It Can Only Get Better!

I did not grow a garden this year.

I grew a Demonstration Plot for Insect Pests, Diseases, and Nutrient Deficiencies.

Or, as mothers everywhere have said, if it can't be good for anything, at least its a bad example.

I planted green beans and beans for drying, corn and popcorn and field corn, lettuce and spinach and kale and other greens, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, onions and garlic, carrots and beets, summer squash and winter and pumpkins and melons.

I have grown all of these successfully before.

The beans, different varieties planted in succession over the summer, were repeatedly chomped down by Mexican bean beetles. I had never even seen these pests before; this summer I handpicked thousands and didn't make a dent.

The corn looked ok, if a little pale, but for some reason pollination was sketchy and many cobs had only a handful of kernels.

Any greens that did germinate in the intense summer heat (yes, I know these should be planted in spring but my plot wasn't tilled until late) were eaten by insects that I never even saw.

The tomatoes did fairly well, except for blossom end rot (another problem I had never seen). I gave them some water with calcium pills dissolved in it and this seemed to help.

The potatoes did fine! Hallelujah. As did the peanuts.

My onions struggled and the few that made it were soft and rotted easily. The garlic came through for me--the grounds are covered with wild garlic so it seems the soil is hospitable for something.

Carrots never came up, beets were sketchy,

 And the pumpkins and friends were attacked by squash borers. Dare I say I've never seen these before either? Add to that, the blossoms were moldy--in a summer where we didn't have a drop of rain for almost a month.

This tale of woe indicates to me that I have a lot to learn about gardening in the Midwest. 


I'll spend the winter researching and working on my plan of attack. Trying to garden organically surrounded by GMO, chemically raised crops will not be easy and I know I have my work cut out for me. But a gardener always knows next year will be better, and as they say in Galaxy Quest, "Never give up, never surrender!"