Gardening Laments
How about a space for disasters and disappointments? All gardening isn't jolly. Here it is, mid-June and one of my students reported an inch of snow on his porch this morning. The cold wind has been blowing for days. My tomatoes look sickly and my basil is as good as dead. You'd think the spinach would like the cool weather, but it bolted as soon as it came up. And the rain we've had is dried up almost immediately by the wind. It's deceiving. I still need to water my plants, check the soil moisture every day.
Am I bad gardener or are there merely things beyond my control? Whatever, it's just a big depressing. It's certainly a lesson in growing diverse plants if survival is dependent upon what my little plot should produce.
Am I bad gardener or are there merely things beyond my control? Whatever, it's just a big depressing. It's certainly a lesson in growing diverse plants if survival is dependent upon what my little plot should produce.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Maggie on -
It's good we talk about the weather, I can not imagine what it is like to try to garden where snow freezes the ground in winter and now you are having such cold temperatures and strong winds.
Our garden looks good because we have had good weather for the plants to grow!
We just put them in the ground and have had sufficient rain and sun and mild nights so they are very happy plants at the moment.
Now sprouts would grow well inside, we had best save lots of seed for sprouting!
Not such a silly idea, sprouted sour dough bread is delicious and heaps healthy!
Maybe we should start a sprouters group, but maybe we already have one!
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Permalink Reply by Penelope on -
There's half a paragraph missing in my intro??? Mercury is retrograde -- we geminis are tender at the bone these days. --p
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Permalink Reply by Ian on -
I think the weather is one of the things that makes gardening a challenge. Here in France there is no snow on the ground but I lost nearly all my tree fruit back in April to late frosts. I have some apples and some walnuts and that's all now.
On the rain front we have the opposite problem, we have had so much rain things are getting waterlogged, and very little sunshine to speed up growth yet.
Ian
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Permalink Reply by Robin on -
The weather is so unstable here the spinach couldn't decide what to do. Should it stop growing or bolt? Turn yellow or be beautiful? Grow or laugh at me when I walked by? So I made the choice for it, got out the tiller and replaced it with late cabbage. It's either unseasonably warm or cool.
The wind won't stop. A half dozen tomatillos bent in two yesterday. The peppers look worn out. The sweet potatoes are on strike because they ended up in cool, windy Maine rather than Louisiana.
It'll get better. Won't it?
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Permalink Reply by Kate on -
I could go on about disasters and disappointments in the vegetable garden all day and night but one thing we learn as gardeners is that nature is unpredictable. Best thing to do is just keep on sowing stuff; eventually things will be condusive to the growth of whatever it is you are trying to grow. If you wait until everything is right before you start, you may be too late!
Garden, nature and me - we are a threesome in a rocky relationship but we all muddle along as best we can and sometimes we get it right !
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Permalink Reply by Maya on -
... and aren't the pleasant surprises just lovely? Overcalculated on the lettuce? Host a potluck and provide the salad! So far I've found that, much as I can complain about the bits and pieces, the abundance in some things more than makes up for the scarcity of others when something goes wrong in the garden. We haven't starved yet. Bet something else in your garden is going to thrive because of this. Chin up, old girl.
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Permalink Reply by Penelope on
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Vegetable gardens are being touted as "primitive" and "old fashioned" by some artist on Studio 360. Can't quite get a handle on it. An artist using the gardens as protest against commercialism, I guess.
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Permalink Reply by Lakeecha Murrell on -
I start almost everything from seed indoors until i think the weather is consistent enough to put in the ground/outdoors BUT i planted spinach and i put it in the ground and in pots (which i do often totally experimental to see what grows best which way) and the ones in the ground went straight to flowering stage the ones in the pots are confused so i pulled the ones in the ground. I am going to start a second crop of spinach indoors for later in the season. I am also keeping a journal so i can try and correct errors from year to year.
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Permalink Reply by Leah on -
So here's my lament: CUCUMBER BEETLES!!! Oy vey. Everything was going beautifully in my garden. Then a few days ago, I noticed something was eating the leaves of my zucchini and cucumber plants, and found some cucumber flowers off the plants. And the culprit is the blasted cucumber beetle.
So in keeping with organic gardening, I first used soapy water on my plants and have been picking off all of the nasty bugs that I can find. I'm losing the battle, so yeaterday I went out and bought some Diatomaceous earth (DE) and will spread that around the garden. Since these bugs also fly, I got some fly tape to hang from my deer fence. And of course some specific beetle traps to hang 30 ft from the garden.
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Permalink Reply by Maya on
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants says naturtiums and tansy are what you need to repel cucumber and squash beetles!
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