Year 3. This was to be the year of the garden.

We cleared more trees. I dug, cleaned out the old stuff, got the weeds contained. We hauled in top soil. I installed drip irrigation. All the tomatoes split from the heavy rains (too much water). The peppers just plain never came in. The beets started strong and whithered, the peas produced hardly anything. Lettuce and spinach did OK, but that's not enough. The blueberry bush is just starting, it will be a few years before that produces anything meaningful. The strawberries produced about 6 berries and that was it. Herbs are doing fair, fennel and oregano doing very well, rosemary and basil hanging on. We also lost 6 laying hens to predators (eagle, hawk, fox, weasel or mink and something else, not sure what). If it was up to me to feed the family, it would be a lean year. Our nut trees don't produce on even numbered years, so to the walnuts and hickory nuts, which are abundant on odd numbered years, are totally absent this year.

All together, I learned that the Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA) was the best thing I could do for planning my food allocation for the year. Yes it's a risk (with a CSA, you pay the farmer in advance, if the crops fail, that's the risk you're taking) and at the beginning I was really getting a little worn out from the kohlrabi, but later as the more "traditional" crops came in, things got better.

But I definitely have learned a bunch about where to situate a home if I were to do it all over again. In short - not here. Yes, we have a nice pond and we love the woods, but I'll never buy a property again where it's 90% shaded - no more than 50% woodland, a good open south exposure to full sun is a must. I like being up on a hill the way I am, but I can also see the advantages to being in flatter terrain.

We're not moving, and I'm not clearing any more trees...but I am working on better local sourcing of meat and other food.

Seems like everything went wrong for you. A bad year is always discouraging. It gives some appreciation of the pioneers whose gardens were a matter of eating or not eating.

Shade is a killer when it comes to food production. I know a lot of people who would like to garden in their urban backyards, but few get enough hours of summer sun to pull it off. A treed acreage has the same problem. Sometimes a greenhouse can help, but it becomes much more intensive in terms of the work.

Good pollination can be a big issue as well. A week of wet and cool when fruit trees are blooming can lead to a very thin crop. I'm starting my own colony of mason bees (a.k.a. orchard bees) to supplement all the native bees I have been carefully encouraging.

I like the CSA concept. Some farmers are tired of the mass production agribusiness treadmill. And most people don't have the time to dedicate themselves to producing their own food. So, a potential win-win.

This was a bad year for me, too.

We had a long cold spring with a LOT of rain, and it just kept raining. Summer arrived (they say), still cold, with cold winds. It is a celebration even now (August 2) to have a day in the 70s. I think we've had maybe three whole days that crossed the 80ºF mark. Nights are still dropping into the low 50s.

A very late freeze wiped out the cherry crop, and probably some of the blueberries, there weren't many berries. The late blueberries are still green.

Since all my old chickens were killed, I planned to get a new (small) batch this spring. By the time it was warm enough to get chicks, the feed stores weren't selling them anymore. I had to buy six from a neighbor.

My carefully handpicked collection of black soldier fly larvae is just stagnating, none are hatching into adults.

It was too wet and cold to plant much other than peas and lettuce.

The tomatoes are only growing slowly, I didn't even bother with peppers, because they need even more heat than tomatoes.

I have yet to check under the mulch to see how the potatoes are doing, but the tops are dying down now.

A local Mennonite group has just bought a small building to sell fresh produce. Right now, they're trucking it in from the warm side of the mountains, but plan on selling local stuff in the future.

It's been a big disappointment. Oh, well, I guess I should go in and make my bed... three wool blankets and a down comforter... it sure doesn't feel like August.

Sue

Do y'all store your own seeds? I know different years I have had radically different results in my gardening. One year I had minimum potatoes, but I had more tomatoes than I could handle. I canned and canned tomatoes. Luckily other folks had good results with your veggies, and I purchased some food to put up. I wished I lived where I could get a share of a CSA.

I keep my seeds from one year to the next, but I haven't been organized enough to save my own seed from my own crops. I know how to do it, I just haven't.

Some years are better than others for certain crops. Heat (or lack of it) and rain (or lack of it) all affect the plants. Some plants are fussier about soil quality than others.

Contact your local Cooperative Extension Service and ask if they have info on local CSAs. You can find your Ext. Service through the USDA site [url= http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/]here.[/url]

Sue

same here..our city backyard tomato patch is a washout and none of the onion sets took.if i can keep the raccoon's out of the grape vines i might get enough to bulk up a batch of wild grape wine.
a few years ago i got heaps of tomato's,onions,peppers and the herbs to make up gallons of pasta sauce and still have enough for eating.all this explains why so many family's moved into city's and took jobs in industry's so they could eat more than weeds and muskrats.

Well now I'm feeling badly, because after a late start our garden is absolutely going great guns. The only problem is that it's coming all at once.

Tomatoes are producing and flowering, we've already had peppers from the greenhouse, green and yellow zucchini for stir-frys, raspberries by the gallon, many quarts of tame saskatoons as big as blueberries, new potatoes with fresh dill and cream, baby carrots thinned out of the rows, and more fresh young peas than we know what to do with. We should have fresh beets in a week. Meanwhile the corn has tassels, the onions are over 16" tall, the scarlet runner beans are flowering, and the pumpkins and winter squash are stretching by the hour. Argh! We can't keep up!

Doug..about how much farther north from Minneapolis are you?..
our corn came in weeks ago.i think the garden problem here was too much heat and rain early in the season.

I'm a fair bit farther north, around 53 deg N latitude. Shorter growing season (average 140 frost-free days per year), but longer hours of sunlight in the summer. First frost anytime after Sept. 10, and a killing frost before the end of Sept. So when August rolls around, everything in the garden is on notice: get busy, only 6 weeks left.

"Argh! We can't keep up!"

Doug, that's just AWFUL! I'm nearly in tears, thinking of you trying to keep up with the harvest.

Do you deliver?

Sue

Martin, your post makes me smile, but it's a smile of sympathy and recognition.

This is the third year for me having a garden, too, and it seems like every year is another "rebuilding, learning" year.

So far, my asparagus looks great - next year, I get to begin harvesting it. My mesclun salad mix has produced...copious amounts of arugula, and almost nothing else. I thought I'd be getting a salad in a packet of seeds, but I've got like 90% arugula and a tiny bit of one other variety I don't recognize. And it's just too bitter to be its own salad. So - lesson for next year is to diversify a lot more, with several more varieties of lettuce.

My herbs were terrible - most didn't sprout for me this year. I got two oregano plants going. Slugs got my basil (traditional and thai), and also destroyed all but one of my Toscano di Nero kale (an absolute favorite I discovered last year).

Tomatoes sprouted and have grown wonderfully...and fallen prey to tomato blight. Once I found out what it was, I've been pruning ruthlessly and spraying with a sulfur compound. The first 3 to 4 courses of branches on each of my plants is gone, but they're forming nice-looking tomatoes. I hope the plants stay alive long enough to harvest them.

My zucchini and summer squash looked great (they've so far been my one absolutely reliable crop. Who can kill a zucchini?) ... until they started one by one to wilt. A trip to the nursery found the culprit - an inch-long white worm burrowing through the low stem system. Solution: spray for them bugs before they get in. Alternate solution: dig into the stem, find and kill the worm, then cover the stem with more dirt. So, being I caught it so late, I did get one worm out of one of them, and it rallied for about 5 days, wilted leaves stood up again, then gave up the ghost and wilted again.

Rhubarb produced pretty well this year, but the Japanese beetles have really hit them hard. I've never liked Japanese beetles. Many of them end up going for a swim in a bucket with water and just a touch of dish soap, but there always seem to be more.

Beets have been coming along nicely - humongous leaves - but they're STILL tiny. However, the greens have been great with some olive oil, bacon and balsamic vinegar.

I've got some Thai eggplants going this year - last year I couldn't get them above 5 inches tall - this year they're almost 2 feet, flowered and beginning to form eggplants, but we'll see if they really produce.

I started okra, too...they're still about 6 inches tall and I wonder if they'll ever get to maturity.

Pole beans have done well - kind of like my first time with squash, I underestimated the room they'd need. I made a bamboo pole framework, but they need more than a 7 or 8-foot run...I'll know better next year. The Japanese beetles like them a lot, too.

So...I think I've picked crops more wisely this year, and I think I've improved the layout/footprint of the garden a lot. Next year, I'll begin a pre-emptive course of spraying for several pests (fungus and bug). So far, that's been my entire gardening experience - some small triumphs, many lessons/things to try next year, and reversals on previous successes.

Dave

No worries there Martin. I've grown a few tomatoes and peppers, even a squash or two, but on the whole I'm near about useless as a farmer.

I don't so much grow a garden as run a torture center for plants. A place where plant enjoy vibrant early growth that highlight's the later grim end. Once I lay my hands on them they are condemned to stunted growth, extended suffering, and slow death. Those few plants that prosper and bear fruit serve as cruel mockery of the many less fortunate. It seems my grower's thumb is dark as a tomb, cold as death, and always pointing down in condemnation.

On the other hand I have had considerable success helping others grow things. I drove a well that made a dry field fertile. Build raised beds that made waterlogged ground quite productive, and cleared trees. I set up hoops of PVC conduit to carry protection from frost, hail, and birds. I have set up several hydroponic systems. One of which was quite elaborate. As long as I stayed away from the plants themselves the gardens thrived.

I've gotten four zucchini so far; 11oz, 12oz, 13oz, 16oz off the one plant we put down.

Lost one of our 6 tomato plants to the lousy early summer weather, replaced it and that one isn't doing much better either. The others are doing very well.

These plants are giving me satisfaction that my job hasn't given me in a long while!

like most,i have a "fun" garden.just a tomato patch and a few other easy things..if they grow..but if you were planting so you could winter over on what you planted--not you, Art in FL or other Southern types--what would you plant?..cabbage,string beans,potatoes,tomatoes,i'm thinking more bulk and keeping qualities than taste.

/\ I have no idea.

It's true though, it's a fun garden not one designed to keep me alive. I'd like to do more next year, we have the space and we get great sun exposure.

My father grew potatoes for several years when we were small and I'm sure that was not just for fun either.

Art, you have what is commonly known as Black Thumb Syndrome. Some people have overcome it (with strict training), but most back off and use it as an excuse not to do any weeding. Proximity, you know.

Sue

Dave T,

'Salade mesclun' just means 'mixed salad', usually harvested when small. Collect the seeds of varieties you like, mix them together and sow. Arugula would gag a goat.

Try winter sowing your herbs: put in containers with drainage in late November or December, and leave them out in the weather all winter (out of reach of slugs). They will sprout when it's time.
(for more on winter sowing, see Winter Sowing.

To help resist tomato blight, plant far enough apart for good all-around air circulation, and prune off all stems within 12" of the ground. Mulch with straw, hay, leaves or weeds to prevent soil splashing onto the leaves.

Insecticides are less useful every year, as the bugs quickly develop resistance. Use organic fertilizer (look for OMRI on label), it's more complete with 16 nutrients and trace minerals, most chemical fertilizers just provide three (NPK). Healthy plants resist disease and pests better than struggling plants.

Consider chickens, they love Japanese beetles.

Sue

Thanks for the tips Susan...imagining how far to space out my plants has been an ongoing challenge - when you've got a 2-inch-tall sprout you're transplanting, I find the picture in my head of how big it will get and how much space it will need doesn't match up with how big it eventually gets. A couple of my tomato plants are crossing limbs, and I think that's adding to the problems of a fairly high rainfall this year and blight.

I knew that that mesclun would provide a mix - and that was the surprise -that what matured was almost exclusively arugala. When I put it in, there were 5 or 6 different-looking seeds...but the results didn't reflect that.

I'll be sure to mulch the tomatoes early with hay mulch next year, and prune the lower branches off...another thing I read is that bee balm is a good companion to plant with them, so I took some out of my flower beds and put 2-3 small ones in each row of tomatoes...of course, they were small ones and while most of my bee balm was done blooming in June, I've just now seen the first one breaking out into bloom in the vegetable garden...so perhaps next year the timing will work out better.

Another thing that I've been working with and modifying is using the anti-weed roll-out fabric. Last year I used some around my plants - patches of it, and I cut a hole into the fabric for each individual plant.

This year I much more carefully rolled out rows of the fabric and made a pair of slits almost the length of the row (using 3-foot-wide fabric)then made a cross-cut that overlapped the long row cut by about 2 inches in either direction (like a very long, skinny capital I). Then I tuck the flaps back under the fabric, and have a narrow row of exposed dirt for planting either my started seeds or seeds directly into the row - very little exposure of bare dirt, makes it very easy to weed.

However - weeds still grow in the "footpaths" I had between the fabric rows. Sometimes I'm really on top of it and the garden's gorgeous and looks manicured and well-planned, sometimes the weeds get ahead of me and it's pretty ugly...then I do another session of heavy-duty weeding to get back to bare dirt.

I've decided that for next year, I'm stocking up big-time on the weed fabric. I'm going to remove the fabric rows I have now to put down compost and rototill, then I'm going to put down a solid floor of the anti-weed fabric, and just have my row slits to plant - and then I'll have very little weeding to do at all (I don't kid myself that the fabric means "no weeds" - but it will hinder them to the point that it will make a very small work load). Plus, a solid layer of that fabric will keep moisture in the ground, and should help control the dirt splash-up during a rain that helps spread blight. This is another one of those "sounds good in theory to me" plans that we'll see how it works when I actually try it. Like I said, so far every year with a garden has been a "rebuilding year."

Any thoughts on what's going on with this yellowing of the leaves ?

Tomatoes are in raised beds, good soil, excellent sun exposure and get enough water.

Doesn't really seem to be stopping the growth of the plant(s) although I haven't had anything ripen yet.

MarkO, are you feeding them with a chemical fertilizer? If you feed too near the roots, you can get leaf tip burn. If you're getting a lot of lush, green growth and no fruits, you may have overfed them.

Overwatering might cause it, too.

Sue

No chemicals of any kind. Maybe I'll lay off the water a bit as the most affected plant is the one that gets the most water.

Thanks!

Another consideration is the type of water. Water with a lot of dissolved mineral/salts will do something like that to tomatoes and squash. I use well water for a lot of things, but the tomatoes get only collected rainwater. And never water the leaves of a tomato plant!

Hi Mark - can't tell you for sure, but it looks like a very mild case of the tomato blight that my plants were suffering. Mine progressed (rapidly) to fully yellow leaves on the lowest tier, with black spots, yellowing progressing slightly up the branches and then to the next-higher tier of leaves.

There were two products recommended to me, and I went with sulfur plant fungicide - mixed the powder with water and sprayed on the affected leaves...took a couple applications, but it's slowed and apparently controlled what had been a pretty prolific outbreak of the stuff - I had to prune back about two tiers of branches to the stem of the plants, and there's still some yellowing on some of the lowest leaves, but it seems to have stopped spreading, and I've gotten about a half dozen or so tomatoes to ripen, and the rest seem to be progressing fine.

Also, as Susan had suggested earlier in this thread, hay mulch can help - this fungus is apparently airborne, lands all over, then is spread by rain splashing it up to the lowest leaves - then it spreads higher and higher up the plant.

Hope this helps

Dave