End of season garden fail report
Well, I had goals, of writing every week, extolling the knowledge I had gained about gardening with funny anecdotes of my adventures. But then a key thing I forgot, the gardening itself. In prime gardening season I spend my weekends up to my elbows in dirt, and I am too exhausted to write about it. Or there’s the fact that I haven’t seen friends in a year and a half because of a pesky pandemic and I wanted to drink beer on my patio with them, oh and then there’s screen burnout. Who wants to be on the computer after 8+ hours of zoom meetings? Not me!
Anyways enough of my excuses, I am here to make up for it, as I hit my “I am sick of the garden” phase of the year, aka October, when things are dying and tidying up seems to be the only “job for the weekend”. Today’s post is about things that went badly. Yes, I’ll write about the wins and how much I love the space I’ve created but let’s start with the ugly.
2021 should be known as the year of the slug, those little bastards ate so many things. They decimated my zinnias, my lipstick Maltese, my rhubarb, my hostas (believe it or not the beer traps held them off a bit). Anyways, a summer with tons of rain meant a shit ton of slugs. I finally stooped to picking them off with a stick and drowning them in salt bath, 20 slugs later, still no end in sight. Anyways, slugs suck, that is all.
Tomatoes, I had dreams of lovely salads with tons of tomatoes. Seriously I got 4 cherry tomatoes. I have done much research on how I went from a very happy plant to nothing. Let my failure be a lesson to you! Size of pot, it needs to be 2’ diameter at least. It needs lots of water, a ton, and needs tomato feed. When finally I gave up on my pathetic tomatoes I had given them blossom rot (when there is huge variation in watering, aka I didn’t then I did ;)), and I pulled them out of the pot they were totally root bound. Also don’t put 4 plants in one pot, that’s dumb. ONE plant, one big pot, tons of water, weekly feeding. I will prevail! Next year ;)
Powdery Mildew. I had an epic patty pan plant, I am not joking it was 5’ tall. It was fruiting constantly and I was thrilled. Then it got a weird white dust on it, leaves started dropping like flies. I pruned, I tried an alkaline tip, then an acid tip, and nothing, it slid into slimey oblivion, so I ripped it out. What to do next year? Probably plant more kale? It seemed resilient ;)
Loofahs, I was going to be victorious on this famously finicky plant. Nope, I do not have the loofah touch. I got lots of leaves and otherwise bupkiss. I am going to try it on my pergola next year. I will PREVAIL, or not ;)
And finally the box tree moth, that little fucker. Yes, I am not mincing words. Don’t buy box woods friends, Ontario has run amuck with box tree moths and if you don’t catch it early, it’s a killer. I had a small infestation last year but caught it early and saved my tree with a few good healthy doses of BTK (insecticidal soap) and caught another one this year, but I missed one. A huge boxwood out front that I have ignored for years got taken down. It looked like a shell of a tree by the time those jerks were done with them.
I really had a great gardening year, for the most part I learned a ton, it was looking very lush, but it’s not all success. Trials of being a gardener, and next year I’ll try most things again, except for the patty pan. That’s a big bush for a tiny zucchini ;)
