Yesterday we spent nearly 2 hours pulling up landscape fabric. And it was a MAJOR pain in the keister let me tell you, I thought it would never end.
But it did and now I guess we’ll see if the landscape fabric was a contributing factor to our worst gardening year ever. All that work! And for nothing. Talk about a HUGE disappointment. 🙁
Especially when the landscape fabric is working so beautifully over at The Duck Lady’s place.
We do plan on testing the soil, but I still don’t think the {content} of the soil is the issue.
After all, we did have plenty of pumpkin seeds pop up in the area just fine.
I think the soil just needs to breathe {and for the rain to stop}. If you look closely, you can see how compacted the soil is {probably due to the rain and it being constantly waterlogged}.
When we were pulling up landscape fabric, there were even a few frogs that leapt out from underneath it! And lot’s of worms too. Worms are a good sign! Frogs in the garden … Not so much.
While for the most part, I think the 150+ tomato plants and 50+ pepper plants we planted are goners… I think there is still hope. At least we know we’ll get a few.
Maybe enough for fresh salsa and salads. But not enough to can? Who knows.
Can you imagine a summer where you’re weren’t constantly trying to give away your extra zucchini. How crazy would that be? 😉
And last but not least, the sun is back! So that’s good, right? Only 3 of the next 10 days have a chance of rain. I’ll take it.
So how are things doing in YOUR neck of the woods these days? Are you picking baskets full of glorious summer vegetables yet? Canning up a storm? I want to hear about it.
~Mavis
Mrs. C. says
I’m an extension master gardener in my state, and it looks like a lot of the plants in that garden are nitrogen deficient, likely due to the constant rain. If I were in your shoes, I would side dress the plants with fertilizer PLUS spray them in the evening or early morning with a fish emulsion or Miracle Gro so that they have immediate access to nutrients.
Your peppers are bigger than mine because we have a drought. a groundhog and his wife decimated all my cabbages – over 50 of them. Another tough growing season.
Mavis Butterfield says
Thanks Mrs. C! I have some Miracle Gro so I’ll try that. Sorry to hear about your groundhog issue. 🙁
Debby T says
I added some fertilizer to my peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers last week and they are already showing improvement. They got some when planted in May. It was suppose to be good for 3 months. — My issue on a potted tomato plant on my deck is, the leaves are curling. Googled it and one issue could be not enough water, another reason too much water. So I let it go dry then soaked it. No change. Gave it some fertilizer and will see if it improves. One positive thing is it has some real nice Roma tomatoes on it.
Wendy C says
We never got around to planting our garden this year. The only thing we have our random volunteer cherry tomatoes, but those were going gangbusters until it got hot. So we made cherry tomato salsa.
Heidi A says
Ugh – so sorry! I tried the landscaping fabric a few years ago but ripped it out as well. My soil was compacting due to the amount of moisture being trapped and the heat baking it. Plus it became a haven for mice and voles – they loved building nests from the fabric. I stick with raised beds now along with no tilling and mulching. If I’m proactive in mulching at the beginning of the season it has kept the weeds at bay.
Mel says
I had forgotten until you said it was compacted, but the same exact thing happened to us one year where nothing really grew because the soil was too compacted for the roots to go anywhere. Did you by chance till in your new soil? We happened to use landscape fabric that year, but the bigger issue for us was tilling. Our soil compacts easily, but tilling made it far worse. We switched to broad forking for a while, which helped, but we ultimately switched to raised beds with a lot of leafgro mixed in. Even after years of amending the raised beds, the soil directly below them gets compacted.
I’m not sure what the solution would be for you since you can’t have a religious garden sized raised bed, but it’s possible the soil you added didn’t have enough compost to keep it from compacting.
Angie says
We are in canning season over here for sure. We have two gardens and they are giving us a half bushel of tomatoes every other day, plus okra, cucumbers, zucchini, field peas of all varieties, the corn is going strong, and the pumpkins looks as if I could set up a stand in the fall and sell them. We have green beans too but they are struggling a bit to produce due to the high temps we are having – green beans don’t enjoy temperatures in the mid 90’s you know.
I have been canning diced tomatoes & tomato sauce, freezing okra, green beans, shredded zucchini for baking, accumulating cucumbers to make sweet relish and pickles, and shelling peas and beans for the freezer.
Our sunflowers, marigolds, dahlias, black-eyed Susans and zinnias are doing fairly well & yielding lovely bouquets for our home which I love.
It isn’t a perfect gardening year as we have had some challenges as well with Japanese beetles and overall maintenance when you are trying to accomplish many tasks at once. All in all I cannot complain – we are harvesting plenty and are blessed beyond measure.
Mrs. C. says
Mavis, you might want to watch this video for encouragement. She typically hills her garden like you do by your house. Last year, she didn’t, and she lost a lot of her plants. I learned a lot from this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJv_nCAdCio
Another thing you can do is cut some stone suckers off your tomato plants, cut of bottom leaves and drop them in water – they will root within days and you can transplant them, without starting from seed. This will work best with the tomatoes that have the shortest days to maturity.
GM says
So disappointing about that garden! Hoping it can recover. I’m always surprised by the huge growth a garden can have when the conditions are finally right so maybe it will still happen.
I have raised beds. I’ve been trying a few things from Homestead & Chill blog (aerated compost teas, one made with worm castings; one made w/ alfalfa meal). I also used this stuff called Mycorrhizae that they explained about which helps the roots draw up nutrients. I incorporated more pollinator plants (borage, sunflowers, oregano that I let bloom) and so far my garden is incredible! I planted powdery mildew resistant squash from High Mowing seeds which I had never tried before. I hadn’t gotten a single squash for a couple of years due to powdery mildew, squash bugs, and vine borers but this year, I HAVE NO bad bugs at all! It’s very odd. I’m not sure if bad bugs don’t recognize these varieties but my garden has not one single squash bug egg. (Hope I’m not jinxing myself LOL). My plants are alive with activity from pollinators when I’m out there. It’s a beautiful thing, but no bad bugs. Amazing.
Its been very hot and dry here in mid MO (100+ many days) but I water deep every few days. I also fill big (empty) flower pots sitting in the garden beds with the drain holes mostly blocked w/ water, for a slow dose of extra hydration. I think my one yellow squash plant is 4′ x 5′ and is gangbusters in squash blooms! I have lots of volunteer tomatoes but most seem to be cherry tomatoes. I just puree them and make tomato sauce but I do wish I had some of those big red juicy ones. Oh well. Next year!
Some garden years are good and some are not so good. You worked so hard on yours. I send you the very best wishes that it comes around.
The Duck Lady says
Why are frogs bad? I have to say the low nitrogen comment was brilliant. It makes so much sense in the differences between our gardens because of how much chicken I add from the coops.
Mavis Butterfield says
I was thinking the frogs were making it their home because the soil was so wet. I do love frogs though. Good insect control!
Lindsey says
We went to raised beds, a LOT of them, two decades ago and would never go back. We buy large animal watering troughs, often off Craigslist. They warm the soil earlier in the spring, keep it warmer all summer, the watering doesn’t run off into aisles (since there are none), you don’t walk on the soil so it does not compact, weeds are fewer and much easier to remove since the beds are 3 feet tall, and voles cannot get purchase to climb up and into the beds (they were able to do that with the 3 foot tall wood beds my husband made when we first decided to go with raised beds. You can also plant things closer together and with things like pumpkins, they can drape over the sides and you won’t keep stepping on the vines.
Mavis Butterfield says
I’m starting to think raised beds may be the way to go. They just look so good also. 🙂
Mim says
How much dirt do you need to fill a trough? Seems like it would be quite a bit. Do you use packaged or topsoil with amendments? I’m very interested in your methods, as my wooden raised beds are starting to come apart and this may be a good replacement. Besides, it might just be an answer to the groundhog problem!
Susie says
Mim, lots of people with raised beds/troughs fill them 1/3 to 1/2 with cut logs. Takes much less soil then. It’s called “hugelkultur”. From an article I found, “The gradual decay of wood is a consistent source of long-term nutrients and moisture for the plants, and the composting wood generates heat which can extend the growing season. Corbett cited research conducted in arid China where hugelkultur was found to be the most effective method for keeping crops moist.”
debbie in alaska says
so cool! thank you for sharing.
Ashley Bananas says
What are you doing with all that gardening fabric? If we lived closer and you were getting rid of it I would snag it in a heart beat. I use that in landscaping under mulched areas to minimize my amount of weed growth. I’m planning on ripping out and relaying fabric and mulch around my whole house this year as it was all destroyed and blown off in hurricane Ian.
Mavis Butterfield says
Probably give some of it to the neighbor across the street if he’d like it. Most likely use it in some areas where we need to lay down some rock to help with the weed control. Too expensive to let it go to waste. It’s still pretty useful. 🙂
Teri says
Looks like you did a good job of removing the landscape fabric without hurting the plants. Big job! Hopefully you will get a nice harvest now.
Mavis Butterfield says
It was a delicate operation for sure. Not fun.
Sue S. says
So sorry for your troubles this year. Last year my grass was crispy from the lack of rain. This year it needs mowing twice a week. You can’t win some years. Maybe you’re meant to do more hooking instead. Maybe patterns with vegetable designs?
Nancy says
If your friend has luck with the landscape fabric I wouldn’t think that was the problem. Maybe all the additives (seaweed, etc.) needs more time to breakdown or maybe you used too much of it. I would give it a try next year but do a smaller section and see how it goes.
KC says
I hope you can get the water-logging/compact-soil problem solved so your garden can flourish next year! Well, next year may be less soggy anyway.
Is there a way of improving drainage for the whole garden or making the soil less compact-able aside from raised beds?
Geunita W Ringold says
I think I saw a heatwave is coming ya’lls way. Maybe there’s still hope for some of it.
Marti Clark says
I have a huge garden and it is just me that takes care of it. After plants have emerged, I use cardboard in between the rows for weed reduction and water retention—it is also too far from a water source. My yard is also huge so all the grass clippings go on top of the cardboard to keep it in place. By mid June, the entire garden is cardboarded and mulched and the plants are huge. My harvest today was a 5 gallon bucket of yellow beans and another of green beans, a clothes basket of broccoli, and about 1/2 bushel of cukes. And 28 zukes and yellow crookneck squash. We had an extremely dry June and finally got rain mid July so the cardboard really helped with moisture retention. By fall the cardboard and grass clippings have completely mulched down to bare soil. And I have big fat happy worms!!
Dianna says
You read my mind. My garden chore this week has been to pull up the landscape fabric that was under the now-collapsing cheap Sam’s Club raised beds. I pulled what I could, but some of the weeds’ roots have gone so deep through the fabric gaps that I can’t get it all. I am going to have to get my husband to help me. I bought a couple of Birdie’s beds and hoping for better luck with those. Used cardboard on the bottom to smother weeds/grass, then filled with twigs and branches. Lots of tomatoes, yellow squash, and zucchini are growing. So far, so good!
Susan says
Hello from the PNW! I have a first time small garden and we didn’t amend the soil, so we’ll see what we get! I have 6 pepper plants and so far 1 have any peppers so far. I have a ton of beefsteak tomato plants as those were the only seeds to take in the trays when I started. But, I don’t see any actual tomatoes growing yet.
But my husband had a ton of berry bushes planted before we met and married, so I’ve been harvesting plenty of berries! So far this year, I’ve harvested about 30 lbs of rhubarb (no a berry, I know), blueberries, tay-, logan-, black- and boyson berries. We’ll have huckleberries and possibly some lingonberries later this year.
Kathy says
Susan, I am in Southwest WA and just found my first tomato this morning. I don’t have any peppers yet but I see the starts of flowers! I planted in late May so don’t give up hope yet. I think there’s still time!
Patti says
Our “Lasagna Garden” is producing like gang busters, although we did have a ton of rain in June that caused ours to be late in producing. We have filled our freezer with squash and zucchini as well as eating it day and night in all the recipes I can think of. Our tomatoes and peppers are just now starting when we should have had them a month ago. I cannot stress the lasagna method enough – it produces a tremendous amount in such a small area. (Look up Lasagna Gardening for details). I sure hope your garden will perk up and end up coming back to life.
Diane says
It seems like the main difference is whether you amended the soil. Did you add lots of compost?
Also, I’ve been reading articles about problems with soil and even purchased compost being contaminated by herbicides that inhibit the growth of plants. So, if you have compost derived from cow manure, and the cows had been in pastures that used these herbicides, then the compost can be contaminated. I hope it’s not that because I heard the only way around it is to physically remove all of the contaminated soil/compost and start over. It makes me afraid to even buy bagged compost now.
Tammy says
Ugh! All that work! I hope you start to see some fruit for all your labor!
I am in South Carolina. We have had extreme heat this month, so my tomatoes (which are indeterminate varieties) are not putting on new fruit. I have been picking and putting up tomatoes all this month so we did get a very nice crop of tomatoes, but we won’t continue to get tomatoes. As soon as the tomatoes are completely picked, we will be taking the plants out. That will probably be in just a few days here.
When we moved here from Michigan I thought we had a longer growing season, but we really don’t. The hot, hot summer really stunts the plants.