Reply #5: Planted a very large garden last year

[Cherchez la Femme]

Yield of total edible crop: 2 cucumbers & 1 squash (when I planted only zucchini, must have been a mix up regarding seeds).

This is a bit OT, but so far looks like the best place to put this.

As I always have, I went totally organic and my thumb is, as they say, 'green' ...up until last year.
Half the crops were tomatoes. None developed far enough to eat. Not even fried green tomatoes; then they rotted on the vine.
The number and size of the slugs were simply incredible, but strangely enough I didn't get any tomato bugs. Among other unhealthy bugs (saw NO bees at all), aphids were totally off the charts. Chard & greens can't be planted this year (last years looked like green bits of swiss cheese) and I won't be blowing $200- on seasonal plants such as petunias, marigolds or snapdragons as the aphids, etc. ate them all up too. The front year will look terrible and dull, but at least I'll till in a bunch of last years dead leaves into the soil to help aerate it & grow new soil for hopefully better years to come.

I spread 2 large bags of wildflower seeds around the areas not specified for planting too, along with planting sunflowers around the sheds & off the front of the property.
Not one flower bloomed, the sunflowers never even seemed to start.

The reason? The wet summer,
i.e. Global Warming.

I read a newspaper article (real newspaper, cannot give you a link) that in the entire N.E. there was not one locally grown organic tomato to be purchased!

Simply a nightmare, and judging by this years weather so far it looks the same if not worse.

This year along with my regular garden I'm going to try to hang as many of those 'Topsy-Turvey' growers as I can off my deck as a back-up. Gonna use them all for tomatoes and 3 of those blueberry plants advertised on television (Who knows? But I'll give it a try) Up on the deck they'll still get all the rain but perhaps the slugs & other bugs maybe won't get that far up and being controlled like that I'm thinking maybe fashioning little umbrellas out of tarp to drape over the tops of the containers when rain is too plentiful. I'm still going with starting heirloom seeds, I hope to goddess they make it; I don't even know what the difference anymore is between naturally grown, more resistant or hybrids vegetable strains are between what is bio-engineered and the seed packages nor the seedling stickers certainly don't tell you!. I won't touch genetically modified even with someone else's 10-foot-hoe (to be truthful, I wouldn't touch it anyways : ).
And I still think the heirlooms are much more flavorful.


So good luck to all you organic home growers -- especially in the NorthEast! If this year is anything like last, we're truly going to need all the luck we can to pull in ANY kind of harvest!


P.S. I'm thinking since I had such a hard time last year growing above-ground yield crops, this year I may try some root crops such as 'taters & beets... Never done them before (I know potatoes have to be 'hilled' but do beets? Do all/most root crops?) I also have clayey soil, which I know is anathema to onions, but what about the two I mentioned? & Yep I'm going to do research online but it's always good to get advice from those who have done it themselves, not to deride generic articles...

-- if you have any tips/advice pls send an email as I don't check here very often anymore. Thanks!