Celebrate “culture” in agriculture & share skills like growing, cooking, canning

What happened to our garden this year???

We live in Eastern Ontario, and we're scratching our heads over what went wrong with our garden this year. We've never seen anything like it! Some seeds never came up at all. The zucchini and lettuce are the best ever, but other than that, we're either getting nothing or close to it. The tomato plants look good, but no flowers. Same thing with the marigolds, even! They're tall and not as bushy as in previous years, but no flowers at all!

This year spring came late and we didn't get the garden in until June, and it has been cooler than normal. We've had a lot of rain. I think it's rained just about every day this month (July 2009). We live on a llama farm, and used llama manure and compost. The weeds and grass are growing like crazy, but usually by July, we get some humongous (and gorgeous) garden spiders -- the biggest one I've seen this year is well under an inch.

I just don't know what to think. (Other than that the produce store will have lots of business from us this year.) Any suggestions as to what's going on?

..Christine..

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ToddB on July 25, 2009 at 1:56pm

My wife and I run a small produce farm in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and we have seen the same results. Way to much rain and colder than usual temps have definitely played a part. We would usually have a bounty of peppers, tomatoes, and okra right now, but are barely getting enough to eat let alone take to market. Crazy weather is my best guess.

Todd B

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by JoyfulC on July 25, 2009 at 5:41pm

Yes, I guess it's not just us. I just read this article: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Cold+harvest/1827363/story.html

Sheesh! My husband is so dejected. He was thinking this would be his best year ever.

..c..

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Michelle Hurlbut on July 28, 2009 at 6:04pm

Í'm in Iowa and we have also had a cold rainy summer. Lots of zuchinni blossoms and only a few very small fruit. Same with beets, carrots, broccoli. Beans only produced a couple weeks. This is our first year using raised beds/sq ft gardening so we were just thinking the beds may still be a bit too "hot." They're dressed with cow and bunny manure, haylege, compost and bonemeal. But the beds were made last year and ruminated over the winter. Recent hailstorm demolished my tomatoes but they have lots of blosssoms as well as many large tomatoes setting on. We're waiting to see if they recover. I'm disappointed cuz I was expecting a very BOUNTIFUL year. Next year should be better- the storm also took down three trees in my yard so now we will have SUNSHINE!!! Michelle from Iowa