By this time in the garden…about 5 weeks after planting everything…we are seeing some successes and some failures. Frustrating, but totally expected. Between the weather and the bugs, it is almost guaranteed that some plants do very well and others don’t. Things can change even in few days. Ahh, the adventure of gardening! Thank goodness for the Farmers’ Market and even the produce in the grocery store.
It has been 15 days since our last measurable rain. We’ve had some dark and cloudy days, a little sprinkle now and then. We know this because Bert has tracked our rainfall for over 20 years, every day from March 1 to November 30. Our rain gauge measures to the 100th of an inch. Remember, Bert’s an engineer!
Two weeks ago, the cucumber plants that Bert started indoors back in April were doing very well.
Over the last few days, I even found 4 small cucumbers that I ate immediately! Yummy! Yesterday the plants were wilting and even with watering they did not perk up. Absolutely dead! With a little online research, Bert found that the culprit was probably a bacteria in the soil. That particular raised garden has had the same problem over the years…first with strawberries and last year with cucumbers. Looks like we need to try to find seeds/plants that are resistant to that issue, or at least plant something else there. Anyway, Bert pulled out the dead plants.
Now how about the rest of the garden! My raised planter is doing well. My second batch of radishes are almost ready and the lettuce has been picked and replanted.
That’s the tour. We certainly don’t grow all the vegetables we like to eat, but over time we’ve decided to let local growers handle the things we don’t have room for (like corn) or the things we don’t eat very much of (like squash and potatoes). Every other year or so I’ll go to the Farmers’ Market at the end of the season and pick up a pile of cucumbers to make relish, or even tomatoes and make ketchup. Our carrots will stay in the ground until probably Thanksgiving and we’ll just dig them up as we need them.
The older we get we know which vegetables are labor intensive and which we don’t want to mess with anymore. As the season goes on, I’ll start preserving any abundant vegetables by canning, freezing or dehydrating. More on that as I do it!
Please comment or email me directly if you have questions at marykisner@comcast.net.
Hi Aunt Mary,
What I’ve learned recently is that many garden crops need to be rotated routinely because of bacteria or fungus… tomatoes, peppers…I didn’t know about cucumbers, but I’m not surprised. Once I figured out where different types of plants grew best around my house according to the amount of sunlight, then I had to find several different places for rotation purposes. Best of luck with the cucumbers!
Thanks Todd. We do rotate but this time I think it’s the soil. No matter what we plant in that particular bed it seems to have problems. Oh well. It happens!