awe Julie....we all have those seasons. My fall season just sucked rotten eggs. Spring 2011? It got hot very early this year for one thing and that hurt a lot of our spring gardens. I love Silvia to death and I learn a great deal from her...but my garden and soil and budget are totally different so I don't expect the same results. I will tell you this though....experience is more than half the battle and every season you have that isn't perfect (basically every season) is teaching you something that will make your next season much much better. Hang in there! Tell me where you are if you like and if you are within an hour or so I'll come over and buddy garden with you for a little while. :)

You won't be sad for long. When one of my "plans" is a massive fail I get horribly sad and disappointed, but then something else does well and I start thinking about my next garden adventure. The best thing to do is to plant a lot of stuff all the time and something will work out.

I know how you feel. My garden has been a disappointment as well. Not a single curcurbit set fruit. And my tomatoes are not producing either.

But my peppers are finally coming in and my beans are doing well, and I'm learning about fertilizing and mulching and proper watering and proper planting times, so I'm hopeful that my next try will be better. I hope yours will too.

Julie, none of us have a garden where everything does exactly as expected, except Silvia. But no matter how the plants do, we learn from each experence. Don't give up! Also, you might want to consider signing up for the Osceola county Master Gardener class which will be starting Aug. 2nd. You will receive lots of info there that will help with your gardening.

Thanks everyone, and thanks Tina for that sweet offer. I'm not giving up and I certainly don't expect anything like Silvia's. I'd just like one thing to turn out right! Actually I've got some buds on my peppers, but not sure how they will turn out. I'm learning a lot, I do a lot of research and reading, and I've already got my calendar marked when I need to start my tomato seeds for the fall!

Happy Girl, I'd love to do the Master Gardener class but can't afford that right now. Where in St. Cloud are you?

Julia, I hope that you are feeling better with all the gardening friends support.
I always learn new things even with the bad experiences, I was at Epcot on Sunday for the behind the seeds tour and you would be surprised at all the work they put on those vegetables 15 interns no less, everyday they harvest, spray, hand pollinate, get rid of the old plants and put new ones that are waiting. And the water and fertilizer are perfect, always the same controlled temperature and you know what? I saw some foliage diseases on some plants. They even sterilize the sand. I said to Willy even if we could sterilize our garden, the person that mows the lawn would infect it again, lol

Since we don't have unlimited resources to garden, we have to do the best we can and as cheap as possible. Starting from seeds is not expensive and if we loose we only loose a seed.

If you go to the feed store they have peanuts to plant and your sweet potatoes should be fine too, they both can be used as a ground covers.

And is never to soon to plan for the fall season, when it gets cool there are a lot of options. Keep learning, never give up!

Silvia

Hi girls,

Have you tried singing to the plants? That must be what Silvia does. She has some secret that we don't know about to have such a beautiful garden. My garden is like amagnet to all bugs, fungus, disease etc... It is a full time battle fighting the elements. I learn from experience and I have a lot of utoh's daily. After making a mistake I try not to make that bobo again. Don't give up. Do like the school teach says, do it over & over until you get it right.

Luther

This goes the same with pretty much everyone (except for Silvia, of course!) Some Springs my garden fails or certain things fail, the next year the opposite. Same for the fall. This year, we ate lettuce for the first time for several weeks, but the greens didn't do well. We also had a wonderful crop of snap peas, even now a few are coming on and it's getting so hot the plants are dying. But the bush beans are producing minimally. The tomatoes are so-so. Don't give up, unless you just don't enjoy it at all.

Julia,
Whatever you plant, don't just plant only one kind of the same type veggie. Like my tomatoes, I plant 20 to 30 different types, cucumbers I plant 10 different types, etc, etc. When you start your seeds just start a very few of each type, like only 2 or 3 seeds. Soon you will find that when one type did very well last year, this year it was horrible but another type that failed last year will be doing very well this year. I keep my seeds bagged in the freezer and use them year after year. Try this method for all the hard to grow veggies and you will have successes year after year. The failures get yanked out and the easy to grow veggies get planted in their place in the garden.

Lou

Thanks everyone. I'm not giving up without a fight!!!!!!!!! Lou, I did plant about 5 different kinds of tomatoes (don't have room for 20-30!) but that's a good idea on the other things as well. I did start a notebook and am writing stuff down so I will remember next year!

Luther I don't sing, but I do talk to them! Each morning, when taking the dog out, I go around the house that way to pick up the paper and talk to my garden.

OMG Lou I can't imagine how big your property must be!

I've done most of my gardening on Cape Cod. In the vegetable garden one year, I had so many cukes, I made 32 quarts of pickles. A man loading furniture in a truck fell in the cucumber bed and was horribly apologetic. (He wasn't hurt.) I asked him to fall again! It was so productive it just wouldn't quit. I think I've successfully grown ten cucumbers since that year. And we still have jars of pickles!

Last year on the Cape, my tomatoes were all torn out due to blight, the squash/cukes all got powdery mildew, and I harvested about one billion jalapeno peppers and a few potatoes. Basil did well. So we had really hot spicy pesto, and cooked up the jalapeno peppers and froze them in ice cube trays. We needed gas masks, though.

You just never, ever know what will happen. That's part of the fun, as long as your life doesn't depend on production for your food all year long.

My most successful vegetable this season in Florida was lettuce grown in Earth Boxes. It was a joy going out and picking some for lunch and dinner.

Carol B. in Sarasota

Julie, I too am disappointed in my produce production. I had great plans to can enough tomato sauce to last into fall. I have 2 qts. And no squash! Geez. I really kinda blew it, totally did not take into account the sun moving and planted squash in the wrong place. And when I was thinking I should put a tomato over by the arbor, I should have done so!

So, my spring garden was not so good; but you know what? It is much better than last year - when I was too much the wuss to even try.

Oh, and we are having from our very own garden salad yet again tonight. I might not have squash, but we've still got salad makings, broccoli and greens going gang busters.

I've heard that spring time in Florida is the hardest veggie growing season. You gamble with late freezes and early heat waves and drought. You race the clock to get a harvest in before the bugs come along.

Next spring, I am going to plant more early hybrids. And, I am going to plant in more places around the yard. And in more pots. To be better able to take advantage of where the sun is.

I started a journal early on, then quickly put it on the internet. It is so handy to have my journal to hand whenever I might want to look something up. And I'll have it to hand next year to remember what I learned this spring.

/hugs

~dianne

Carol,
I have to agree with you on the lettuce in the earthboxes. My earthboxes are still producing the many kinds of lettuce that I planted last fall. We enjoy our salads with the meals. I have 3 earthboxes just for the lettuce and I grow my tomatoes in my greenhouses during the winter.

Tina,
I have ten acres here, but the point I was trying to make was planting just one or two of the many varied types of each veggie to insure getting a crop should one or more types fail. I have found that many of the hard to grow veggies are very weather related and some will flourish when others will not and it changes every year which do well. This year my tomatoes are doing very well and even my backup tomato plants have set fruit even when they are still in their small one gallon pots, But on another note all but one type of my pepper plants failed due to a late unexpected frost when I was hardening them off.

You win some and lose some, that's life.
Lou

Julie, I am on Wisconsin at Lakeshore. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by. It's the house with the flag.

Lou, I wish I could see your set up! I don't have nearly the space you do, but I have a lot more that I could be using if I knew what to do with it. Or better yet, come see mine and tell me what to do, lol!

Tru

I agree with Lou and I try the same thing on a much smaller scale because my yard is tiny. Diversity of plants, planting time, and location is key.

You know Lou, you are exactly right! I watched "the botony of desire" from netflix instant movies last night. The one thing the scientist narrator repeated over and over was monocultures were a recipie for disaster. Like the irish potato famine directly related to only one type of potato being grown, and how organic farmers grow lots of different varieties to ensure success. It was quite an interesting documentary. Did you know apples come from apple forests in Kazakhstan? Probably. But I didn't! LOL!

Thanks Tina! Quite interesting movie. BTW, you can see it online on PBS videos also.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1283872815/

One thing that hit a cord with me was monoculture is not only found in growing but also in eating. A diversified diet is as good for us and our adaptability as it is for our gardens, farms and orchards.

~dianne

Lou thanks for the idea of storing seeds bagged in the freezer.. That's what I just did with the seeds I received at Silvia's garden party...
I am waiting to plant them in the fall...
Dianne you made my day when you said you were harvesting broccoli..I also have broccoli and cabbage which are now being eaten by the bugs..My tomatoes are just coming up..
After visiting Silvia I realize that my planting schedule is way off..
Silvia please let us know what to plant and when..
Also, how often do you water?
Maxine

Hi Maxine

In the beginning when I started to garden here, I glanced at the schedule for planting crops and then I make my own as I go along.

The very best time to garden is when is colder because nematodes and bugs are not that active. And I try to plant cold crops when is cold and warm season crops when is temperate, in the summer I don't waste my time, only the crops that are strong get planted.

I will try to do updates also on what I plant and when so it can be easy to follow up. Now I will be harvesting what is in the garden already till there is no more. Only butterbeans, okra, sweet potatoes, peanuts will be planting, if I have space yard long beans.

Around July I will be thinking again about starting seeds for peppers and tomatoes and start planning the fall garden.

As for watering, on Monday and Friday the whole garden gets the sprinkle system, the other days I hand water all the vegetables once a day. The tomatoes get water 2 times a day, they are taller than the trellis now.

I will be happy to answer any specific question that you may have and I am sure I am going to hear more success stories coming up and one is going to be you, little by little we all can learn, I am learning too.:)

Silvia

Hi Maxine! The banana's you and Silvia gave me are looking great! Thanks!