I'm not really sure why I all of a sudden lose interest
in my garden, maybe I have AADD:) Just wondering if I was the only one.

Bermuda grass makes me feel sick.

My tomato yield was terrible this year. I got 4 big tomatoes on 15 plants all my blooms kept falling off. I thought it was the fertilizer I used till same thing happened to my 2 neighbors. I pulled all my plants up except a few cherries. Then the stink bugs moved in and took control over what I had left.
After all of this, plus vine borers in squash and zukes I was ready to destroy my raised bed. I got over it and now looking forward to my fall planting season.
I still have okra,peppers and butterbeans going.
Ernie

Yes, I'm like you due_east. I think weeds make me give up easily, plus all that heat and humidity.
I think there is a wide variation in the types of people on this forum, the time they have, the energy they have, etc.
I've always had a big garden, but raising my kids took up alot of time, and now I'm having health problems.......and I don't want gardening to become a weight around my neck. So next spring, I'm really going to try to cut back, and work on the container gardens in my back yard. I don't want it to become a chore, so I'm going to try to size it down so that I can once again get more pleasure from it.
Maybe you should do the same?

I got sick of it last year. This year was a bit better because I planned in advance not to even try to nurse any tomatoes through the summer months. That was what frustrated me and got me burned out last year.

I still get a little weary when I have to go into the garden every afternoon when it's 95+ degrees, so next year I'm going to plan even more carefully. The ONLY things I'll keep going through next summer will be okra and maybe sweet potatoes. Everything else will be grown from January-May and August-December.

flip, sounds like you've hit on a plan that the deep south figured out some time ago (couple centuries or millenia, depending on who you ask), aye?

Perhaps Square Foot Gardening might be in order?

due east, maybe you are a reborn martha stewart and everything is perfect. just joking, i can find something in the garden to do.

The only thing I'm sick of is hulling endless quarts of strawberries. I never would have guessed that everbearing strawberries would be so productive.
I guess I'm one of those people who doesn't get sick of gardening. Actually August is my second favorite part of the gardening season (my favorite is early spring). We've got all kinds of produce coming in and the excitement of planting those fall crops. As long as I can nuture some little seedlings I'm happy.

"flip, sounds like you've hit on a plan that the deep south figured out some time ago (couple centuries or millenia, depending on who you ask), aye?"

Yeah, you'd think living here all my life, I would have known that instinctively! I hate going outside from June to August, but I thought that the rewards of gardening would compensate for the mosquitoes, yellow jackets, and heat like the inside of a microwaved burrito. And they sort of do, I guess. I get darn few cucumbers in this heat, but when I do, it almost makes up for all the sweat.

Even the most dedicated gardener can become discouraged, or overwhelmed. Our hobby places us at the mercy of the elements - and sometimes they have no mercy. Hail, heat, drought, frost, flood, quack grass, SVB, cucumber beetles, rust, blight, PM, mosaic...

//Blood pressure rising//. Deep cleansing breath; breathe in... hold it... breathe out... Relax.

The challenge of gardening is to avoid as much frustration as possible through planning, and to just accept that while you get the bear most years, some years the bear gets you.

I overcame part of my frustration, oddly enough, by making my garden larger. Since Wisconsin summers are so unpredictable, I plan (and plant) for both hot & cool weather. There are always failures... and there are always successes. Even the failures are learning experiences; and you discover odd things, like limas and eggplant that thrive in cool weather, and a hot-weather pea. Each year I find a few more "keepers", so my garden gets better with time.

Weeds became a frustration at one point (too many had been allowed to seed, and too much quack grass) so I took a year off. For that year, all I did was raise cover crops; one after the other, I planted, mowed, tilled under, and planted again. I found consolation for the summer in a small pepper patch behind my home. By the next year, not only were most of the weeds gone (including the quack grass) but the soil was considerably richer. This might also be helpful if a particular disease or insect has become an established problem.

For vegetables that tend to mature all at once, it can be overwhelming. I have a real love-hate relationship with sweet corn for that very reason; when it's ready, it won't wait, and freezing it is a monumental task. It usually makes for a long night.

So what to do? I tried smaller plantings spaced out over time, but wasn't happy with the pollination. Then it hit me - Shucking Party. Invite friends & family over for a pot luck, part of which will involve shucking & processing (and of course eating) the corn.

Instead of a daunting task, it has become a ritual to look forward to. The same idea works for the green pea & edamame soybean harvests as well. It is rediscovering a bonding experience that our forebears knew, and we have forgotten. Some of these folks even stepped forward to help me with my spring planting.

Sometimes if a particular task is especially trying, all you need is the right tool. A good tiller or small cultivator can make big jobs short work, whether you choose to buy, borrow, or rent. I never liked the dainty hand tools most often sold in garden centers, so I took long-handled hoes & cultivators, and cut down the handles to make them hand tools; they have a comfortable balance, and get work done in a hurry. Take a blowtorch to the tines of a strong pitchfork, and bend them to make a "potato hook".

Floating row covers can be the solution to severe insect problems (like SVB) and are re-usable if handled gently. Heavy-duty landscape mulch will significantly reduce weeding, and is also re-usable. Mulching heavily (with straw, leaves, grass clippings, or compost) will reduce some disease problems (especially for beans) and reduce the time spent on watering. It will also promote a healthy earthworm population, and improve your soil as it breaks down.

If you grow food for self-sufficiency, then gardening can be work. Most vegetable gardeners do so for pleasure. I and many on GW probably fall somewhere in-between. ;-) There are many tools & techniques that can minimize the hassles, and improve your chances of success. But the bottom line is, if you are happy with a large garden, great; if it becomes a chore, don't be afraid to scale back. You may need nothing more than a few large pots of jalapenos & cherry tomatoes. Keep it within your comfort level.

What I want to know is: why don't the slugs and bugs eat the weeds? That's a win win for everyone. Maybe we could train them?

terri,at the same time they should be trained not to eat vegetable and flower plants,otherwise we will lose everything.

Luckily I "get sick" (or tired) of my garden just about the time first frost comes around....and then all I have to deal with are the fall crops which are more maintenace friendly. I could never live in an area that doesn't have a retreat called "winter" :)

Yes. I am itching to start in Jan/Feb. then come August I'm tired of it, especially this year. Only because #1. I hate the heat! #2. The excitment of seeing things grow and starting something new diminishes. #3. My Tomatoe yeild is horrible this year. #4. So busy doing other things.

But I'll never go a year without one. :)

We get tired of everything all the time. Its natural. :)

"Yes. I am itching to start in Jan/Feb. then come August I'm tired of it, especially this year. Only because #1. I hate the heat! #2. The excitement of seeing things grow and starting something new diminishes. #3. My Tomato yield is horrible this year. #4. So busy doing other things. "

Yeah that's me too, in the spring everything is growing
and looks great, but come July - August even a garden that is doing fairly well starts to look ratty, I just get sick
of even looking at it, and having to keep it up. I get the itch to pull everything up and put it in my compost, and get my back yard all tidy looking.

I think I like the idea of gardening more than actual gardening.

I'm a tad tired of it myself this year. I mulch so the weeds aren't the issue. This year its the darn squash bugs, cuke beetles, hornworms, powdery mildew and early arrival of blight. I can't ever remember getting hit so hard by everything all in one grwoing season. Still I spend a couple of hours each day in the garden doing battle. :-) Pluses for the season are white yams, parsnips, brussel sprouts, carrots, scallions, peppers, watermelon, asparagus, raspberries, blackberries and Black Krim tomatoes. Negatives i.e. less than stellat performance or a downright bust are all the corn, green beans, curbits, most of the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, leeks, jicama, artichokes, celery, peas and blueberries. Lettuce was just OK and the basil is too strong. Well after taking inventory it doesn't look like the season is a total loss so I gues I'll head back to the garden!

My vegetable garden is too small to loose interest, but my flower gardens are another story...by this time I've given up because the deer have eaten nearly everything I've been waiting to flower. I keep telling myself I'm not going to plant anything more...but keep planting anyway. Next spring I am going to move alot of the deer edibles closer to the house (hydrangeas) and move the bleeding hearts out into the woods where the hydrangeas are now.

My favorite saying this time of year is "there is always next year"

Happy gardening

I HATEEEEEE Bambi and his friends!!!

John

I never tire of it. Sometimes I get lazy or discouraged, and maybe that's what others mean by getting tired of it, but I am hyped about gardening year round. Like Karen, it helps that my space is limited. Not severely limited, but enough so that I can't plant everything that I might have a whim to. So it's a manageable chore to care for it. Also, I'm retired. So my life is pretty leisurely, compared to many of yours.

Right now I'm putting in some fall crops and thinking about next year's garden. As I said, I don't have room to grow everthing. So the planning is intense. No longer do I give in to impulse buying from catalogs. I only grow something if I really and truly want to. That keeps me from having to care for things in which I only have a half hearted interest. Everything I grow is grown for a good reason and is something I want to nurture.

Jim

If in early to mid May, you put down a good thick layer of mulch, for me it is leaves that were collected the previous fall, then even in the 3rd week of August, you should have very few weeds, a garden that is still healthy & productive. It's just that simple.
MULCH!

Strangely enough, it wasn't the weeds in my garden beds that got to me. It was the rest of my yard. We had a drought for most of the summer, but I was able to keep everything going by deep soaking. When the rains finally did come, the rest of my backyard went to goatheads and other weeds that sprung up around my fruit trees and other plants outside my beds. Then I got overwhelmed because the rain kept coming and the weeds needed to be mowed down but stayed too wet. Then came the big hail storm that tore holes in everything. This was my second season gardening, and I guess I probably planted too much of everything. The harvesting became a little overwhelming as well. Next year I will try to plant less of everything.

I get a bit tired with outside temps everyday at or over 100 degrees since late June, with no, and I mean no measurable rain. Tired is probably not the best description, frustrated or discouraged seem to fit better. I had to pull everything in mid July, so no real gardening for a month or so. Now I'm just waiting on a cool down to get Fall planting started. One good thing though. I've had time to make a lot of compost.

This summer has been less frustrating so far. I've finally realized (duh!) that if I want to eat it, smell it or look at it, I have to fence it against Bambi and Friends. I mulch and use cardboard, and I work in the garden in the morning before the heat. The bugs haven't been so bad; I pick them off by hand every early evening with a glass of wine in one hand and a cup of soapy water in the other. So far I haven't drunk the wrong one! I really think the deer fencing lesson has made this summer much better than any other even the drought and the usual crop failures continue.

I get alittle discourage when my cucumbers start to die off by the end of July to early August. Maybe I need to remember to have a backup plant when it gets close to that time.
My tomatoes were not doing so well due to the high heat scalding the maters, the size of the maters were not as large as they should of been & lots of blooms falling off the plants.
My yellow peppers grew 2 decent peppers before it started to go downhill. After that... the pepper plant grew a few more peppers but all of them ended up with the brown spots on them. Right now the pepper is not bloomimg one flower.
The only luck I'm having is my cantaloupes & hopefully my watermelons will taste good once they are done ripening.

I had to think a little about this question . . . meditate in my version of the lotus position (some may think it looks like I'm nodding off in the LazyBoy ;o) . . . take my temperature. Naw, I really don't get sick of the garden.

There's been so many years and so many gardens - I know I had a few sniffles and rashes along the way (taking over my neighbor's weed-infested site comes to mind.)

One thing, I don't really mind feeding my compost pile - recently, it was with flea beetle-riddled 3rd planting mizuna. Once I had it in the pile, I felt much better.

Too much of something? If I don't have use for it, I can just walk right past it and admire it as it goes to seed. I once had some neighbors who thought that they were doing me a favor by picking a bucket of my beans and setting them beside the front door. Dang that made me mad! I only got some clarity of mind after I'd carried them over to someone else as a gift.

August is a very good time for me here in Zone 5. The garden has real "presence!" Sure, a lot of things are gone (some long gone) but the zinnia bed is nearly as tall as I am, I have huge ornamental corn and sunflowers, the poles for the beans are draped with green vines, there are pumpkins turning orange in a sea of huge leaves, and everywhere I look under a cucumber leaf - there's a cucumber!

Besides having grown my favorite environment, I'm eating my favorite foods - sweet corn, green beans, slices of beefsteak tomatoes/sweet onions/cucumbers marinated in apple cider vinegar. I had my first melons this week!

Too large a garden can get away from you but without sufficient space, we won't be able to grow enough varieties to overcome losses (the before-mentioned flea beetles and the dratted rabbit took a significant toll on my 2006 garden ;o(

Yes, thinking about gardening is fun but you can put roots under your garden in the sky. I'm with Zeedman . . . plan, plan, plan. But, also plan for your time. I'm currently spending about 2 1/2 hours per 1,000 square feet of garden each week. I'm like Jimster and have "retirement" time but I'd do a better and tidier job with twice this many hours.

No, I'm not going out there when it's 95 and am blessed with the opportunity to greet the sunrise in the garden on many, many days thru the season.

Gardening contributes to my happiness, sense of well-being and health, and provides a way for me to be productive.

Time to get off my soap box.

Steve

I have problems keeping up with gardening through the summer due to difficulties tolerating heat. Also, my allergies tend to step in and make me a near-invalid for about 4-6 weeks. Its been bad enough the past 3 years that I finally caved and started the immunotherapy shots for allergies this year.

The other thing that gets to me by this point is bugs. Its icky to be out there squishing the endless bug populations on the squash and beans during the heat with your head ringing from clogged sinuses....

I never get tired of gardening. It's the hot temps that get to me. I tell myself to get up at the crack of dawn but never do make it outside until around 8:00 and then by 10-11 I'm too hot to keep on working.

I have more projects that I want to get done in my yard than I probably have years left to accomplish. So I get mad at myself when I sneak indoors to cool off. Now I'm having major back problems so I'm really beating myself up for not getting more done while I could have. I'm still not ready to give up though.

MeMo

Update to my post. The past few days have been horrible (Ragweed) and now i'm drowsy from my medication most of the day. NOt a fun time to play in the garden. I hate paste tomatoes...there i said it!

Sorry about your allergies franktank. What do you hate about paste tomatoes? I don't like how they always fall to the ground, but I sure like to freeze them. They are soooooo easy to peel.

Yep - it's Bermuda grass, Argentine ants and too busy canning all the goodies from it, to keep up with the weeds, watering, spraying, etc.

But come dinner time, I look down at my plate and note that most of what is on it, I GREW!

So after a nice glass of wine, to go along, I feel better about it. The next morning, I can't wait to do it all over again.

Bejay

The heat really got me down this year. And the self-imposed schedule that I have now given up. . .WHAT was I thinking?My garden is not located where I live, but ten miles away, on a wild piece of land that used to belong to my great-aunt. Trying to "tame" it - if there is such a thing - has been difficult. Each year I put in more beds and grow more flowers, herbs and veggies. Irrigation has been a challenge all its own. Finally got a small pump for the nearly dry well that empties and must be left for a few days to refill. THAT's another story. . .
The thrill has been eating a meal from my own garden, and this year that happened quite often. Being able to put up tomatoes, though a lot of work, was rewarding too (San Marzanos are the bomb!). Trying new varieties and things I never grew, like pumpkins, was both exciting and frustrating (@!*# squash bugs!).
So, yes, I was nearly fed up with my garden at one point this year, but the good seems to far outweigh the bad as I look back. And, to go along with what Bejay said, after a shower and a nice glass of wine, I'm ready to go out and do it all again. :)

When I lived in southern New Mexico I got really tired of taking care of the garden since the growing season was so long.

However, here in Colorado the season is just about right so I enjoy it.

I don't plant a whole lot. I have raspberries along one side, a rotation of cukes, tomatoes and hot peppers on one end with huge sage plants on each corner. The back yard has quite a lot of clover growing with the grass so the resident deer do not bother my garden. The chickens (all two of them) keep the bug population at bay. I especially notice the earwig population around the house being low when i keep a few cluckers.
This summer I grew lemon cucumbers, spinach, lettuce, hot peppers, plus my garden borders.
I can buy vegetables cheaper than i can grow them, so I try to keep it fun. I am recovering from an illness which limits my ability to garden, mostly in the stamina dept.. so I moved my porch swing out to the garden. I have discovered that I should have been doing that for the last 25 years. It is my favorite place to sit in the shade. So even though I am tired of weeds I still find my yard swing the nicest place in the yard.

I haven't yet gotten sick of my garden, but it's very small. I have felt better since I made peace with myself a few years ago about killing things (that is, planting stuff that didn't thrive, or just outright died). Composting has helped my sanity a lot, because my garden flourishes from the rich soil, and when something dies, it goes into the pile to be recycled into useful stuff.

Like others here, I enjoy the sprouting and nurturing of seedlings the most. More even than the harvesting of the mature plants. There's definitely a lull in the middle, between seedling care and harvesting, when the garden is at its dullest, though that's usually when I'm chaffing at the bit to see some fruits and all impatient.

Putting in a second crop, and succession planting, is a good way to get my seedling-growth-fix in all season long.

I'm learning the value of mulching and the joy of how to successfully fight bugs. I've only been gardening a very short time and I get a kick out of learning how to do all this "growing stuff". Maybe when I feel I've mastered it (if that ever happens!), then it will get boring and I'll be sick of it.

You might consider too if your garden is what you want it to be. Maybe you'd be happier with turf and a small container garden.

I like sitting in my garden just looking at it. I'm away from husband, 6 year old son and infant daughter. It gives me important time alone to reflect on things. There's been at least a dozen otherwise intractible problems I've found solutions to while sitting in the garden. I have a chair on a couple boards positioned under some shade precisely for me to have a spot to sit and think. If I didn't have a garden, then I wouldn't have a good excuse to go sit out there, would I?

I have been gardening since 1980. I really love gardening more than anything else I do. I have energy limitations, so over the years I have had to scale back my gardening. We have a small property so my largest garden was 25x30. A persistent invasive grass got the best of me and I stopped using that space for veggies and started just doing one long raised bed closer to the house for lettuces/broccoli etc. and tomatoes in containers. Then I added back in peppers/zuchinni in containers.

I left that veggie garden area with that horrible grass weed for quite a few years. But I missed having enough room to grow more. Plus I couldn't compare what my tomatoes would do in containers vs. in the ground. So I started planning to 'retake' that area. [g] I have had to enlist the help of my family to do it, but last year was the year. We increased the size of it, cleared off the neglected growth and found a new way to approach the killer grass. Instead of pulling it and horror of horrors, one year I tried rototilling and pulling out the roots..lol. What a mistake that was. It came back with a vengeance. We used cardboard and lots of bark mulch and covered the whole area and then some. We got lucky and our yard went without rain for about 2 months straight last year. So that grass was history for the first time since 1980.

Our sons built raised beds, we had been collecting leaves for a couple of years and composting them. This season was the first year using that new space in a number of years and it was very exciting. It has been very low maintenance with the whole area cardboard/mulched, despite the tons of rain we have had, very little weeding. No weeding in the beds, as we do square foot gardening with chopped up leaves [with a mower] for mulch.

I have been organic since 1980, and so I have also concentrated on growing flowers/herbs that attract beneficials. I let things take care of themselves most of the time, except for hand picking anything unwelcome. This year, I had no Japanese Beetles or Asiatic beetles to speak of. Nothing bothering my garden except a surge in earwigs, which seem to have died down now. Some cuke beetles, which I just pulled my cuke plants this year not having the energy to deal with that. And a woodchuck who seems to be visiting regularly, because I see where he is coming in under the gate and I ran into him one morning. But not noticing very much missing or damaged.

I do get tired of the garden when it starts looking ratty and/or too many issues frustrate me. This year I think I had the luck of a 'new garden'. Next year I am sure it will be different. But the raised beds, square foot gardening, cardboard/mulch, organic methods, laize faire attitude seem to be keeping me in the game.

Keeping things interesting, creating a 'total' environment in the veggie garden area made a difference for us too. We put up an arbor to the entrance to that area, with honeysuckle on it. We left a mulched area with a couple of easy to care for plastic adirondack chairs right on the edge of the veggie garden in the shade. We feed birds with safflower/thistle to keep the squirrels out of it. Grow lots of flower/herbs in among the veggies. Fragrant plants. It is really really nice this year. As good as I anticipated.

So if you are getting tired of the garden. Take a break from it, grow some flowers in your veggie area, or rethink the whole thing and make it smaller/bigger, grow something you never tried before. Make it what you 'want' it to be for you. If you'd rather be building wooden furniture or lifting weights, or sipping tea in the shade, then build a workspace near your garden, and use the garden to make the whole area attractive. Buy one of those inexpensive screenhouses and put it up right next to the garden. We did that this year and WOW, what a difference having that there. We have enjoyed it all season. We also put one of those mosquito machines and we think it helps a lot. We added a long strip of a raised mixed border, along one edge of the veggie garden, with butterfly plants in it and now I can't wait to get out there and see butterflies in the morning.

Now it is just as much fun/enjoyment as it was in 1980. In a little different way, but just as great. I hope you all continued happiness in your gardens.

:-)

Prairemoon, wow, that was very inspirational!!
Best Wishes, Wendey

i got tired of my garden this year as well. my grandmother got sick int eh spring and passed away June 15th, so the major growing season saw a lot of neglect on my part. my wife and i got out there and got the weeds under control, and we had a decent crop of beans, but we lost all our corn. the okra filled a deep freezer.

last month i decided to just let it all go to seed. these seeds i will put up for next year, probably pick them this weekend. after i have harvested my seeds i will cut every thing down and till it under. then i will move my compost pile into the middle of the garden so that all i have to do is spread it in the spring. i would go ahead and spread it now, but most of it is not ready yet, and i need a lot of compost to cover the 100x100 area. although the area is big, i actually plant my rows about 8 ft apart so that i can work the ground with the garden tractor. if i setup the rows at a normal spacing it would still be a lot of space though.

another thing that nearly broke me of gardening is the fireants. no matter what i try, they take over the garden. the only way to force them out is to have standing water int eh garden, and then the plants suffer. vegetable safe chemicals do not work, so i may have to go a little stronger next year.

Hi Wendey,

I hope I didn't overstate it. [g] I re read it and didn't mean to make it sound ideal...lol. If I think about it, there are things that are less so, this year, as it is every year. Tomatoes aren't ripening fast enough, few peppers, seedlings got in the ground late, with the cool rainy weather in the spring. I think I am just happy with the changes and that makes a difference in what I am getting out of it this year.

Gardeners have a LOT of challenges and seem to get more every year and it does get discouraging sometimes. Some years more than others and you might need to take a year off. I just wanted to share how things worked out after I took some time off, to encourage anyone to think that after a break from it, you might decide you could enjoy it again with a few changes.

Good to see you posting Wendey, hope all is well with you. :-)

David,

It sounds like a great accomodation, to make the rows far enough apart to use your tractor. It must really help in managing your compost pile too. I hate to hear of someone struggling with Fire Ants. You are doing better than I would. That might be something that would get the better of me. I wish I had some suggestion, but no experience with them here yet, this far north. I applaud your efforts to manage them in a non damaging way. I hope someone finds something thats safe that works against them. I'm sure a lot of people are trying to.

I'm so sorry to hear of the loss of your grandmother and hope next year will be a better year for you, in many respects.

Thanks for sharing. :-)

I am going into my 5th year of gardening here and loving it more and more. I like being able to put food on the table and filling my shelves with full jars of healthy veggies.
There is a real sence of accoplishment knowing I have not only planted the seed and harvested it, but I am also learning to save the seed too. I think I would be sick if I could not garden.

The answer, for me, is "no." I love it more and more. I eat what I want; give away what I can't consume, and everyone is the better for it.

I love watching new things grow, learning new tricks to combat all the things that will compromise a good harvest.

It's the ultimate vacation.

I came to this thread to see what heretics might be here, sick of their gardens! Never happens to me. I feel guilty about neglecting it, but I always like my garden. Sure some things do better and some things do worse in any given year, but that is how life goes. I am organic and find that bugs and nature sort of balance themselves out, never too many kinds of bad bugs at any one time. I realize that I am lucky to never have had deer problems, and to have just regular ants, although an awful lot of them this year.

I aspire to do better in lots of way every year, and sometimes I really do. This year I abandoned a lot of my garden space from the past few years because of all the weeds, mostly quack grass and wild strawberries, but plenty of other stuff. But I am putting cardboard down on it now and will cover that with various lasagna layers and garden on top of it next spring. My raised beds all did great, so I can't complain. We are just barely able to eat all our tomatoes. I have one flower bed where the soil seems to suck, and maybe that will be my project next year.

Marcia

Not really sick of gardening or tired of it even. In NY no problem to keep a garden running all summer and producing also! Here in NC we go through what I call summer mode. Pretty much everything will die off, stop growing or be eaten faster than I can realistically deal with the bugs. Yes, even the best organic cures will not deal with all issues.

I work this into the summer gardening routine. When the July/August heat and dry spell hit I let nature do its thing. Most everything is finished with at lest its first crop by then anyway! Besides as others mentioned it is brutally hot/humid and just standing in the shade looking at the garden can make you lose 2 pounds per hour.

By that time of year I can make do with two cherry tomato plants, one regular and one or two of whatever else is still producing something. Pick the best and healthiest ones and I will let them go with water, once or twice a week and little else. Yes, I am cruel and mean to my plants. In July you get one or two days where it is only in the 80Âs so I use them and till the whole mess. Looks pretty barren with one or two plants poking up in a large plot!

About now it is cooling down again. I did a fast shallow till to get the little weeds and am planning to plan the fall garden. Two gardening seasons is one way to look at it. First year in NC I did try to keep everything growing all summer, not a pretty sight and a ton of work hand watering. I am trying to work with the cycles we have and besides, who wouldnÂt like to do spring planting twice in a year!

I don't think many of us would be here if we did...

*wink*

I can't say that I ever actually get "sick" of my garden. Any decrease in interest during the dog days of summer is short lived. I've always maintained that if I had only one garden to plant it would be a Fall garden. Fall gardening starts in August in south Louisiana. The benefits of a fall garden are fewer weeds, fewer insets, a enjoyable climate starting in late September. Fall is time for planting my vegetable favorites - broccoli & cauliflower. But it's also the time to plant spinach, garlic, onions, lettuce, snapbeans, radishes, lettuce & strawberries.

My favorite time to garden is during the afternoon when there isnt much to do indoors. I mean I spend most all winter days indoors why not be outside in the summer? With the heat, it's not always possible. Plus you're not supposed to water during the daytime but many times I do anyway.

It seems all winter I dream about my vegetable garden, then there is the prep stage in springtime. After that's it's water, weed and watch it grow until you get your first tomato. Then it's weed, weed, weed and continue harvesting through summer. Finally it's harvest some more then do the fall clean up. Somewhere in between it's fun to identify problems and pests because that creates something else for me to do.

In fact I built my garden so I'd have things to do. The therapy I get from working out there is invaluable. Sharing my experiences with others and learning from others via this forum is equally satisfying.

I never get tired of the garden. I do a lot less in it as the season goes on since I mulch deep and don't do any second plantings (used to garden from early spring through late fall with many plantings).

The only thing I DO get tired of is the stinking mosquitos!

If there were no mosquitos I would garden all day everyday. I hate those things. And I could tolerate it to a point but now every bite you have to worry about disease as well. Blech. Makes me want to tent my whole backyard.

So what do you guys do about your problems? I'd love to hear how you beat the heat, the bugs, the boredom...I had a small garden in Phoenix, AZ. The heat wasn't nice but I coped. Now I live in Vancouver, BC and we have highs that are 75-80F and mid humidity, and I have potted herbs etc in an apartment with no Balcony. (Sigh)

I may be stating the obvious to such seasoned gardeners but a few tips I learned to beat the heat in PHX were...

1 - Cotton, cotton, cotton. Never synthetic blends. It makes a world of difference.
2 - Less clothing doesn't equal cooler. Light cotton T and light cotton shorts keep you cooler then shirtless etc...
3 - Damp bandanna and/or clothing even in dry heat makes you feel hotter (water being a better conductor then air). Plus water helps you get a nice sunburn.
4 - (Don't shoot the Buddhist) - Meditate while gardening. Get calm, relax, concentrate on what you are doing and nothing else, move thoughtfully and slowly. Mosquitoes are attracted to CO2 and in a meditative state of mind respiration decreases and the bugs can't "see" you as well. This seemed silly to me but I went and was playing at a park, Frisbee etc..., and I was bit all to heck. Went back a few days later and sat and meditated and only 1 mosquito bite.

Sorry if this sounded preachy, not meant that way, but these were things that helped me...What tips do ya'll have?