Becoming Weary

I am becoming frustrated with my garden this year. I am so tired of fighting the elements. If it's not the incessant wind, it's the heat. If it's not horn worms, it's locus (huge grasshoppers), spiders, aphids, leaf hoppers, etc. Not to mention other problems I don't know how to identify. I'm trying not to use chemicals and the alternatives seem to be exspensive. My husband isn't much support. He just says "I don't know why you're doing it. It costs more for watering than just to go to the store and buy the stuff you're trying to grow." Can't seem to explain my reasoning and quite frankly beginning to wonder if it's really worth it. Just venting. I know it is if I can just stop having to deal with one problem after another and just enjoy my garden.

I know it can get old battling the elements but once you really get going you will see it really is a money saver not to mention everything you eat is going to taste a million times better than at the store and besides that I find gardening soothing and relaxing! Just so you know spiders are a good friend in the garden so don't kill them because they will help you with a lot of the bad bugs! I hate grasshopers, yuck.

I am hoping Rowena reads this because she seems to have all sorts of cheap easy home remedies that you can make with stuff you already have at home.

It might help if you post some pictures so we can see the damage and help you the best we can, I hope you hang in there... and your veggies too!

songstriss to the forum. As a first year gardener I know how you feel,altough we have vastly different weather problems the learning curve seems mighty steep. I have had many failures and successes this year already and will have more of both. Good luck and hang in there.

Here is a link to several home remedies all organic http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/homemade-organic-gardening-sprays.htm

Here is a link describing how to post pictures from your computer to this forum https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t129-how-to-post-a-picture-located-on-your-computer

Songstress, I'm a newbie, too. Last night I DREAMED I was visiting someone's house and asking them why their tomatoes were ripe while mine were still green (I asked when they planted theirs!). I don't have answers to your questions, but I do want you to know that you're not on this adventure alone!

Ahaaa ..... Chin up Songstriss , pucker those lips for a whistling tune , if any form of gardening was that easy everyone would be doing it and have magnificent gardens of flowers and veg .

Now you have reached the " Is it worth it " stage ( most of us did at one time ) you have come to the fork in the road . Before your take the most travelled one ( the easy way out & give up ) do a check list of what you have done and a list of what you percieve to be problems wrt the gardens and your life.

It's not problems in life that do you in for every one on earth has plenty of crap in their lives , it's how you deal with them /it that matters for successful outcomes , .

Doing the check lists gives you anchor points to tie onto and climb back up from .



There are shed loads of people in your area who have overcome what at first they thought were big problems in their gardens when they come on line perhaps a few will take you under their wing for a while till you get back in the swing of things.

That you have done a year of ANSFG tells me you have done some things right or you'd have given up ages ago .

What did you sucessfully grow and was it worse or better tasting than the shop stuff ???

It is my opinion that predator pests come first and eaters of predators come later. So it seems to take a season to get some balance of good and bad guys in the garden. There is some science to back me up, but I could not find my sources and am too lazy on this hot day to keep looking. Season two should be less plagues and more balance.

Thanks everybody. Just had a momentary weakness. I know this too shall pass. At least we don't live in the frontier days. We have so many more resources available to us. I'll try posting some pics and see if anyone can help me identify the problems. It's great to know there is a support system out there.

Thanks again.

I can totally understand what you're talking about, Songstriss. I seem to have a never-ending line of challenges and new problems to overcome in the garden (though they do seem nice enough to come at me one at a time, lol). I battled against damping off throughout the indoor starting season, then had slugs in the early planting season, followed by fungal issues, then a huge war with groundhogs (which my pellet gun and I finally seem to have won, lol), then my forgetfulness led to over-fertilization, and now I have to take care of some resulting blossom-end rot. All I can say is to take comfort in the idea that you're accumulating knowledge, learning how to handle each of your garden's problems, and before long you'll know how to keep them from being a problem in the first place. This is my 3rd year gardening, 2nd doing SFG, and I can't believe how much I've learned so far, or even how much I've learned this year that will save me trouble next year. I try to keep an attitude of "me & my garden vs. the world...bring it!" and that seems to help me keep a more fun, positive outlook even in the face of new problems.

Good luck! This is a great community, just bring your troubles here and these guys will take care of you. xD

Here is a tip for controlling aphids. I can't remember which book I got this out of (not SFG book) but we tried it and it seems to help for keeping aphids off some of our plants.

Last summer I had an outbreak of aphids in my Kale and in the fall they got into my broccoli, brussel sprouts and just about everything else. I read that if you put a reflective foil down under the plants the aphids don't like all the heat/light so they don't infest those plants. It also acts as a mulch and it reflects more sun onto the plants which is helpful too (not sure if it might at sometime be too much light - we have had some hot days and so far so good). We used some reflective bubble type packing material used for shipping chocolates to the hotel my husband works at and it's working......no aphids on the Kale my husband also put it under his tomatoes.

I definitely think it's worth it to grow your own veggies. Organic veggies in the store are so expensive and we don't want to eat the pesticide laden veggies if we can help it. Planting from seed is so inexpensive. I know it's a lot of work but hang in there, the rewards are worth it.

Now I need to know how to control leaf miners and cabbage worms.

Songstriss, I just started this project in April and it quickly escalated and grew until my bank account was bleeding and I was almost in tears a couple of times. I made so many mistakes, from mixing the wrong soil to planting peas when it was too hot, and wound up doing many big things more than once (the first fence I put up, my smaller dog could go through, so I modified it so he couldn't, but then had to take that down and put up a different one entirely; the PVC irrigation system didn't work out so I re-did it with a drip system; I wound up building two beds so I could split the "wrong" soil between them), etc etc.

There were times, like when the ground squirrels kept eating my seedlings and digging everything up, and I was trying to work with bird netting (evil stuff!) in the dark (did you know it's invisible in the dark? and catches on EVERYTHING) when I thought this whole thing was making me CRAZY. I could just go to the farmer's market on Saturday mornings and buy this stuff instead!

But there are other times like today when it seems like many of the problems are solved and things are finally working... and I'm glad I stuck with it, and I thank the universe that my man is sweet and understanding and has put up with the insanity of the last couple of months, when I was even driving myself crazy trying to make this all work.

Hang in there. I really feel for you.

Chin up ...

It's always easier to silence the critics after you put the first harvest on the table, or bring that first bag-o-extra harvest stuff into the office.

Once you get the first season or two under your belt, you'll start having the same peeps start poking you "have you started planting again" or "you are going to grow those thingies and make that watchamacallit stuff again this year, right?"

Another inexpensive organic method to control aphids is to spray the plants with a strong stream of water. It "blasts" them off; do this for a few days in a row then wait a day to see if there are any stragglers.

I hope when you see a couple things going right you will become excited and hopeful again. It is worth it. This morning I was reading an article on plain old swiss chard and beets and my goodness even if I didn't have a taste for those you almost owe it to yourself to hang in there and enjoy the highest quality nutrition fresh from your own garden since its not happening in the supermarket. Store bought is practically 3rd rate junk food by the time they spray it, transport it, serve up genetic modified crap sometimes sprayed with liquid plastic and call it fresh produce.. yeah right!

@ Miss Mousie, I use a product called "thoricide"(liquid BT consentrate) for cabbage worms. It is organic and works for all catapillar type worms. Mix it in a presure sprayer once a week and spray.

@ herblover, take about two cups of tomatoe (or any 'nightshade' family) leaves chop them up finely put in two cups of water for app24 hrs; strain the leaves out ,add one more cup of water; then spray on the affected plants. Aphids and most other pest DEAD! Dilute remainder with two more cups of water and empty in compost pile. http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/homemade-organic-gardening-sprays.htm

Thanks Pepper, I've used BT before.......I guess I just need to mix some up and get out there and spray. I just want there NOT to be any pests.......wouldn't that be nice? Oh well, I guess anything worth doing is worth doing right. Thanks again and also for the recipe for the nightshade aphid poison.

I've had good success with Neem Oil (mixed with water and sprayed on leaves) to stop cabbage worms. It makes the garden smell like garlic for about a week, but my kale is finally keeping ahead of the pests and growing (as opposed to being consumed more quickly than it can grow). I haven't seen any worms since I sprayed 9 days ago.

Now, if we could just get some rain.....

I think maybe your husband and my wife know each other. LOL. I got the same song from her after the first water bill came. Ouch!

I does seem to be a lot of work and a lot of learning to be done. Keep plugging along. I pick up books and magazines when i see one that is not a repeat. It seems that every magazine no matter what the subject have the same articals every issue. So i look through them before i buy.

I just lost a cucmber crop that i was pretty darn proud of. But with the loss i also learned a lot for next year. As far as the wife she, when i started to pull veggies and load up the fridge she began to change her tune.

We always have pumpkins around Halloween and Thanksgiving. Every year they get more and more expensive. This year we will have as many as we want and more. (knock on wood). My plants are spreading out in the back yard and fighting with the watermelon plants for king of the realm.

Keep at it learn from your mistakes do not get down on yourself and you will be fine. Remember you can always find someone here with an answer or suggestion for any problem that creeps up. May if i had come here sooner i would have saved my cukes. But no worries. I have more already in the ground. Good Luck.

Mike