I know where you're coming from. That's why Jack Daniels was invented. Keep it on your countertop and use as needed.

>That's why Jack Daniels was invented. Keep it on your countertop and use as needed.

This iz a gud plann.

Also, I highly recommend the organic yellowjacket spray. It works better than Raid, in my experience, and smells nice.

And you don't have to worry if you get some on you -- it's just soap, water, and mint oil, but the mint oil kills the yellowjackets on contact.

Ticks suck :(.

It's been a bad year for me too. More bugs than ever. I made a big mistake and planted tomatoes that came up from seeds that weren't heirlooms. I was so excited I had free tomato plants. They are nasty tasting and bug ridden. The only good thing is the chickens love to eat them. I wasted alot of time and energy and good garden space to plant them all. On top of that I pushed myself to do it all because I knew I was having shoulder surgery soon. And then like a dummy I kept taking care of them, staking and tying them up after I had my surgery. Please shoot me now! A lesson learned for life. Don't grown seedlings from non-heirloom plants. Now I have to yank them all out for my fall crop. My shoulder is saying NO!!

Time to walk away! Some years it just doesn't work! Been there, done that!
If the whole garden is toast, I'd pull it and compost/cover it till it's time to plant winter stuff.
I don't know what your area is like, hmm z 5 , pretty cold. Can you do some fall greens? Chard, mustard, spinach, lettuce? Or is it too hot to plant now for fall veges? I don't know what the east coast is like! I'm on the west coast where we can garden pretty much year round.
Good luck! Nancy

seems to me the problem isn't the garden, it's the outside the garden is in.

Exactly right! The garden is beautiful and productive. It's the lousy pests and bites that are so darn annoying I want to be indoors.

Zackey, I had shoulder surgery last September and I made the mistake of throwing something over the fence (with my other hand). Boy was that a mistake along with trying to water the garden. I ended up gardening with one arm sitting on one of those seats with wheels. Give your shoulder time, a lot of time...months. The garden will be there next year.

Boy, can I relate to this post!

2 WEEKS ago I was stung by another bee-(thru my glove-so It didn't really get me to badly). I'm allergic to bees. I took a chance and didn't use the epipen i carry in my pocket for an anaphylaxis reaction- and avoided a trip to the emergency room.

LAST WEEK I WAS in the hospital for 2 days on IV antibitoics for cellulitis from a staph/strep infection that was spreading thru my blood. Dr thinks it got in through the poison ivy rash I had.

THIS WEEK the test for Lyme they did in the hospital came back positive.

Bees, poison ivy, ticks, lyme, staph/strep - who would have thought gardening was so dangerous and life threatening!

It's usually the heat stroke that gets to me by now, along with the weeding. Was diagnosed with Lyme last week so that put a damper on things. Should be up to snuff for planting the fall crops in a couple of weeks, just hoping that the worst of the heat is behind us.

Having a great year here. Nice weather after suffering through two summers of Death Valley temperatures and drought.

Might get some tomatoes and corn, after two years of nothing but peppers and cucumbers.

This post was edited by tdscpa on Mon, Aug 5, 13 at 2:13

Ah, garden hate. Very close to garden love. :) I have a lot less of it now that the garden is getting well-established in its place and I use more mulch hay/straw than ever.

Sounds like you need some long socks sprayed with a DEET based insect repellent (goes a long way towards not getting ticks on you), some iron phosphate/spinosad pellets (for slugs and other seedling eaters), some time to tip-toe through your tulips (mashing rodent tunnels as you go) followed by some mousetraps and some mulch to put down once you've weeded one last time. Then your troubles would be 95% handled! :) I had one of those days about a month or so ago, got to each problem one at a time and it wasn't so bad. Garden looks the best it has this year. Cheers!

Yeah, I've had a pretty bad year in a progression of bad years. My lettuces were in and doing well, and that was it. The cabbages and broccoli were nice and green but never produced. Only now, in August are the cabbages forming. Planted 3 different watermelons, plenty of flowers, small vine and no fruit. Same with the melons. I got a few eggplants, three zucchini, my collards and kale got eaten in about 2 days, I have plenty of tall corn, but no tassels. I have a few cukes, some radishes, my herbs are all ok, and my Brussels sprouts are starting to form buds. The tomatoes are good. My carrots are just green tops. I feel all your pains. I'm sure you feel mine as well.

The slugs have been horrendous and killed many of my seedlings. There are so many of them everywhere. All my summer squash and zucchini died from squash vine borer even before I had a decent one to eat. The cucumber vines have been dying from wilt before even developing cukes. My persimmon crop is a total failure this year. I am enjoying complaining! One consequence is that I have more reason to support my local farmers market where I can buy vegetables that I can not grow myself.

Gardening is warfare. At this point in the season I just don't care anymore, except for the tomato worms. The beneficials can feast on the bugs. Surgery was effective on the squash. Everything is big enough to handle the weeds. My biggest stress is what to do with the bushels of beans and cucumbers I have.

It would really be interesting to know what part of the country you folks were in and what your setting was.

Like me, here in St.Louis MO tending the garden at my home which is in the suburbs of St.Louis.

It's my first year so im sure ill get my fair share of it but IMO, the virgin voyage of my garden has been pretty smooth. Other than a bit of rabbit damage on my broccoli/cauliflower that eventually forced me to pull my plants (didn't really care honestly, seems the work put in for those two is NOT commensurate to the final product...), some flea beetle damage on my eggplant that eventually went away on it's own and my two tomato addicted pugs.

I'm sure your luck will change, just be strong and know that sometimes less is more.

I'd have to agree with Sunibel to a point. It is the creatures and pests in the garden that seem to be giving you a hard time, not the garden. Sometimes it does just get to you and you sound like the yellow jacket nests were the straw that broke the camel's back.

You might need to take some time off from the garden for awhile, if that's possible. Or if you recover your equilibrium, I'd say take one issue at a time and solve that and go down the list, then next year will be better.

As for weeds in the vegetable garden, I have raised beds that have mulched paths around them and I grow organically, so I use grass clippings and leaves to mulch around everything that grows and pull out few weeds. Some crops don't really take to mulch, like blocks of beets that are close together or mesculin mix, but starting out with them growing close to each other and then thinning them as they get bigger, cuts down on weeding too.

And actually, if you think about the problems you've had, with ticks and yellow jackets, you would still have those problems even if you were just using your yard for anything, not just gardening. Unless you are planning on staying indoors all summer, you'd still have to cope with some of those.

I too get tired of the garden about this time of year. I think that's normal for many of us.

The insects is another issue. Regarding yellowjackets- I've read many times the importance of setting traps out very early spring to try and catch the queen and therefore greatly reduce the yellowjacket population. Of course I've never gotten around to doing that even though I bought YJ traps more than once. The other issue with YJ traps is you need to re-bait them every few days. I would hope if one did all the correct steps, there would be less YJ. How about getting a pest comany out also to knock down the hives as they appear (if you don't want to do it yourself.) Spray in early evening or when dark when they are quiet.

Regarding tics, I only have that problem when walking in our beautiful parks. I guess they come with the beauty of nature. Sorry.

Getting burned out on gardening is maybe a message to move onto another favorite thing - reading, baseball/football, family, a couple of end of summer trips......anything other than the garden.

Just a couple of my thoughts.

Ginny

Here, at least, this is the time when gardening is easiest. It's the peak of the season, nothing much to do but go out and pick stuff.

But that doesn't account for dangerous pests.

Over the weekend I mixed a delicious grapefruit, lime and tequila cocktail and spent 4 happy hours in the garden...I didn't even realize how long I had been out there! My husband came looking for me when he got hungry, meanwhile I was having a garden party! Solo! Is that sad? Lol.

Green, you mean you made a grapefruit margarita? lol. Im more partial to Jim Beam and coke-a-cola myself, but I too have solo parties from time to time, I don't think it's sad, I have a great time!

If were still venting garden frustrations: Between Tuesday and Sunday we had several inches of quarter sized hail every day, drowning rain and even tornadoes (which for Denver is NOT common). My in-ground tomatoes are now suffering from waterlogged feet, a lot of the onions have been cut back to nubs, and the lettuce looks like it was sent through the paper shredder. Everything is looking like they are a bunch of prize fighters fresh out of the ring. This comes two weeks after we had almost a foot of snow on the ground. Now were pushing right through the 80's and into the 90's. I will be lucky if I get anything out of this garden besides the scallions (courtesy of the hail) and radishes I already picked. As a nice little bonus yesterday I found cutworm damage in the corn.

But wait! There's more!

If you call within the next 10 minutes, your National Guard Unit will schedule a 2 week Annual Training from June 7-21 and all you can do is HOPE that the people you leave in charge of taking care of the garden do a good job so you don't come home to death and destruction.

Did I mention I was fond of Jim Beam?