Drama in my garden

Well I have had so many problems with my first garden I think I might be cursed. After all of the dog drama was fixed I am now having other problems. Any help and suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I would like to harvest something from the garden this year. Here is a list of what I planted and the problems I am having with them:

1. carrots - no problems so far although only 11 have sprouted

2. green onions - no problems here yet

3. corn - dog broke them all, replanted them, about 1 week into new plants

4. turnips - greens grew beautifully but when it was time to harvest roots were nothing, no turnip at all

5. icicle radishes - same as the turnips, greens were great looking but no radish, I even waited 2 extra weeks but nothing. replanted the red kind 1 week ago no problems yet.

6. zucchini - dog killed all but one. the leaves started getting wilty and I noticed teeny tiny brown bugs had taken over the underside of the leaves. sprayed with a neem product and the next day they were dead. replanted 1 week ago and the new seedlings are already wilty and infested with bugs.

7. pickling cucumbers - lost all of these to the dog, replanted and dog dug them up again, replanted 1 week ago and so far so good (put up rabbit fencing to keep dog out).

8. pole beans - aside from dog digging them up, no problems

9. small pie pumpkins - these have the same bugs as the zucchini, lost one out of 6 after spraying with neem. these also have white spots on them that the local nursery gardener said neem would take care of. no change seen yet and they still have the bugs.

10. small watermelons - dog killed all but 1 and it is getting wilty and has the bugs, these never really grew very well, it is about 2 months old and it still looks like a seedling.

11. acorn squash - these were my best looking plants until I lost most of them to the dog. the last plant was looking good and had some flowers until this weekend it started looking wilty and I noticed the tiny bugs on it. sprayed it with neem and it was dead the next day.

12. tomatoes - I have only 2 plants, 1 early girl and 1 grape variety, the early girl is big and has fruit that is about golf ball size maybe a bit bigger but the fruit will not get any bigger and have begun ripening at that size. is this ok? the leaves have started turning a gold color recently. the grape size one seems to be fine but has not gotten any bigger than 1 and a half feet in over 2 months and no fruit so far.

So these are my dilemas. Any advice is really appreciated. I really want to eat some veggies this year so I am hoping maybe some of these issue can be resolved and my plants saved.

Hello annabelle790,

You have had an exciting year, huh!? It's hard to say for sure what's going on with your plants without a bit more information. What date did you plant? Did you start from seed or plant?

Here is my best guess on what's happening with your carrots, turnips, and radishes:

These take a LONG TIME to mature. I planted mine from seed in May and finally just pulled them all out last weekend. That's about three months to mature. Even when the greenery on top is huge, the root underneath may still be very small. Again, if you know what date you planted, that will help determine what is going on.

Good luck!

Here is a link to some photos of different plants.

http://cid-ff7175b3bdc7ebff.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/My%20Garden

kbumgar, I started everything from seed except tomatoes. I planted everything on June 26, so it has been about 8 weeks now. If what you say is correct about radishes and turnips taking a long time I am gonna cry because the nursery guy told me I should pull them and replant so I did. I know carrots take a really long time so I am not worrying about them yet. This is a photo of what the turnip roots looked like when I pulled them yesterday, the radishes looked very similar.

annabelle790 -

I think part of the problem is this:

Carrots, turnips and radishes are cool season crops. Planted in June I think it is just too hot for them. You will get greens but it is too hot for the root to grow. Tomatoes will not set fruit when temps get in the 90s, especially when the temps don't cool down much at night. Keep your plants well watered and happy and once the temps start cooling down you should get tomatoes again. I lived in Tucson for a number of years and although you all are a bit cooler than us here in Phoenix, our climates are similar enough.

The bugs sound like maybe aphids if they are very small? I'm organic and try to stay away from even neem. A good blast from the hose or insecticidal soap works well for aphids. Ladybugs and lacewings are natural predators of aphids, but seem to shy away from the garden in the heat of summer.

Here is a link to the low desert planting calendar that I use as a guideline. It will give you a general idea of what crops are planted when. Like I said, you all are a bit cooler than us with a little more rain, but this should be helpful. Maybe the agricultural extension through U of A will have one more suited to the Tucson area.

Hope this helps a little. I read about your dog dilemna on the other thread. I have a Yorkie who is a digger by nature, so most of my stuff is fenced or located where he can't dig it up.

Kelly

http://www.yourguidetogreen.com/TheUrbanFarm/wp-content/uploads/Planting_Calendar.pdf

Kelly, Thanks for the info. I learned after I planted, that I had started too early. I was just very excited to start and one of the local nurseries gave me a list of veggies that could be planted year round here so I planted stuff off that list. I don't think I will be using neem anymore. Every time I use it, it seems my plants end up worse off than they were before. I will look into the aphid thing and see what solutions they have for them. Thanks again for the info.

You're very welcome! The fall planting season is almost here. I have already planted winter squash and pole beans and have lots of peppers and eggplant and herbs that made it through the summer. I'm so ready to be able to plant carrots and greens and broccoli again - yum! That calendar is a great guide. Best of luck with your fall/winter garden.

Hi Annabelle790--
Sorry to hear about your frustrating garden. I know just how discouraging it can be--trust me! ☺

I completely agree with locakelly about the temperatures being one of your big problems. We have kind of a good news/bad news scenario down here. The bad news is that we can't follow traditional planting schedules (and whatever nursery you went to, I would be highly skeptical of because I don't think they're very familiar with our growing climate to give you the advice you got); the good news is that we can grow some sort of veggies year round.

It looks like locakelly sent you a good garden calender link; here's another one I like specific for Tucson: http://www.communityfoodbank.com/pdf/plantingguide_new.pdf

On your tomatoes, if you're getting any right now, you're on the right track--as locakelly said, they won't set fruit when it's too hot, so I wouldn't worry about them for the moment.

I have two other ideas about problems you might be having. First, how deeply did you dig your garden soil? If you're gardening straight into good old Tucson soil, you need to dig deeper than you expect your root systems to be growing (which for tomatoes can be pretty deep), remove any caliche, and amend with stuff that will promote good drainage. If you don't go down very far, the roots often can't penetrate, and you'll get smaller plants.

On the plants that turned brown and shriveled up when you sprayed them, are they in full sun? Wet surfaces in our version of full sun have a tendency to burn. If you need to spray, it's often a good idea to do so either on a cloudy day, or in the early evening when they won't get fried with the sun.

Hope that helps!

Hi annabelle790,

Thanks for the photo! Yeah, I am afraid that your turnip should have been further along that little root with the greenery being so large. It sounds like the others that have responded are really familiar with your climate there in AZ, and the heat may very well be to blame.

On the bright side, if this ever happens again, you can have lovely turnip & radish greens! I actually turned a ton of my beet greens into sautes and salads. It was wonderful, and it was so nice to use the whole plant (not just the root).

Thanks for sharing and try again when it gets a bit cooler! Best of luck to you.

Karen

You're so right about the greens, Karen! I don't particularly like beets all that much, but we sure grow lots of them just for the greens!

tucsonjill, When I was tilling I went about 8 inches deep and then added about 4 more inches of ammendment and mulch. As for the plants that shriveled up and died, I sprayed with the neem product at around 5am and the plants are in full sun until around 9am then they are shaded by my sun shade I crudely built. So for the hottest part of the day and evening they are shaded. My mom had some thoughts as to why the roots may not have developed, she said that pumpkins use up a lot of nutrients and tend to suck them up from the dirt and this can affect any plants in the vicinity. She said this may be the reason why the tops grew and the roots did not. She said that if I want to save the rest of my garden I should pull up my pumpkin plants. Any thoughts? When I was pulling up the turnips I thought about using the greens but to be honest I have no idea how and I figured they would go bad before I learned a recipe so I just tossed them in the compost. I am trying not to get too upset about the whole situation because this was an experimental garden to begin with and I think I have decided that in the spring I will be raising my garden to hopefully give my plants more root growing room if thats what they need.

On the radishs and turnips: It is probably still to hot for them. You also might have them to thick. Ususally the radishs will ignore being to thick and mature some and as you pull these the others will develop. Turnips that are to thick just won't boll right.

" . . . . this was an experimental garden to begin with . . . . "

Yep, first gardens are, even if that wasn't our intention . . . LOL . . . so hang in there.

The hardest thing for me to figure out here in the hot, sunny, low humidity desert was how to keep soil moisture at a good level. At first, I'd water once or twice a day, but it just didn't work well. A lot of continuing effort, and forgetting or being away for a day or two created problems.

My solution is a bit of initial effort, but once done, watering slowly and deeply two or three times a week keeps the plants happy and healthy. I use horse hay (not cow hay), both as an amendment and as mulch. Now, someone's likely to chime in here and say "Never use hay - I did it and weeds, weeds, weeds". That just hasn't been my experience in the four years I've used the horse hay. In fact, the hay mulch virtually eliminates sprouting of wind borne seeds. Looks nice, too. Alfalfa hay, usually the least cost horse hay, releases nitrogen in the soil.

Here's the process. When I make a new bed, I dig out and set aside about six inches of the underlying soil in a 2' x 2' area. I lay in a 3 or 4 inch flake of hay, put the original soil on top of the hay, and repeat for the entire bed. Then I saturate the covering soil, hay, and underlying soil with water. Uncomposted hay I keep moist and weather for a couple of months before tilling and planting. Well composted hay, which I occassionally have, I can till and plant in within a few days.

I plant new seedlings in un-mulched, bare soil - otherwise, the pillbugs which live under and feed on decomposing mulch can damage the seedlings. When the seedlings' stems are thicker and harder I mulch the entire bed with a 3 or 4 inch flake of hay. One thing, the fruit of melons and cantaloupes will rot pretty quickly if left to develop on top of the mulch, so I trail the runners onto bare ground off the mulch.

" . . . pumpkins use up a lot of nutrients . . . . pull up my pumpkin plants . . . "

The one pumpkin we grew here tried to conquer the world, so I can't speak from much experience. Still, lightly fertilizing the neighboring plants would overcome any deficiency the pumpkins might cause. Having well developed pumpkin plants in August sets you up for a good fall crop as the weather cools. Not sure I'd want to yank them.

A characteristic of some desert soils is alkilinity (high pH) which is sometime minor and sometime significant. If the pH is only 7.5 or 8, amending with hay as described above will neutralize the pH. Be cautious about adding lime, which increases pH - good for acid soils, a disadvantage for alkiline. A soil test is the way to find out.


Frank

(edited fro clarity)






This message was edited Aug 28, 2009 9:47 AM

annabelle790,
Fence or kill the dog