This year's garden

[Bill Foster]

I am in my second year living full-time at my BOL. Things are coming together slowly. Last year's garden went to the deer. An electric fence took care of that this year. I chose to use raised beds because of the poor soil. That has worked well this year. My tomato plants grew faster than I could prop them up; 7 ft. tall! I will test my skills at canning in the next couple of weeks. My squash plants were eaten by vine bugs. I will buy them from the local farmers going forward. Great cucumbers and zucchinis. My pole beans really took off. Trimming them properly, I could hide my house, but no beans, no blooms. Any suggestions?

[Rmplstlskn]

As one who dabbles in vegetable gardening, I am always amazed every season how humanity survived this long... If I had to LIVE off what I grew, I would starve and die. Between the animals stealing, the bugs chewing, and the diseases destroying, one has to watch their garden like a hawk! Going to work all day and leaving the garden unprotected will be full of fail. But every year I try again...

As for beans, this problem is always in the SOIL. Soil is the key to everything. You have too much of something, or not enough of another in the soil. Once I added what my soil lacked, my garden has been much better. But still victim to the above threats. I am glad we have a lot of farms locally with a good local farmers market options, but it is not cheap. Good, but not cheap. And I understand why...

Rmpl

[wwdnet]

I went through 4 cans of Seven Dust this year - the bugs were everywhere! I don't like to use a lot of chemicals but I refuse to let the bugs win. I'm getting ready to solarize my garden (second go-around) so I'm off to grab a roll of black plastic. After I solarized last year, I had much better luck and was able to can some spaghetti sauce (we ate the rest of the produce), but there will still a few problems. The worst problem was the HEAT; it was brutal!! Before the beginning of August, everything I planted had stopped producing. We're thinking of adding some light-filtering shade next year - has anyone done this before?

After a couple of weekends tearing everything out and pulling some weeds, it's still warm enough to benefit from a couple months of solarizing before it's time to plant a winter garden, and the black plastic should keep the weeds down and make a good insulating blanket for winter. I kept hoping for some rain but it looks like the irrigation system is going to have to provide the super-soaking I need - then I'll douse the whole garden area with insecticide and weed killer.

Do you get your soil tested? Last time I did, I needed some lime. Who knows what I'll need next year...garden soil, Black Kow, whatever