Zach,

First, I send you a cyber-hug! I think Colorado is just a tough place to garden. Living rural, as both of us do, presents some unique challenges.

The wind just never seems to stop. I have grasshoppers every year, too. I just put down a 5lb bag of Nolo Bait Sunday, around the perimeter of the garden areas and some in old tuna cans in the veggie beds. I remember the years before I started using it, the lil buggers just decimated everything. I do think consistent use does knock their numbers down some, but never eliminates them completely, they still get things. The ones here even eat tomatoes! I'll go to pick what looks like a lovely tomato, only to find the back side's been eaten. Yuck!

I think many of us are super stressed this year. If the garden isn't bringing you joy or peace, stop! We have enough aggravation in our lives as it is. You've been at your place 2 or 3 years now? Maybe use the rest of this season to come up with strategies to make future years a little easier. I have to fence my veggie beds or the dogs run through the beds and dig. In your case, this applies to cows, too! I finally found a semi-protected spot on the south side of the house to harden off flats, where they get nearly full sun and some wind protection. I have some pretty anemic looking seedlings, too, despite my best efforts. But I also have some that look great!

Some things are just beyond our control and you have to accept that. The trees are giving me grief this year. I have a lot of die back, tiny leaves coming in, especially on the oaks and maples. I swear some look like they've been through an explosion! Looking back over a couple of the storms in the last 8 months, they were like bombs. There's not a thing to be done about it but prune out what's dead.

I think despite the challenges, every year brings some success and you learn a little bit about how to grow where you are. I hope you find some success, somewhere in the the garden this year!

Barb

Sending cyber-hugs sounds a little dangerous right now but I'm sending one also, Zach.

I was out in the garden twice this week. At one end, I found tracks - dog tracks. Except, I doubt that it was a dog - coyote. Yay! Okay, I'd better temper my enthusiasm since the coyote (apparently) broke 4 trellis stakes last year. He later left a dead Mountain cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttallii) in one of the garden paths, maybe trying to make amends for his hunting activities. After I buried the rabbit off in a corner, he came back and dug it up ...

Anyway, there are partners out there. Most especially, our garden plants. Some of those species are among the most populous on Earth, because of their partnerships with humans. We may as well think of ourselves as a team. Yeah.

I have had large gardens nearly every year. This means that I can have a lot of diversity. If one crop doesn't produce well because of that year's "conditions," others may do just fine. I complained ad-nausea about last year's early weather wrecking my warm-season crops. And yet, there was absolutely nothing wrong with my sweet corn. It was perfectly wonderful!

The beans were fine and abundant ... cool-season carrots grew better than ever in that garden. I had plenty of greens for salads and stir-fries. Lots (too many) potatoes ...

I have just been reading about wireworms in potatoes. Wireworms, the larva of click beetles that live in the soil and chew up roots and tubers. Symphyla, I already had some ideas about - the "centipede" that isn't a centipede but a root pest. Centipedes and spiders are my friends, along with the predatory beetles. I have no idea how to limit damage from soil pests! Well, I have had no idea ...

It may have been that growing so many brassica greens has been beneficial in controlling the wireworms. Crop Rotation. Ha! But, I just learned that there are commonly available varieties of potatoes that have a natural resistance and show a lot less damage, not zero, but a lot less. Yay! Maybe I will try some of those but not in 2020 since my potatoes have already emerged to see the sunlight.

I complained about a disaster in my winter squash patch while my silly jack o'lantern pumpkins grew abundantly. Where is a C. pepo that could deepen my bench for winter squash - storage qualities especially important? Some might say, grow a pie pumpkin but they all (I thought) require too many days of decent growing season to reach adequate maturity. Howsomeever ... there's a Cinnamon Girl pie pumpkin that I can try for 2020 and the plant starts are out in the garden, now. I'm so happy about that! Maybe, I have some backup for Buttercup and Cha Cha ... ;o). Still, those 2 varieties have many years of success in my garden.

There's a problem. Make a mistake or just have some kind of disaster and it takes 12 months to try something new. We can't change that. Rejoice in the fact that we don't have a butterfly's lifespan. Adjust and adapt ... it might be easy for me to say because I have had multiple gardens over the last 50 years but they have all been within about a few dozen miles of each other. That's helped but so has research ...

Zach, you like research - you have fine skills in identifying native species of plants and animals. Good for you! If'n you want to grow wireworm-resistant potatoes, do some research. Sure.

By the way, the pesty cucumber beetles that sometimes give me problems ... in that same morning research I just learned that the larva are in the soil chewing on roots. Just like the flea beetles. Hiding down there giving me grief before they appear above ground to wreck additional havoc! One dang thing after another ...

It isn't enough to hear about others' problems. That helps but "there is nothing that succeeds like success." Yes. That's what a garden forum is for - celebrating the wins and lamenting problems while looking for solutions. It's all good.

Steve

I definitely need some cyber hugs.

I don't know if it's location or wholly user error.

The wind can be a bit a bothersome, but most of the time I can live with it. The grasshoppers, however, I cannot. Last year driving out into the pastures was like driving through a cloud, only instead of water vapor, it was grasshoppers. The onions I grew were there one day, the next day had be chewed down to nubs right as they were starting to bulb. If I had any other plants I'm sure, they too, would have suffered the same fate Where do you buy Nolo bait, Barb?

I have several fences to keep the cows out in the pastures and to keep chickens and dogs out of the garden. Chickens and dogs can't (or least they haven't tried) bust through them, but the cows sure can. They've got 400 acres of lush, green grass and alfalfa, why they feel the need to come into our "weed patch" around the house I don't know. They don't eat anything, just make a mess and turn around and leave. Regardless, I spent a good couple hours last night putting up barbed wire where they came through the pasture fence the into the "yard" and I'm having a conversation with the guy who rents the pastures this weekend about putting up more hot wire to keep them out.

I know I can't control everything, not that that's an easy pill to swallow. But if everything is out my hands, then there would be nothing to do besides admit defeat. I won't, but purely out of stubbornness rather than than expectation that it will turn around for me.

My main aggravation is that there was a time when I felt like there was at least SOME return on the investment of time and effort put into growing plants. Lately it seems like there really isn't. The amount of work it takes to manage and maintain a garden, and to make a whole new ones from scratch, which I have done twice now in as many years, is not insignificant. When all that work seems to yield nothing but abject failure, its brings me woe and frustration rather than joy and peace. Sensitivity and stress are of course running a bit higher than normal this year as well and optimism has never been one of my strengths. At the same time I've never had this hard of a time getting things to grow, either. But despite being the curmudgeon I am, I probably wont stop. Last year I did give up. That didn't make me feel any better about the situation.

Diversifying helps offset losses for sure but when nothing seems to work out, what is left to be the "boom" to counter the "busts?" It's looking like I'm better at researching and identifying plants than I am at growing them.

I planted beans tonight after I got home from work and I still have to transplant the winter squash. I have back-ups of almost all the tomatoes if mine don't start to show improvement by Sunday. I guess I am holding out some modicum of hope. My son want's to plant sweet corn. Tomorrow I will helping him make rows for it. We are surrounded on all sides by corn fields. Hopefully his corn does well and it doesn't end up tasting like ethanol.

I may have to try that, turning all my veggie beds into a patch of flowers does sound less frustrating. If I go with sunflowers, I don't even have plant them, I end up pulling lots of them out of the garden beds while I'm trying to keep up with the weeds anyways.

I hate to throw an extra Wet Blanket on top of you right now, Zach, but if the corn in the fields around you is field corn--as opposed to sweet corn--it'll cross pollinate with your sweet corn, and, since "the seeds" are what you eat, they'll be a cross between field corn and sweet corn--and VERY likely won't be "sweet!" I know that because one time, many years ago, I was back at my parents in Illinois, and they rented most of the 25 acres they owned for farming, and that year the farmer had grown field corn--and my parents' sweet corn, which was just ready for picking when I was there, wasn't sweet! I hate to be a downer right now, but if that's the situation you have going on, I didn't want you to find out when you picked it and tried to eat it--and then start thinking "you" had done something wrong!

Cyber Hug,

Skybird

Zach,

Big R in Greeley carries it, phone #(970) 352-0544.

I got mine at the Flower Bin in Longmont. I think it was $26 for a 1lb bag, which will cover an acre, $56 for a 5lb bag. If you get it at Big R in Greeley, call first and find out the manufacture date or check the date on the bag before you buy it. It's only good for 13 weeks after manufacture date as it's a spore, so you want to get it and put it out well before the expiration date.

It's key to put the bait out as soon as you see baby grasshoppers. I'll link their website below so you can read up on it.

Nolo Bait

Zach,

Sorry to hear of the cows and other frustrations. I think you know the answer. You have to do things differently to get a different outcome. Be it a green house or different plants.

I don't know if this is helpful but we also have our trials in deep suburbia. A greedy racoon has found my strawberry patch! I had been getting a very nice crop for about 5 days and then all of a sudden nothing. Every morning the berrries have been cleaned out. We are going to set up a camera to capture him (and verify it is a racoon). But if I want strawberries I have to some how completely enclose them in a box with a chicken wire top. They are already fenced in but it is just a bunny fence that also keeps the dogs out.

Yeah, I told Dustin about the risk of growing corn around here, but he is undeterred. Youthful exuberance and optimism. Then again, maybe we'll get lucky and the silking/tasseling period between the "neighbors" fields and our little patch wont line up. If nothing else, the chickens will probably eat it (assuming it grows at all). But he also wants to grow green beans, sunflowers, and pumpkins, so MAYBE those will offset any bad tasting corn.

Sometimes I go out there and things don't look quite as a bad as they seem. Other times they seem much, much worse. It's hard to gauge really. Maybe it depends on my overall mood. I got most of the beds very thoroughly weeded this morning, that helped make things not look so bad. Now if only I could say the same for the rest of the yard (this has been one of the best years for cheatgrass I have ever seen, its almost to my knees and as thick as chinchilla fur in most places). A greenhouse isn't really for me I don't think. Aside from the learning curve of figuring out how to use one, one thing I still very much enjoy about gardening is being outside. Putting four walls and a roof around it would take that away entirely. Although my shoulders, having taken on the hue of cooked lobster from being out there all morning and most of the afternoon today, might appreciate it. Raccoons can sure be a nuisance, I've lost many chickens to them over the years, but never garden plants, At mom's house they have always been content to gorge themselves on chokecherries rather than the vegetables. Box traps baited with marshmallow fluff is apparently a successful way to find them a new home, though in my experience, like coyotes, getting rid of one just makes room for even more.

Thanks Barb! I will be making a call to Big R this week to see if they have any in stock. This is shaping up to be a banner year for grasshoppers, warm and dry seems to encourage them. The kingbirds that I think may be nesting in over by the trailer should be happy. I only need about 100 more pairs of them.

Funny thing about one raccoon replacing another: The neighbor reported a raccoon on my fence one day a few years ago when he arrived home after dark. Fortunately, it was after the time that I had a backyard flock of laying hens or that information would really have led to panic. As it was, I have seen a raccoon in my distant garden and I'm all but sure that they show up every year. However, I had never seen them here at home. Well, 2 mornings later after I learned of his visit, there's a dead raccoon in the busy arterial about 100 yards from our houses. Two years later, there's another dead body of a raccoon at the exact same spot. DW said, "it's like he was re-incarnated and made the same mistake twice!"

New gardens? Oh, yeah. I have had many new gardens - sometimes starting from lawngrass, sometimes a hay field, sometimes an evergreen forest floor.

What I figure, Zach, is that it takes me 3 years to get it up to a "garden variety" garden. Yeah. It has seemed that way, every time. Realize that your garden is an environment. Introducing entirely new species to soil that has never been involved in that relationship is discordant. Is that the right word - Discordant? I don't care, it seems right to me ;o).

Your fault or environmental problems? It can't be one or the other. You are certainly a part of your garden environment -- an important part but only a part, nonetheless.

Steve

who pulled down his hoophouse yesterday afternoon. not the most pleasant environment inside of that thing on our first afternoon with temperatures in the 80's. protected growing is only especially appreciated when it looks like the outdoors should be pleasant but it's not. or, staying inside the house because of rain begins to drive a person a little crazy!

Aw, man! As a suburban gardener, I have a lot of worries but cows ain't of them. Ooof.

Colorado gardening is not for the faint of heart, for sure! Even those of us who are native (or in my case, early-transplant -- my folks dragged me out here as a wee sprout) have years where everything just goes haywire. I initially gave up on veggies after three summers in a row of bad luck: hail, bugs, you name it -- it was just too much work to have it all taken out! Just emotionally crushing. Also, my job had me traveling a lot, which made it hard to put the work in in the first place.

That being said, the unusual situation we've got going on this year has really kick-started my passion for growing again because all of a sudden I have A) a LOT more time at home to monitor things and B) there has been a staggering amount of info put online since the last time I looked. I used to just have a handful of outdated CSU extension pages and a couple go-to blogs, but now between GardenWeb and YouTube and dedicated social media groups there's sooooo much more in the way of resources. It's amazing!

Due to the smaller size of my beds, I think I can handle most hailstorms; but I'm a little nervous about the hoppers this year as well. I'm hoping that the grackles, jays, and other insectivores will make short work of them. I used to have a pair of kestrels that did a great job, but they've moved on since two housing developments went in on either side of the neighborhood.

The peas are now about 6-10 inches, so if we don't get too many more 90F weather days maybe, just maybe I might eke some pods out of 'em? We'll see. Haven't even planted carrots yet, as I'm behind on putting up the new bunny fence.

Tomatoes aren't in the ground, either; I've hardened them off, but have been taking them in any night that dips below 57F or so. (which has been mostly every night). Call me a nervous ninny, but I'll be tied before I plant toms, cukes, or zucchini outside before the first week of June!

Anyhoo, just wanted to encourage ya to hang in there. We're *almost* through the trickiest part of extreme temperature shifting, which is harder to deal with in my opinion than hail.

You got this.... :)

EDIT --

So I somehow overlooked your reply and saw that you have CHICKENS. A.k.a. your own personal grasshopper eating army! If you have a way to let them into your fields via a portable chicken tunnel (like this: https://www.grit.com/animals/diy-movable-chicken-runs-ze0z19mazhoe ) ,I'd say that would be the way to go.

Reincarnated raccoons?! Sometimes I feel that way about the prairie dogs that wreak havoc on our restoration sites. Sure, p-dogs are a natural part of the shortgrass ecosystem, but they evolved to coexist on millions of acres of 2 million year-old grasslands, not 10's of acres of 3 year old grasslands, but I digress (although trying to grow a prairie in a place where it almost never rains is far more frustrating than my vegetable garden, where at least all I have to do is turn on the hose to give it water).

The funny part is, Steve, is that both sites that I put my gardens in here at this house were formerly... gardens! The guy who lived here before me grew for market, so I imagined that the sites would be okay. This years garden was fallowed for a couple years (he didn't use it the last year he was here and I didn't last year) but aside from that, I figured it would be at least "decent." Granted He used traditional row gardening methods while I use wide "raised row/bed" gardening so when I made my garden I did have to alter the soil profile substantially. It will take time to recover, I know that, but as long as I don't have to start anew next year as well it will get there eventually.

Rain almost never drives a person crazy here, Steve, it's drier than a popcorn fart. There was only two times I ever remember being bothered by too much rain. First was in the fall of 2013 when we got a years worth of rain in about the span of week (causing widespread flooding throughout northern Colorado) and then in the spring of 2015 when I think it rained for about 30 days straight, it finally stopped raining in mid-May when it turned to snow. I remember calling my aunt in Portland asking how the hell they deal with it up there. She just laughed at me.

Laura, I think everywhere has it's challenges. I TRIED to garden when I moved to Arizona. The caliche there made the bentonite clay of the Front Range seem like the darkest, softest midwestern soil there is. I had to get a masonry bit on a power drill to make holes for my bird-feeder pole! The extreme mineral content of both the soil AND the water had some weird effects as well. Yet somehow they do it. Phoenix is a city built on agriculture, and even now there are fields of alfalfa and cotton just outside city limits. Truck loads of carrots and other cool season veggies were a common site in the winter. I could never figure out how to do it. Even my peppers, which actually grew beautifully, were decimated by birds that would devour them the second they turned red. Or maybe gardening is designed for the eastern US, course they have humidity and bugs and plant diseases that our region does not. All in all, I can't blame location alone my shortcomings. A healthy dose of my problems must be, as I said, "user error."

I wasn't planning on doing a vegetable garden at all this year, but current events also kick started my engines. Not that I am concerned about a crash in the global food supply, but with us being down to a single income (and despite the hype, I can tell you the U.S. government is not a lavish employer) and the reality the food costs will almost certainly be on the rise, being able to provide at least SOME of our own is important. Now I just need to convince the other two members of this household that there's more to eat on a chicken than the eggs, some of our extra roosters are looking pretty juicy...

I do have grackles, cowbirds, orioles, and kingbirds to help with the hoppers. I just wish I had more. The chickens killed and ate a baby house sparrow the other day, but they don't seem to be much a deterrent to the grasshoppers (at least they weren't last year), despite the fact they free roam around the yard all day. Then again we also have hoards of swallows and our mosquito population doesn't seem to suffer much, either.

One thing we don't get very much of here is hail. We are right at the "bend" of the Platte River, where it takes a pretty sharp dogleg from running North North-West to East North-East, then it doglegs again to run to the South-East. I can only guess, but whatever topography that forces the river to flow that way may also have some effect on the storm systems that come through. They will hit just south of us in Platteville and just north of us in Greeley with a vengeance, often at the same time but we wont see so much as a single drop of rain at our house. Sometimes it's nice, other time it would be nicer if we got some the rain to go along with the wind.

My peas are actually looking pretty solid, probably about a 12-14." But not a single flower yet and it's going to be a hot June if the weather man is to be believed. With "most above average" temperature for the northeast part of the state and upper great plains region and "much above average" for the rest of the state/Intermountain West. I am debating whether or not to keep the peas going or plant something else there instead. Despite ample water and 4" of mulch, they still completely collapse by late afternoon every day. They will make a good green manure to boost my new garden beds though, eh Steve ;).

All in all, I can report that with the weekend, my mood has improved quite a bit. I got all my winter sown native plants potted up. I probably wont be able to plant them until fall with temperatures increasing dramatically and I still need to get homes made for them anyways. Plating larger plants won't be a bad thing though. My veggies actually look a little better than they did the other night, warmer temperatures helped. I got the butternuts and eggplant transplanted last night so everything should be in the ground. I got the tractor out and disked a small plot for Dustin to plant his corn, green beans, and jack-o-lantern pumpkins (I'm not sure he intended to do a "three sisters" garden, but it's kind of neat that it turned out that way). I also restocked the fridge with some ice-cold beer which helps tremendously.