Every day , I water it with my tears! Not really but it might help. I now run the drip two or more times a day.
I find some timely sprays make a big difference as well, especially if you can anticipate your plants problems. For my plants leaf curl, sometimes due to aphids, but an earlier spray for the fungus is part of my schedule, and Western flower thrips especially on the nectarines . I spray with water or Safer soap, or something with pyrethrin for aphids and other so-so critters, or something with spinosad for thrips.
That’s the problem with my rhubarbs, they dry out so quickly, and to the point I’m considering to give them away to somebody that can plant them in ground.
I live in the very north PNW, and this has been a hard year to grow things. Cold. Wet. All we’ve got going for us this year is long days. So far. I tried a heat mat for the first time this year and it did wonders for germination. Some of my seeds (small things like turnips or kohlrabi emerged in 3-4 days with sprouts). I also started all my seeds the very beginning of March, because in past years I’ve found myself at the end of growing season with, for ex, too many green tomatoes. But I can’t say it’s been terribly productive this year overall. Here’s what I’ve got, and how it’s doing:
Arugula and lettuce - both in canvas boxes on the deck. Pretty good. And keeps most bugs out.
Carrots, onions, turnips on the deck in same canvas. All germinated nicely, when they were good and ready. Carrots probably way too close together. Onions not sure yet if they will bulb. I can’t see it. Turnips on deck nice and big, healthy leaves, bulbing slowly. Turnips in the garden absolutely decimated by slugs, so I planted a whole bunch more, but with a row cover.
The slugs - or something else - got 90% of my pole beans. Sadness. My snap peas and green beans must have been too old, because very few germinated. The kale is doing great, as are the cabbages and kohlrabi. Cool weather plants. The kohlrabi isn’t really bulbing though either. Don’t know why. My warm weather loving stuff is doing terribly. I have peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, okra. None of them seem to be growing or thriving. The tomatoes are weirding me out, because the plants are green/yellow, not lush, not more than 10" tall, and already have a green tomato or two on each. Not sure why. Seems premature. My okra never got above 6", and started dropping most of its leaves. I just started some new seeds in case the first plants die. We have 2 beds of asparagus, and despite our best efforts, our whole hilly yard seems to drain into one of the beds, which is slowly killing the crowns. Fewer come up each year. The other bed seems ok and we’ve gotten spears again this year. What else? 3 apple trees. 1 got the fungus very bad and we had to cut all the leaves off. The other 2 look ok. Herbs doing well, except parsley. I can’t get them to grow nice and tall. Last year they were too close together, but this year they don’t seem to be. Just not really growing large. 4 grape vines, and they’re doing nicely. We finally stopped toying around this year and read how to prune them properly. H is growing some strawberries, and I have 1 rhubarb outside the fence, because the deer actually don’t eat it. They eat everything else, even the things people say they don’t (like 1 of my 4 potato plants (in a bag) that they had for dinner a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t. But today was 5:07am and 9:12 pm. I’m slightly discouraged, but I know it’s a labor of love and I still have a lot to learn. I’ve mostly gotten as far as I have to this point through trial and error, but I will be at home much more often for the foreseeable. And the same plants doing poorly this year have done much better in prior years, so it isn’t necessarily me, but I think the weather is a big component, and also leads to a lot of the wigglies.
Absolutely LOVE this thinking @shrinkrap; maybe that’s my problem with it, although I do love watching it all grow, and both harvesting and cooking with the bounty. Just find it heartbreaking when plants die after transplantation, bugs infestation and the like. Patience and try try try again are the operative words. Have you read the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan? (Just realized his name resonates, because it sounds like pollen!) if I’m remembering correctly, he has a really fascinating chapter in there about Johnny Appleseed, or some such, and how all the different apple varieties got started in this country. I’ve got many thoughts for Sasha, promise pics very soon, and one right now. In just a minute, that is.
I adore peonies. The smell is incredible. We bought 6 plants last year (yes, a little overboard), and then some deer got into our yard and were in a state of high chaos and trampled the living daylights out of them about 5 days after planting. We fortified our fence since then, and haven’t seen deer, but we thought all of them were goners. Imagine our surprise and pleasure when all 6 plants came back this year! They haven’t flowered and may not this season, but they’re alive!
Great they came back! Think we’re down to one plant, don’t know what happened to the others. We don’t have a deer problem due to having the back yard enclosed with a 6 foot fence, but lots of hungry bugs.
I so agree about both the beauty and incredible fragrance of peonies. One of my very favorite flowers.
Yes, guess we’re lucky that way, because I know how they can jump. Guess they have lots of easier pickings around here. I do see them on the roads all the time, or munching away on people’s property @Gourmanda.
