An Cooking

Midsummer Garden Report A Dreadful Year

This has been the most difficult of the 4 years we have been gardening, by far. I am hearing lots of lamenting from other gardeners too. One person said it was the worst year in the 34 years he has been gardening. Ouch.


Mind you, we are still persevering. Above, we planted our leeks in the "wet" bed in the usual way. Note how dry it looks. Yeah, thats right. We have had about 80ml of rain since APRIL 1st. We should have had northwards of 400ml by now.



Mr. Ferdzy whacks those holes in the ground to drop in the leeks.


And I water them in. Cant tell you how many hours we have spent watering this year. Up over a hundred by now, I would say.


Were getting better (and by we, lets face it, I mean Mr. Ferdzy) at getting those trellises up. They do help keep the veggies neat and organized, which is more important than you might think when it comes to harvesting. Especially since we grow a lot of indeterminate heirlooms, which tend to be long and rangy plants compared to most modern varieties, which tend to be more compact.


One of the advantages to the larger heirloom plants is showing up in the tomatoes. We  have septoria spot again this year, and the compact little Bellestar are again in a race to produce anything before they lose all their leaves and die. I think next year we cant grow them, even though in theory they produce so much in such a small spot. Above, Mr. Ferdzy attempts to stem the tide of septoria spot by removing the most badly affected leaves. This was a week ago; I cant tell if it helped. New leaves are turning yellow and spotted daily. Ho hum.


My own pile of yellow spotted leaves waiting removal to the garbage - I do do a few things around the garden besides take pictures. When we remove diseased plant materials we throw them away, rather than put them into the compost. The compost should be hot enough to kill them, but it isnt guaranteed by any means. Better safe than sorry.

We had septoria spot last year, as well as bean yellow mosaic. Bean yellow mosaic looks like its back too, along with squash yellow mosaic. All these things are transmitted by insects. I read an article in the spring about how many butterflies are around this year - 10 times as many as usual of one variety - and wasnt that lovely? Yeah, thats lovely. Not so lovely is the fact that we have about 10 times as many of a whole lot of other things. Im seeing insects Ive never seen before in my life this year, a lot. Its practically a daily occurance.


Melons, in the foreground, are way behind where we expected them to be with all this heat. They have been swarmed by cucumber beetles and squash bugs since the day we planted them out. We have been picking them (bugs not plants) and dropping them into the "jar of death"  (water with a little soap, so they drown quickly). We probably had about 50% mortality in our early melon and cucumber transplants, and have had to reseed most of them.

Weve given up on trying to pick the cucumber beetles. We probably picked several thousand of them before we conceeded that there was no way we were keeping  up. The squash bugs have been more successfully controlled. We water the plants thoroughly, wait for them to climb up on the leaves to get dry, then pick them off. Their numbers are more in the dozens than in the hundreds. However, there are certainly still enough to kill plants. Where do they keep coming from?


Zucchini are particularly hard hit by the cucumber beetles and squash bugs. Weve yanked out a couple that were the first to show signs of the yellow squash mosaic virus.


Didnt do any good though; the rest are starting to show signs of it too. Goodbye zucchini. We might get a few before they are too badly affected to eat.


Peas and squash in the "wet" bed look fairly good from a distance. We are watering these just as much as any of the other beds, which is annoying. They are inconvenient to water - the whole point was that they were in a low, wet spot and wouldnt NEED watering. Maybe next year.

The peas are dying down, which is fine. They are an early summer veg, and we left 2 varieties to produce seed rather than picking them.


Cucumbers show how badly off they are - half of these died and the other half are pretty stunted. Havent had time to get them up on tomato cages yet, but it hardly matters.


Another pretty view of the garden, looking very structural. Mr. Ferdzy added some more yesterday, these ones for electric fencing to go around the corn.


The corn has been attacked by the cucumber beetles, and is a bit spotty but mostly outgrew them. However, something has been knocking them over and chewing the stems.


More chewing damage. The electric fence has not kept whatever critter it is out. We thought rabbits or raccoons, but maybe it was squirrels or rats. I did see a rat when I was weeding yesterday - first one Ive seen in 4 years. It was big and fat and sleek - cute as a button, really. Like a lot of cute as a button critters I was nevertheless not entirely pleased to see it. Rat-traps, ahoy.

The animals have been relentless this year. A mild winter, followed by the dreadful lack of water, has meant there are a lot of them and they are all desperate for anything moist and juicy; otherwise known as our garden. Also, the next door neighbour used to feed all the local stray cats. He moved out this month and stopped feeding them last month, and they have dispersed. All the things they used to keep away are coming back. I think thats why we have the rat, actually.

Overall, we are very discouraged. We are doing twice as much work as usual and will probably get half to two-thirds the usual harvest. Maybe. Dont know what else to say; we are not the only ones. The apple harvest around  here will fall somewhere between dismal and non-existant, and Niagara isnt doing much better that I can tell. Local grain fields look okay; but hearing that the U.S. is going to have a noticeably diminished crop.

Hows it going where you are?