Good morning, to say it has been a challenging year is really an understatement. Everything started out fine but I think the wind was over the top. This has been my nemesis for both of the times I have had set backs. The first time was when it was blowing all day for a couple of days and I neglected to completely cover some beds with a second layer of fabric. This allowed a convection freeze to really to travel through the fabric into the plants and set my early tomato bed way back. Then there was the 60-70 MPH wind storm that preceded profuse pea gravel sized hail storm that proceeded to eviscerate the portion of the garden that the wind had blown off my covers. All the beds that did remain covered were severally bruised. One blessing was that I was able to clean up all the damage before any insect hordes arrived. Then came many consecutive days of triple digits. I was able to keep everything hydrated but I did notice the lower fruiting wood on my indeterminate toms got nailed just like in 2011 thus destroying the first crop. I was thinking since I had a drip this time all would be well. I evaluated the errors of my ways and have added another 2.5 hours of watering time to them. I hope this corrects that problem. As we all know it was a very dry start to the year and this really effected my onion crop as far as how large the bulbs got to be. This in reality was a two phased problem. Last fall was a very warm one and all the harvester ants remained active pretty well into early winter. We did have a brief chill down and I thought yes, they have gone to nest for the winter. This was not to be. I sowed my onion seeds for bulb onion transplants during this chill down only for another heat wave to arrive. Just as the seed was germinating the ants came in and harvested the majority of my seeds. Normally I bury the edges of my onion seed beds to prevent them from doing this, I was lulled into their temporary absence. I did re-sow the bed but the new plants were so much smaller than the first planting. This may not have been a problem if it had not been also such a dry spring.
I have always known during extremely dry springs that the native thrips population that thrives in the grassland around my garden migrates into the garden because it is the only thing green for them to feed on. I have found that permanently covering onions forces them to mature way to early and therefore except for extreme chill downs they remain uncovered. Likewise, with the garlic. Due to the extremely windy conditions I was unable to effectively start a spray program to squelch them and thus they got a foot hold into the garden. With extreme diligence I have turned the corner on them. They are a formidable adversary.
I must say even with all the challenges the garden is doing quite fine even though there were some real setbacks. As I say if agriculture was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Follows is a list of what I am growing, please email as to availability and prices. Chard, kale, green onions, carrots, lettuce, okra, tomatoes, chilies (several varieties), eggplant, butternut squash, garlic, beets, bulb onions, cucumbers, summer squash, sweet potatoes, and beans. Also, there is volunteer basil and dill.
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