Vegetable Gardening Disasters

I always write about my successes, which may give the mistaken impression that everything I grow flourishes. Not so. Like most people reading this blog, I’ve had my share of failures too.

I started thinking about this when a friend emailed me to share that none of her melon seeds came up, her lettuce plants had been eaten by something, and she felt like a failure.I can say for sure that if this was the first year I grew a vegetable garden I’d feel like a failure too. The record-setting heat, drought, and voracious insects have reduced the vegetable garden to a rather pitiful state.

I like to accentuate the positive and share successes, but today – just for today – let me share what didn’t work well this year.

• Corn: Our corn this year was awful. And I mean awful!  Last night we took down about half the stalks in the bed.  When we opened up the jackets on the ears of corn, they were either filled with some sort of nasty detritus or missing rows of kernels. It tasty woody and none too pleasant. I threw most of it in the woods for the animals.

• Tomatoes: Blossom end rot, anyone?  I am getting a really good pitching arm from pitching rotten tomatoes into the woods. Now the tomatoes seem to have settled down and we are enjoying them, but early on I thought another year would go by without a tomato.

• Peppers: End rot again…I have one large one, the rest are all tiny.

• Cucumbers and Squash: Despite all my care and attention, the squash bugs have once again decimated the plants. Last night I saw hundreds of infant squash bugs wriggling over everything.  The only good thing I can say is that  the squash and zucchini acted like trap plants to keep the insects away from the cantaloupe.

• Strawberries: Tiny at best. Small crop. What I didn’t pick right away was eaten by insects.

Now what is growing well?  The melons….harvested the first cantaloupe last night and had it this morning for breakfast. The watermelon look fine too.  The cherry tomatoes are quite good.  The spring carrots grew well, and I should get another harvest. From the foliage I’d also say the sweet potatoes are okay.  The beets only time will tell.

So as you can see, even someone like me who writes about gardening and considers herself a veteran gardener experiences failures too.  Gardening keeps me humble.  No matter what knowledge I’ve gained over the years, I’m still at the mercy of Mother Nature and her minions from the insect kingdom.