I had some spectacularly epic fails in the vegetable garden this year! It's been great. Failure after failure, all season long.
A lot of things have gone wrong this season. Some of it I can blame on the ridiculous heat, some on pests and some on my own bumbling moves. But who gives a big, fat, dipsy-sh*t when you fail if it results in a win later on?
Gardening a 10 minute drive away from my home (I garden in a 40' x 40' community garden plot if you didn't know) is also less than ideal.
Table of Contents
Creepy Crawly
A lot of things have gone wrong this season. Some of it I can blame on the ridiculous heat, some on pests and some on my own bumbling moves.
See this?
And this??
It wasn't caused by a raccoon, skunk, mouse, or vole. If you see this kind of bite mark out of your tomato, it was in fact, caused by a hornworm.
But ... this is not a tomato hornworm.
This is a tobacco hornworm. And like the tomato hornworm it can eat every single leaf and tomato on your plant as fast as you can eat a bag of chocolate covered almonds.
I always assumed since they were on my tomatoes that I was looking at a tomato hornworm. That's just good, sound logic.
But the tobacco hornworm and the tomato hornworm are almost identical and both will eat both plants.
Tobacco hornworm
Tomato hornworm
Has black edging its white stripes.
The horn is red.
Has green edging its white stripes.
The horn is blue/black.
Hint: If you notice your tomatoes with this type of damage or see completely eaten leaves you have to find the hornworm and get rid of it. Unless they're really huge, hornworms are hard to see on the plants so people use blacklight flashlights and search for them on the plant at night.
Lesson Learned
Knowing the difference between these two hornworms won't have any effect on them decimating my plants next year but at least when I complain about it, I'll be swearing about the proper pest.
Late Planted Carrots & Beets
In early summer I planted a billion carrots and 5 of them grew so I vowed to plant more. Which I immediately did 2 months later.
Once they sprouted, I brought them to my vegetable garden and transplanted them into the ground.
Transplant day - August 5th
September 5th
You can see one month of growth on these transplanted carrots. Even though all that greenery is a good sign, an even better sign is an actual carrot forming.
These carrots are bigger than the pathetic 5 I planted months ago.
The beets are showing some progress but aren't doing quite as well as the carrots in terms of bulbing up so I'll have to wait to see if planting them this late will work out.
Transplant day - August 5th
September 5th
You can see a beet starting to form after 1 month in the ground.
Lesson Learned
Always start and transplant my carrots. It works great, germination rate is excellent. It takes about a week for the carrots to get over the shock and start growing after transplanting.
I should plant my carrots much later than I normally do and grow a short season crop(lettuce, radishes, peas, green onions) in the bed prior to planting them. That will double my growing space for the season.
Pantyhose Prophylactics
I still prefer a low tunnel of insect netting for growing clean cabbages, but covering them with nylons like I showed you a few weeks ago works really, really well.
I highly recommend this technique; when the cabbage starts growing all you have to do is cover the head with a knee high. The cabbage moths can't get through the nylon to lay their eggs, hatch their caterpillars, eat your cabbage and poop their poop.
Spray the plants to be covered with BTK first to knock out any cabbage moth caterpillars and eggs that might be on the plant before covering it with the nylon.
Lesson Learned
Continue being curious and experimenting, even with previous fails of the same thing.
I tried this pantyhose thing about a decade ago and deemed it a failure. I can't remember why, just that it didn't work. Oh a whim, I tried it again this year and it definitely did work.
Swiss Chard Damage
I haven't had any Swiss chard this year. Just as it seems to grow, the next time I look at it the leaves are either full of holes or gone entirely.
It's been like this since I planted it in the spring. I couldn't figure out what was eating it but 2 weeks ago I covered the chard with insect netting and there has been no more damage.
My super-sad swiss chard patch is now just starting to grow. So what was eating it? Since a light layer of row cover protected them, chances are birds were pecking at it. I never would have thought to look to them as the pest, but now it makes sense.
Lesson Learned
There are few pest problems in the vegetable garden that insect netting can't solve. Also, when in doubt, blame the birds.
Corn Spacing
I always have excellent germination for corn but not this year. This year over half of my seeds didn't germinate which left a patchy sporadic looking corn bed.
But I noticed something interesting happened with the spacious planting.
Every single stalk grew 2 cobs.
For reference, I have never had a stalk of corn grow more than 1 cob on it before. Technically corn can grow 2 cobs on a stalk but I've never had that happen. Until this year.
Lesson Learned
SPACING IS IMPORTANT and what you think is correct might not be. I now know if I plant half as much corn in the same amount of space I will get the same amount of corn because each stalk will have the energy and room to grow 2 cobs instead of one.
Smashing as many plants as possible into a small space doesn't necessarily increase your harvest. Which is the reason you don't hear anyone talking about square foot gardening anymore.
UPDATE: I picked some corn and a lot of it had poor pollination (because there weren't as many corn tassels to pollinate. So if I want to continue this spacing, I have to help the corn with pollination by shaking the stalks a little when I see there are pollen tassels and corn silks emerging. This will help drop the pollen onto the corn silks, which in turn turn into kernels.
Although a fail is a fail this year, if you're observant and curious enough - it'll turn into next year's win. This ends my motivational speech for today. I have some green hairy balls to check and report back on.
i had no idea Hornworms could get so juicy!
Please don't think I'm insensitive to the damage the worms can do - but me-oh-my! those are some Handsome Looking Worms! Dontcha think? Look, just Look at those patterns! it's Pretty. (sorry).
Gack. ~ karen!
Yup, it's definitely been a weird growing year. I have had no Swiss Chard and usually I am drowning in it.. Carrots and beets, and little turnips haven't done well either. Tomatoes and scallions have been great though. Maybe I'll try cabbage again with the knee high trick.
I checked the carrots and beets again tonight and they're doing great. I actually pulled 3 carrots and had them for dinner. (I needed 3 to be the equivalent of 1 full sized carrot) I'll always plant my carrots late in the season like this now. ~ karen!
Man oh man would my grandsons, 3 1/2 and 2, love those worms. Maybe I should have you ship me one!
Holey Moley Karen, who's that creepy little guy beside your newly developing Beet? He's just to the right, similar color to the soil and look like something that would be inspiration for a terrifying Aliens Sequel.
Things ya see when you don't have a chicken handy......
P.S. Can you feed those fat green worms to your chickens?
i understand your gardening curiosity and intense desire for things to succeed/grow.
my tomatoes, and peppers began to grow when the temperature
dropped which i believe is a result of global warming. i had great success growing borage, jerusalem artichokes and dill. but my delight is limited because i wanted more tomatoes.
Oh it's absolutely due to global warming. ~ karen!
I wont show the beet. That one is truly X rated.
Oh my. I, too, tried transplanting carrots this year. Every single one came out curly-cued, as shown in the photo. Lesson learned!
Fifty years ago I tried something that I read in Organic Gardening magazine. A tobacco farmer had hornworms and he picked a handful, blended them with water in a 'just for gardening' blender and mixed that into a sprayer to spray his tobacco leaves. The hornworms disappeared. I found hornworms on my 100 tomato plants soon after and decided to give it a try. I took a handful of worms, smashed them in a pail with a rock, filled it with water and used two sponges to smush bug juice lightly over all the leaves. What a dork but you know how a 24 year thinks they know stuff. Anyway, I came home from work the next day and walked down my rows - not a worm to be found. None dead nor moved on to another type of plant. Just disappeared. The worm juice must have left a smell that told the others to run quick or maybe released some signal for birds to fly down during the night and eat them then leave. Just weird. What a boost to a 24 yo that people made fun of for organic gardening.
Delightful and very informative, as usual. The worms are amazing!
“Which I immediately did 2 months later.” Hahaha. It’s your fault I woke the dogs.
I grew corn in a wire cage (former dog enclosure that they hated) in a place guarded by the dogs. Take that, raccoons. I added companion amaranth (hot biscuits, as you suggested). I think the amaranth shaded the corn as very few kernels developed though to be fair I didn’t brush against them but will next year. We called them Appalachian Corn. So politically incorrect, I apologize.
We had tons of hornworms. One, I swear, was 6” long. Perhaps the tobacco variety gets bigger? We checked every day and still one got that big!
Thank you for sharing your learning experiences. It’s heartening. And funny.
Re Swiss chard….caught red-handed or maybe that’s “beak-handed”? Gold finches noshing on my Swiss chard, skeletonizing the big leaves. In the end, I’m happy to share!
Corn was terrible here in Northeast Pennsylvania as well :(
Even my beloved zinnias weren't great
If the Swiss chard that was damaged most was on the pink/red side definitely blame the birds! A few years ago, my broccoli transplants kept getting pulled out and left to die on top of the dirt.. I finally saw why: robins were pulling them !I guess mistaking the pinkish stems for worms and leaving them when they got vegetables instead.
It was definitely birds. And it's growing like crazy now. (finally) ~ karen!
You find the silver lining behind every dark cloud! Love your honest & humorous take on things…life!
Wondering if you or any of your readers has any suggestions for dealing with squash beetles? There were so many on our cucumber plants that the plants seems to be writhing in agony over being decimated in 2 short days. Cucs, zucchini, yellow squash and butternut…all gone! We sprayed the little @#%&*s with diluted Dawn Soap mixture. That only annoyed the ones we hit. Do we need to relocate the garden? Is there a way to prevent this invasion next year? We’ve had the garden in the same place for 6 years with no prior squash beetle visits.
Hi Deb. Some years are worse for pests than others. One year you have a lot of cucumber beetles, the next year you realize what you thought was a lot was NOTHING compared to what you have now. Ditto for rabbits, squash bugs etc. So it could just be a bad year for squash beetles for you. The one thing you can use on them is Neem Oil. It smells gross, but it works. ~ karen!
Epic fail for my garden. A new variety (to me) tomato was a huge success...in the germinating department, but not so much in the tomato growing. The Reisetomate formed the cutest little babies right from the start. THEN, bugs got into them and our high 90s heat didn't do them any good. Pepper plants were dismal performers and are just now starting to produce. Eggplant ... well, never mind. Squash lost the battle with the vine borer. Do you think the panty hose thing would have worked for them?
Borage was lovely until Bambi found this thing that was supposed to be deer resistant...didn't read the book I guess. They also got the bloom of the Mongolian sunflower that I was trying this year. There doesn't seem to be enough wire in the world to thwart those little bastardoes!!! Go ahead, love Bambi if you must, just know they are not adored here.
However, a massive success happened with the marigolds. OMG, they were incredible. So, there you go. Success in the garden comes in a beautiful form.
Hi Celeste. Next year try this method for the squash vine borers. I haven't lost a squash in over a decade. It's gross, and a bit terrifying but it works. ~ karen!
I planted my corn too close together this year and won't do that ever again. Some ears just didn't have room to grow well and grew at odd angles.
But I found that if I jiggle my corn stalks every single time I walk by them, I do get excellent pollination. I just walk along and hold my arm out and brush against the stalks like one would do walking along a picket fence with a stick. I go down one side of my bed and then back up the other side, 3-4 times a day once I see silks and tassels on the stalks.
For the first time ever, I did use a small syringe and mineral oil and put a good few CC's of mineral oil down into the tops of the silks once I felt like pollination was over and done. Not one of my ears had ear worm damage so that is something I will most definitely do in the future.
This is also the first year in a while that none of my cobs got corn smut! I forgot the mineral oil this year but only had 1 ear so far with a worm. ~ karen!
We live in DeKalb county in IL and literally right next to a corn field - there is so much corn around here that this time of year before harvest, it's a little dangerous driving when it feels like you're in a corn maze. We've only lived here in this area for 14 years and I never know that corn stalks generally produce only one ear per plant so seeing 2 on yours was pretty cool...who knew that could happen. The people who farm the fields by us have gotten to be friends and many times along the edges, the corn just doesn't produce any ears at all (I'm sure you probably know the reason behind that) so we're allowed to take a few stalks for our front porch fall decorations. It's pretty neat living in "corn country"!
Corn fields around corners are the worst. You can't see a thing past them. A lot of corn grown around here is cow corn for feed, yet people still stop and pick the cobs.😆 ~ karen!
I have to say the colour of that caterpillar is beautiful, and it's so big! I love gardening, every year is different. By the time I harvest it the vegetables are very expensive, even without counting my labour. Still, every Spring I go crazy. I learnt from a corn farmer this year that every tassel is connected to a corn kernel. Cool huh? Happy harvesting.
They are a remarkable colour! But so gross. To pick it up even with gloves is horrifying. They are very strong and very wiggly. ~ karen1
Do you carry a bucket with a lid to take them home to your chickens? I imagine they would love them!
Thanks for sharing, Karen. All your efforts help me to sort things out on my patch too. I had no idea you could transplant carrots. I thought the seeds had to go straight into the ground. That said, all the poppy seed packets suggest direct sowing but I always start new poppy varieties indoors and transplant them when they're tiny. In no time they are huge. And so pretty! Once they're established they self-seed like crazy. Do you have them in your cottage garden?
Well it definitely isn't the norm to transplant carrots, but it was my best chance at success because my garden isn't where I live. It does work though! My carrots are doing great. ~ karen!
And they wonder why I buy all my veggies at the grocery store....lol... trust me, I lack the fortitude farming demands of the farmer. I sincerely applaud your gumption and perseverance Miss Karen. I have no doubt ultimate success shall be yours.