Fed up with the garden

[NoTrespassing]

Sorry to hear some gardens are struggling. Since my wife's schedule changed to week days we're working our garden together this year and it's doing well although running a little behind. I bought a Sun Joe battery tiller and it's really helping keep the weeds down. I'm really looking forward to canning spaghetti sauce, chili, and salsa. We have over 30 tomato plants this year and a bunch of peppers.

 

[masseyrider]

Were oh were do all those Fing beetles come from? And don't say England.
Bumper crop of ladybugs.

 

[Jstpssng]

Were oh were do all those Fing beetles come from? And don't say England.
Bumper crop of ladybugs.

They don't hurt anything though. The natives eat aphids. There also is a species here which the government released to control some other invasive insect, I don't recall what.

 

[ning]

We also had a "cold" winter & spring. Two years ago, we had a super warm February and then a hard freeze in the beginning of March which resulted in zero fruit. Our normal has flowers in April/early May, then good gardens & fruit.
This year, I got two, 2, cherries. Thanks.
Figs are finally showing up, about a centimeter across on our three trees; there's actually three very large figs on one tree strangely enough, it's like it started those and then said "ah maybe we'll wait TWO MORE MONTHS"
My pomegranate bushes finally leafed out. They've yet to flower, and it's July now. I doubt they're going to do much.

Our garden seems ok but not great. Had excellent strawberries and peas, lettuce is good, we'll see how the tomatoes do.

 

[masseyrider]

They don't hurt anything though. The natives eat aphids. There also is a species here which the government released to control some other invasive insect, I don't recall what.

lady bugs = good.
F...ing beetles I meant to say potato beetles. Just hundreds of them. I've never seen so many.

 

[Oaktree]

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

I've heard that argument many times. Gardening is like any hobby, you have to enjoy it because the money saved vs time spent doesn't make for much savings.
Personally, there's nothing like FRESH produce, just picked as opposed to the stuff that's probably close to a week old by the time it gets to the supermarket. You also know how it was grown if that matters to you.

F...ing beetles I meant to say potato beetles. Just hundreds of them. I've never seen so many.

I've found that delaying planting potatoes until around June 20th +/- seems to keep them to a minimum. Still get a decent crop but you've shifted the timing with respect to the bugs' schedule. Obviously timing would vary by where you live and the length of your growing season...I'm in northern New England.
Japanese beetles are a bigger problem for me, haven't found anything that works very well on them.

As far as the garden goes, hope I'm not jinxing it but so far so good. Between an odd May that toggled between abnormally warm temperatures followed by frosts and a rainy cool June (and sofar July) again interspersed with short hot spells my expectations were low.
Peas didn't produce very well, but everything else is going fine. Corn was "knee high on the 4th of July", beans, cukes, tomatoes all ahead of schedule. Even starting to see some small peppers...don't usually get peppers until late August if at all.

 

[NoTrespassing]

Yep, store tomatoes aren't anything like the ones we grow.

 

[Egon]

Bug control?

Guinea hens, chickens, geese, ducks all do a good cleanup

 

[NoTrespassing]

Bug control?

Guinea hens, chickens, geese, ducks all do a good cleanup

I'd love to have some guinea fowl but so would the coyotes.

 

[JJT]

I started planting very early, May 10 for lettuce, peas and radishes, normal planting is Memorial Day weekend. Slow start with a very dry June here, but things have really taken off. Have had a few cukes, onions, lettuce, radishes, zuchini and yellow/summer squash. Peas did not amount to anything, 100% of my cukes had to be replanted and some of the early cukes had a skin blight.

Looks like we'll have a bumper crop of tomatoes, pumpkins and winter squash. Nothing beats fresh veggies from the garden. We share with the neighbors, I always plant too much, figuring the deer and rabbits will get more than their share.

The electric fence seems to be working great, so far no critters in the garden. Weeds of course are out of control, I'm good about weeding until the end of July, then I give up.....

 

[Paddy]

I agree with gardening is a hobby. A bit like fishing. I do enjoy it so we plant selectively every year. I like to plant things that are either easy to grow or hard to get good produce.

We are no till. Just a 70 ft long 2 foot wide strip covered in mulch with irrigation tubes. I can mow right up to the mulch, virtually no weeding. Also in the garden are (3) 7 year old peach trees pruned to 7 ft tall. Last two years we picked 1200-1500 peaches. This year nothing due to X-mass sudden deep freeze. two sour cherries planted this year to replace one that died last year. The fruit trees do require pruning and spraying.

The entire garden is surrounded by electric fence on a timer.

The peaches and tomatoes are grown because you can't beat a home grown peach/tomato picked fresh. We can't buy sour cherries here so we enjoy having a source. We have Rhubarb that will be ready for the first harvest next year, who doesn't like strawberry rhubarb pie! We also have cukes and zukes.

Friends and family enjoy the bounty of peaches but so do the local food pantries. other than a two dozen canning jars of jams or a few frozen pie packs, we don't spend the time to put it up. Enjoy as it comes on.

 

[oosik]

We had a GREAT garden the first year here on the property. Then - slowly but surely - the local indigenous inhabitants ( Ex - deer, coons, pocket gophers, birds, chipmunks, mice, etc ) found this "offering". By the third year we were lucky if anything even survived sprouting. We gave up and bought everything at the local farmers market.

The final straw - for the wife - the chipmunks ate all her strawberries before they were half ripe.

 

[GeneV]

I've heard that argument many times. Gardening is like any hobby, you have to enjoy it because the money saved vs time spent doesn't make for much savings.
Personally, there's nothing like FRESH produce, just picked as opposed to the stuff that's probably close to a week old by the time it gets to the supermarket. You also know how it was grown if that matters to you.

Oh, I definitely get the value of it.

 

[RobertEH]

We had a GREAT garden the first year here on the property. Then - slowly but surely - the local indigenous inhabitants ( Ex - deer, coons, pocket gophers, birds, chipmunks, mice, etc ) found this "offering". By the third year we were lucky if anything even survived sprouting. We gave up and bought everything at the local farmers market.

The final straw - for the wife - the chipmunks ate all her strawberries before they were half ripe.

Don't forget those Washington Slugs... Nothing like finding a 10 inch long banana slug on your produce!

 

[Jstpssng]

lady bugs = good.
F...ing beetles I meant to say potato beetles. Just hundreds of them. I've never seen so many.

Spinosad, AKA "Captain Jack" works well on them. Spinosad General Fact Sheet I'm not organic by any means, but do try to keep my pesticide footprint to a minimum; otherwise I may as well just buy commercially grown produce.

I've found that delaying planting potatoes until around June 20th +/- seems to keep them to a minimum.

I plant a short row as soon as I can work the ground in spring, for summer use. Then I plant 10 lbs around the end of June to use through the winter. Aside from the reason you list, it also means less time from the time they are dug until when spring comes.

 

[jyoutz]

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.

Our cherries did exceptionally well this year, but no apples and a very light pear crop. Last year we had a bumper crop of apples and pears. Grapes have a very heavy crop developing. A mixed bag.

 

[ning]

Our cherries did exceptionally well this year, but no apples and a very light pear crop. Last year we had a bumper crop of apples and pears. Grapes have a very heavy crop developing. A mixed bag.

I got two cherries.
Two.
My figs are just now starting to grow, I thought we'd completely missed figs somehow.
It's like our trees just didn't wake up till recently.

 

[Egon]

While growing up the garden was not a hobby. It provided serious food for the year. Canning & freezing!

 

[NoTrespassing]

While growing up the garden was not a hobby. It provided serious food for the year. Canning & freezing!

Our hope is that ours will this year.

 

[masseyrider]

Now we got hit with high winds, nothing extreme like on the news, but enough to beat things up.
Just one thing after another.