What's going on with your Veggie Garden: Part 3

kev, you might want to look at mosquito netting at an army surplus store instead of bird netting. The downside with actual bird nettting is that birds get caught in it and then you have to deal with releasing them from it or prying them out of it if you don't notice in time to release them. army surplus stores sell mosquito netting designed to fit over a cot. It works really well in my garden. Maybe you could rig something like this if you don't have a structure already to hang the netting from.

These beds are 4'x6', the pvc is 10', the netting is a perfect fit.

Hope this helps.

Pure genius!

I think that would definitely keep the Stinkbugs off the tomatoes!!!

Mary, do you mind if I pin this on Pinterest?

This message was edited Jun 6, 2012 1:23 PM

I don't know what pinterest is but don't see why not....whatever.

The downside to this enclosure is bees cannot enter for pollination purposes. At this time only tomatoes are being protected by the netting and the air temp is in the triple digits so no tomatoes will pollinate anyway. Just keeping the birds off the already set tomatoes while they ripen.

Thanks Mary, my problem is my tom plants are almost 6 1/2' tall and on the corner of a raised bed. I would probably need about 50 square feet of netting... Plus, we've got zucchini right next to them and they are really packed tightly against the tom plants. I've got some 5' light-duty fence posts and had planned on criss-crossing them with PVC to make a hoop house-like set up.

Next spring the only thing going in the raised bed will be zucchini, cukes, & squash. Tomatoes are going into containers exclusively. Easier to move if need different spacing, diseased plants or things like that. With the catastrophe that befell Cricket, I will try to eliminate one variable out of the equation...or at least have a quick solution..

#1 & #2 Tomato end of raised bed, Big Beef, parks Whoppers plus 2 Roma plants...

#3 Cukes with a solitary cantaloupe, the only one the leaf-footed hasn't killed yet...

Kev,
You say a Leaf-footed Stinkbug killed off your cantaloupes? That's a new one on me.

I thought it was the Squash Vine Borer that damages/kills the vining plants.

MaryMcP
If I pointed you to Pinterest, you'd never be over here. It's an online pinboard (bulletin boards you set up for yourself to "pin" stuff you run across on the web).

Each board is a personal bulletin board of things you want in that category. I "pinned" your mosquito netted RB picture to my board entitled "Gardening Tips!"

Linda

kevcarr59, the only way I have found to beat the birds is to pick at first blush. I've tried netting, a 410 ga shotgun, water nearby which only brought in flocks of birds.

LOL!
That sounds like that new weed killer commercial! The lawn care guy sprays a pristine lawn to kill one weed. Next morning, the homeowner steps outside to find the whole lawn dead. The only thing standing is that one weed! Hilarious!

Know your enemy!

Can I vent a bit here? This is turning out to be an awful garden year.

This winter, I lost a walnut tree. It rotted at the ground level. Granted it was a low spot, but it was on a slope and I piled up a mound of dirt to plant it in to drain even more.

Last year the apples nearly died. They look a little better this year. I have my fingers crossed.

Slugs ate almost all of my fall and spring crops. Aphids got the lettuce.

Two of my tomatoes looked happy one day and two days later they just up and died like they hadn't been watered in months -- the ones next to them are fine.

Two if my peppers out front got some kind of wilt and died. The ones out back have some sort of fungus rot on the fruit.

I just got the pathology report back yesterday -- every single one of my peaches, nectarines and plums have a massive infestation of bacterial spot. I can either remove them and never plant another prunus sp. or watch them die over the next couple of years.

Just as I was getting resigned to that, I looked out the window today and saw a wilted squash. It's not THAT hot today and the ground is moist. Yep, the dread SVB, which I've luckily never had before. Every single one of my vines has been hit, and that's a lot of vines since squash was this year's experimental crop. I tried the surgery technique on all the vines except the worst one. I pulled it up and it had NINE of them!

Granted, the garlic crop was awesome and I can't complain about the peas. The kohlrabi survived the leaves being eaten to lace. And basil is inevitable, right? But that those might be my only victories this year.

I've had those years and mine"s not starting much better, condolences.Your luck and plants will improve with time though,all things change.(hopefully for the better)!!!!

NicoleC,
If possible, try to see the glass half full. Use these setbacks as an opportunity to clear the pallette, start with a blank slate, as it were, and begin afresh, again.

►Build your list of new veggies to try.
►Run soil tests in the interim to see if there's a problem there.
►Assess what was working in the beginning, and try to deduce what happened so you don't repeat the same mistakes (if it was something you decide you did...)

There are many, many, many more seasons ahead!

Linda

Pulled the snap peas (they were done) and planted a few Toms and swiss chard.

I planted chard much earlier and even my lettuce is still good. Knock on wood.

Ever the optimist, Linda!

This is only my 3rd year in this house, so I've been in the honeymoon phase I suppose. I plan to be here for at least a few more decades so I've been careful to do things the right way the first time (or at least as much as there is a "right.") I've put a TON of work into the place and it shows, and while I expect losses this year has just been really hard. I got a fancy soil test this year that covers even micronutrients so I have a pretty good handle on where I need to pay attention. I found it very funny that the soil lab tech could even tell me I'd been using tons of municipal compost, because he told me to lay off it for a few years. :)

What am I doing new? Well, I'm growing new stuff. The BF likes the winter stuff so I've been planting way more of that, and every year I experiment with a new kind of veggie to find my best varieties.

When it comes to disease, I back up to many acres of woods and many of my neighbors have gardened for ages. The diseases are lurking in the wild and the bugs as well established.

I haven't even chopped down the fruit trees and I'm already measuring and planning my garden expansion. My BF isn't saying anything but I can tell he's pondering the amount of work this fall. :)

P.S. New garden design thread here if anyone wants to join in:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1263915/

Geez..I thought I was safe with basil.

NicoleC I have had seasons like that. But the summer of 2010 was the worst (last year was bad but the weather was bad dry and hot) but 2010 everything I planted in one area died I'm not talking a small area. That garden is 50' x 75' so being optimistic is one thing but being realistic is another. All the money and time is something else. If I had a smaller area being optimistic would have been easier....I hate that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I use the vacuum attachment on our weed blower (which we never use) to grind the leaves up to smaller pieces. It works great. Hope this idea is helpful to you.

Yesterday I pulled all the pea vines. Today I started pulling the garlic.

The trellis on which the peas were growing is filling up with melon vines.

The garlic will be replaced with some bush beans.

The "Monica" tomatoes are growing, but sadly much of the fruit has BER :(

Honeybees are visiting the garden! YAY!

Summer Relatives, perhaps? LOL!

Honey - for the BER, someone on another forum told me she finely ground egg shells and scratched them into the soil. Claims she noticed immeditate improvement. fwiw, 2nd hand.

Mary - thanks for the egg shell tip. I've tried that without success. I add an abundant amount of crab shell to my garden every year, and that helps to some extent.

My theory is that when tomato plants grow faster than their roots can draw up nutrients it causes BER. I have some other paste types growing in an area that gets more shade and they are producing fewer tomatoes. So far they have no BER.

I'm going to test different things each year until I come up with a solution (if I live that long!) LOL

Gymgirl -