What didn't Turn Out Well

My strawberries did not do as well as I would have liked. Eggplant and beets probably are the only other things that did not produce. The pole beans are just unreal and I have more peppers than I ever had and my tomatoes are really doing good. I think I planted them where they got more sun. I have never had this many cucumbers either. The squash is doing pretty good. I did not plant a lot, but we have had plenty to eat.

Along with the squash, the other vining plants must have appreciated the slighty-warmer June. Probably, it was just that they could perform normally in their early development. As the July heat set in, they took off!

I say all vining but my volunteer pole beans have not done well. They must have just started too early. What were they thinking?!

The Buttercup squash are real nice, Talladega cucumbers are having their 2nd great year, the lemon cukes came on strong and must be earlier than ever, and the Rock Star pumpkins look better than any rock stars!

This must not be the best year to assess Alvaro Charentais melons and the La Madera squash - 2 new to me varieties. As @Jared77 says, I can't control the weather. I don't know if I would have decreed this much heat. It would have been nice if I could have prevented the tomatoes from having been blown to smithereens!

A lot of these weather "things" have to do with timing, as @Ridgerunner suggests. It does help me to have gardens in multiple locations and multiple garden crops, helps, too.

If I could pay Benjamin Bunny, the spider mites in the dahlias, and what are likely raccoons that are showing up in the corn to just go away! Life would be better but, it would probably break the bank.

Steve

I got a little eggplant, but the plants were decimated by some kind of spider mite. The leaves turned brown and were covered with webs. We sprayed insecticidal soap, but they keep coming back.

I can say the Alvaro melon is absolutely delicious @digitS' , a new variety for me also. We have a problem with mice this year. Some of my melons are full-slip varieties, others are not, and the patch is an impenetrable mess. This year I learned to just search for the first few mouse nibbles on the rind, and pick immediately. It has worked like a charm, except I missed one of the Alvaro's and the mice had hollowed it out.

Tons of peppers and tomatoes, but I'm still waiting for ripe San Marzano's. Onions are a little small this year, so I'm glad we grew a lot.

We built a greenhouse early this spring. Well, got it started anyway - a hoophouse. It didn't get done early enough to use it as a greenhouse for this year, but I planted stuff in there anyway (we didn't put the plastic on). Everything in there got aphids and just looked puny. Except my basil, which got yanked when DH was helping by pulling weeds. To be fair, it wasn't labeled, and it was surrounded by weeds. We had put old cow and horse manure in there, and soil on top of that. DH is thinking that there was maybe too much manure, not enough soil, and the plants got burned. I'm going to dig it all out and start again next year.

I wonder if aphids are attracted to plants with too much nitrogen ... might be. Once the aphids are in good numbers, there goes any benefit all that nitrogen might have had! "Dig it all out, @bobbi-j ?? Turning it wouldn't be good enuf?

Mites. I wonder if that is some of the problem my soybeans had. I often pull green beans after they produce because the mites love them. Shoot. Little edamame but there's some tofu if I want it ...

Insecticidal soap should kill mites and aphids both.
It's a contact spray, of course. Probably doesn't harm the eggs and those spider mites - whatta they got, like a 9 hour generation?! Probably like aphids and born pregnant ...

My eggplant looks fine - mostly. I did find a few potato bugs on them this year but this wasn't a bad year for those pests. Not many flower thrips either. Surprise, surprise !

Steve

That's an interesting thought about aphids and nitrogen Steve.
One year I had a monumental amount of aphids on the backs of the sunflower leaves. I've never seen anything so infested, the backs of the leaves were absolutely solid with them. it was just stomach turning. I hosed them, I sprayed them with a homemade soap spray, I squished them by hand, but they persisted and multiplied no matter what I did. The chickens enjoyed the leaves when I would give up and yank the worst ones off.

Now that you mention it, I wonder if the amount of nitrogen in the soil had a part in that heavy crop of aphids. I had amended that area well with chicken coop cleanings, and in fact the sunflowers were planted around the outside of the pen to provide shade...

seedcorn said:

spider mites get into soybean fields and can get so bad that they will kill areas. In gardens, the pesticides we use on fields would not be a good thing.

Those that say that pesticides increase spider mites are living in a dream world. By the time the predator insects get enough numbers to be effective the damage is already done.

In a garden, I'd suggest watering the plants 2X a day. Spider mites have a hard time w/wet conditions.

Click to expand...

That quote is from Seedcorn here: (LINK)

I've just been dealing with the spider mites in the dahlias. I'll find that picture of my sprayer and post it in the pest forum.

Steve

Well, it's hard to say. A lot of bad things happened to my garden this year, but they all ended up being something wonderful. So here goes:

1. My radishes were small, puny little things that refused to grow into large fat radish-looking radishes. However, they were my first taste of real food EVER and they were soooooooooo good they switched my eating habits for good. Yum.

2. My broccoli failed to perform yet again this year, but they actually lived! The fact that they lived is an exciting turn of events, and next year I will try with a different variety. "Pacman".

3. My corn was flattened by someone in my neighborhood, but I learned how to deal with the situation, and how to recover a corn crop. A valuable skill.

So some bad, some good, but a silver lining on all the bad. YAY!

@AMKuska what is your winter climate? I am asking because our winters are mild and I grow broccoli in the fall through spring. As soon as it warms up, it bolts. Last year, we got snow twice and one ice storm. Of course, what we call a snow storm here is a joke to most on this forum. But the broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower still lived and produced.

The weather in winter is pretty unpredictable here. Sometimes it never snows, sometimes it snows several times. Sometimes it is bitterly cold and sometimes not so bad. It always freezes though, at least at night, at some point during the winter.