Putting pitiful gardens to bed

I need help and suggestions on what to do now to lessen or prevent some of these problems next year. I'm to the point of just giving up on growing vegetables, because the quality and quanity isn't worth the time I'm investing trying to keep the weeds down, etc.

This has been my worst garden year ever...I've had powdery mildew, the eggplant leaves were eaten as soon as they emerged, mature grapes & broccoli leaves attacked as well but with a different look, tomatoes have black spots & dead leaves, green beans had a rusty look, corn earworms, had the locusts this year, flying grasshoppers, a whole colony of moles to the point it's dangerous walking in the paths for fear of twisting ankles, squash bugs wiped out the zucchini & crooknecks, huge weeds ie; one that looks similar to corn & a huge clumping variety. Even my ornamentals around the yard have been affected with powdery mildew, black spots, dropping leaves, etc.

What did well....asparagus, head lettuce, jalapenos, bell peppers recently, herbs, onions, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes look good but haven't dug them up yet and melons which were planted around the young fruit trees. Japanese beetles were minimal this year.

I haven't done a soil test yet. The soil is loose enough I can dig potaotes with my hands. I've used RoundUp on the walkways, but the weeds just keep coming back. We use a lot of grass clippings (fescue hay) to mulch the rows to help keep weeds down & retain moisture. I have removed the worst infected plants for burning. I used a soap/pepper spray for bugs and perioxide/water spray for powdery mildew. Have metal windmills and pinwheels for the moles, but apparently they like them because the moles are getting worse. I bought a lot of castor bean seeds, but am concerned about whether I can plant them near the garden. I did just buy 2 packages of poison peanuts for the moles. I've been reading about milky spore, but wouldn't be able to put it down till the end of October. There's a walnut tree 150' to 200' from the garden. I heard many years agos that tomatoes won't develope well around walnut trees. Could this be part of my problem?


I live on an open hilltop, hot days and cool nights with heavy fog or dew every night. I'm going to pull the dead plants out. I had planned on working the mulch into the soil to decompose over the winter, but am now having second thoughts.

Any suggestions for a course of action?



This message was edited Oct 12, 2008 8:56 AM

msrobin, don't get too disheartened - some years stuff just happens. Of the specific things you mentioned, the walnut tree is far enough away not to be a factor, and I'd not hesitate to turn the mulch in and let it decay. Other folks can offer bettter suggestions about the diseases and pests than I can.

In gardens years like this, it's good that we don't have to rely on our personal crops for survival. And one can recognize why farmers whose livelihood depends on production do what they do to combat the things you're talking about.

Hang in there.


Frank

[quote]Any suggestions for a course of action?[unquote] May i suggest some light reading here -

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=5178693

OOOphs see you have already been there!

This message was edited Oct 12, 2008 12:47 PM

This message was edited Oct 12, 2008 1:06 PM

Frank, this was by far the worst garden in the 6 years we've been here. It sure seems like each year just gets worse. It's also the first time I've been here to "close" the garden in the fall, so was wondering what I can do now for a better garden next year.

I've been out digging sweet potatoes since the first post. Got about a bushel's worth out of 12 plants, so was pretty pleased with that, but about half of them are pretty small. I couldn't find plants till the end of June, though, so I think they just didn't have enough time in the ground. I'm leaving Tueday for 10 days (headed out to see Hineni and Darius) and some of the leaves were dead already and I didn't want to take a chance on the frost hitting them before I get back.

I had covered the walkways with grass clippings too, which helped a lot with keeping weeds down. After digging out the sweet potatoes, I went ahead and worked the mulch from the row itself and the walkway on either side into the dirt to a depth of about 12". Guess I'll do that to all the rows as I'm pulling out dead plants. As soon as weeds start popping up in the walkways next spring, I'll spray with RoundUp a time before I plant.

I forgot to mention that I do rotate the rows.

Dyson, I loved your article!

Does the fescue hay you're using to mulch have seed heads on it? You could be adding weeds to your garden if it does. I always use clean wheat straw since it has no seeds. DH disks it in at the end of garden season and we put a cover crop of clover for the winter which we disk in come spring. This adds compost and nitrogen.

This place was a hayfield when we bought it. DH keeps about 3 acres mowed for a yard, so no seed heads. We don't use the bagged clippings from the fist couple of mowings for mulch. It generally goes into the chicken coop and the goat house. I've read a lot about cover crops, but haven't done it yet. I usually don't do anything to the garden in the fall, because we usually have to leave town before I get to it. In the spring, I would work the mulch in from the previous year.

Definitely don’t give up! It sounds as though you’re on your way to a wonderful garden and are doing a lot of great things with it. Doing some fall clean up can really go a long way towards preventing problems the next year so it’s fantastic that you’re getting the chance to do that this year.

It sounds as if there are a lot of different issues going on but since you’re already rotating crops the next two biggest things you can do is get that diseased/insect damaged material off your property. You want to make sure that material doesn’t end up getting tilled in or thrown into the compost since home composts aren’t generally hot kept hot enough to kill most diseases and throwing powdery mildew into a compost typically only helps the spores to overwinter safely.

The same goes for any weeds that have gone to seed – if you toss them into the compost they could very likely just end up coming back again next year when you lay out the compost in the garden. If you’re mowing the surrounding area that’s a great thing for keeping down the weed seed population and eliminating harborage for garden pests.

Are the weeds primarily a problem in the garden beds or also a problem in the rows between the beds?

~Amanda

Thanks for the input! The weeds are on the entire property. That was why DH keeps so much mowed and I was resorting to mulching the rows and paths. The one (Johnson Grass, maybe) has a large root that grows horizontally just below the surface and sends up lots of new plants. I found it grows AT the surface under mulch. and is easier to pull out.

Been burning diseased and mature plants with seeds.

See, you're already on your way to garden greatness!

Mulching the rows and paths both is great - something that I've found with the creeping weed varieties is that you can yank them out of the beds all you like but as long as they're still around the edge of your garden or rows they'll still crawl into your beds (sounds like a bad horror move ;)). However, once you get them away from the area surrounding your beds then you're no longer dealing with new infestations - just working on pulling out and exhausting the roots that are already there.

One of the big things about mulches though is that most are preventatives. A properly laid down mulch on an area that has been cleared of weeds can prevent existing weed seeds in the soil from germinating and can make new seeds that drift in easier to remove. But if a mulch is laid down on top of persistent weeds that are still growing, chances are good that they'll soon grow back up through the mulch.

What has worked for me in areas with actively growing weeds that were too prevalent to hand pull is to lay down non-glossy newspaper (it needs to be several sheets thick) or cardboard (depending on whether it's for a bed or a row) and then lay a more attractive mulch on top of that. The newspaper/cardboard completely excludes light to the live weeds beneath it and kills all but the most tenacious of weed varieties by the time it breaks down. Then your standard mulch that's on top of the newspaper/cardboard eventually takes over and continues to keep out future weeds.

What also can work well for the rows and immediate area around the garden is to lay down landscaping fabric then decorative mulch on top of that. It works as a long term weed barrier that, unlike plastic, still allows water penetration. It's also a preventative though, so if you lay it on top of grass or other perennial weeds, it won't necessarily kill them (because it does still allow light and water penetration) and they may grow through it. But if you lay down newspaper underneath the row cloth when you're installing it that usually takes care of most of the perennials.

Another very helpful fall cleaning thing you can do to keep weeds out of the bed for next year is to cover your beds for the winter. If you leave the soil exposed all winter that's months during which they can collect and grow weeds, however if the soil is covered then you're cutting down on new weeds seeds being added and old ones germinating.

And it doesn't work for everyone since some people primarily maintain gardens through tilling, but if possible, if you can disturb the soil as little as possible it really goes a long way towards preventing the germination of existing weed seeds in the soil. Every time the soil is turned new weed seeds are being brought to surface and many of those annoying fellows have seed lifespans that we all only dream of our 'good' garden plants of having (scotch broom for example, has a potential seed viability of up to 50 years).

The other alternative if you do seasonal tilling is to do your tilling a little early and give the seeds that have been brought to the surface time to germinate at which point you can deal with them before your garden crops are planted.

~Amanda

On the weeds... just a thought but in my experience... when I use RoundUp (and I do) it kills what is presently growing but seems to give the weeds and bad stuff a toe hold. No real experience with Johnson grass but I think smother mulching with newsprint and cardboard would help. Tilling also seems to exacerbate some of these problems by chopping up the roots to make more starts of weeds.

Thanks for the input!

Just got back from vacation...will remark later.

Don't give up. The bright side of failing with some crops is that you become a better gardener by figuring out what went wrong. I really struggled with cucumbers this year and, believe it or not, radishes. Radishes have always been the easiest things to grow and this year I couldn't get a decent radish to save my life! My winter project is to figure out what went wrong and correct it for next year. That's a big part of the fun for me. If gardening was easy all the time it would get boring, IMO :)