn and the beans and the wheat aren't much better. The wheat has very small heads and the beans are stunted.

Oh well, poop happens.

Least my hayfields are looking good. Fingers cross there.

 

[5030]

The issue with any garden is, they are all labor intensive no matter if the yield is good or not.

 

[GeneV]

I applaud people tending gardens, and I totally get the appeal...especially if you're farther out from grocery stores. We also had a garden for a few years. But then every trip to Costco, there's them organic fruits and veggies just right there waiting for purchase, every day of the week/month/year they're in season, and you could buy just enough w/o having to find family/friends to unload the excess onto, etc.

So we no longer have a garden, for us it's just redundant when the grocery store is a scenic 12 min drive away.