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Any Midwest Growers Having Trouble with their Gardens This Year?

C

cmpman1974

This has been the worst year I can recall regarding my plants. I live in MIchigan. We've had kind of strange weather here. It's cold often, tons of rain in May, some in June, none in July really so far. Temps don't seem real bad, but kind of cool I believe for this time. Sometimes it's hard to tell honestly.

My pepper plants look pathetic in my raised beds. I cannot believe Potawie is in Zone 4 and has these massive plants in this type of weather!! :) Truly remarkable.

The weird phenomenon is the Pubescens for the first time ever are setting pods like a regular pepper should. They aren't especially big plants, but some have 20-30 small pods on them. Most years, getting 3-5 would be a huge accomplishment. I'm sure pepper maggots will take care of the pods though at the end. lol.

Tomatoes look like garbage too - few fruits, smaller plants, etc.

I attribute this poor year to:

- Unpredicatable weather

- Perhaps over amending my raised beds with organic matter - more is not always better

- Planting too intensively - always trying to get more varieties in a space - STUPID idea and counter-productive - cramming 36 C. Chinense in a 4' x 12' raised bed???? lol. Worked OK some years, but....

- Not putting out large enough plants - dumbly I thought I'd start a lot of C. Chinense in early March in smaller plug trays to save room / effort - dumb dumb dumb. There's a payoff for starting these in January and managing larger plants. I would've been better off babying 75 nice sized healthy plants than 200+ not as nice plants. Bottom line - don't waste your time putting plants in the ground that look like runts / spindly hoping they'll catch up - THEY WON'T.

- Over watering - seeing some evidence of root rot (roots not as white as they should be when digging them up). Again, small baby plants can't handle as much water.

- Putting old spent potting soil in my raised beds. Too much accumulates and you eventually have a lot of soil comprised of spent peat that doesn't provide the ability to hold water as it should. Maybe too many shredded leaves too locking up nitrogen.

Oh well, lots of dried and frozen pods stored. lol. Fortunately, this is just a hobby. It's just disappointing to put hard work into something to fail due to some avoidable errors. I wasn't feeling too well this year so I took shortcuts. Maybe the weather will improve and something good will come out of this. :)
 
My plants in their super good soil mixed pots, and my plants in my super good beds are doing AWESOME! Biggest plants to date. My co-garden place is not doing very good at all. So I'm torn as to wtf is going on.
 
Its definitely a slow year for me, with lots of rain, hail, and cold nights but not as bad as last year so far. It was down to about 7C last night, but this now seems common in July:(
 
Sorry to hear that Chris. The pepper plants that I put in a few weeks late were giving me problems but with the advice from Potawie to use the peroxide for the roots seems to have done the trick and the plants are doing very well now. All in all the garden for me is on the right track but it seems like my pepper plants did not produce the number of buds early on like they normally do. As for the pubes, my Manzano is producing like crazy, I'd say around 25 to 30 pods and lots of buds. I attribute that to the temps we are having this year. Hope things turn around for you Chris.
 
Much warmer down here. Too warm. For the most part everything seems to be doing well, some of us just got slowed down because the Tulsa area had 22 days straight of rain back in May. So we basically got everything planted in mid/late April... had an awesome week of about mid-80's temps with lots of sun... think this year is gonna be great... then we didn't see the sun for 3 weeks. All our stuff rebounded well, though I think hitting triple digits in June may have stunted some growth. We're supposed to dip back down into the low 90's/high 80's for a high and mid-60's at night here for several days starting tomorrow, so I'm thinking this weekend might be when we finally get to see some stuff turn and start growing more again.
 
TBO,

My garden is by FAR the best it has ever been. Perhaps it's the winter wheat, mixing some silty soil in with the clay, just enough rain to keep the soil damp underneath. Maybe getting it planted in the middle of May instead of early June. Probably a combo of all the above. The toms are approaching 5' which has never happened, even the determinates are twice the size of last year. Enough blooms to satisfy half the bees in the entire state. Peppers, beans and carrots are also fantastic.

In Cincinnati.

Mike
 
Hey Chris
Don't worry my friend you still have all the way till mid October so by that time you should be all right if we have good weather or if not like I said always is the next year.Hope you have great season my friend!
 
It doesn't take much to set everything back does it? I have zero complaints with my year. This is the first year I really got into it, usually less than six plants.

Chris if my stuff continues to go well I'd be more than happy to share some of my harvest with ya. Just let me know.

Season's not over yet though so best of luck to you and your plants.
 
I had to pick a couple of tomatoes yesterday that were starting to rot on the vine and they were still Green! It has got to start warming up around here.
 
Its no better here either! Seems like its always cloudy, but no rain. Its been getting to cold at night and the flowers drop. We really need some sun...
 
A few pics of the shit plant's root system I dug up. Many seem 'dead' to me. They aren't wilted, but the leaves seem soft and so so stunted. Thr soil almost seems dead, but that doesn't make sense as I grew beautiful snap peas in the same beds a few months earlier. I see no fresh bright white roots on these pepper plants when observing ones I dug up.

I think eventually with raised beds adding to much old potting soil backfires. I wish I never did. I should've only added compost/manure over the years. Just a guess. I also think these homemade soil Ph meters are garbage and may not be accurate. Time for a soil test!

My last thought is perhaps the aphid infestation earlier in the year caused more problems than I realized long-term?

Chris

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Pepperfreak said:
I had to pick a couple of tomatoes yesterday that were starting to rot on the vine and they were still Green! It has got to start warming up around here.
Click to expand...

Were they rotting on the very bottom (blossom end)?
 
Our peppers are suffering too plus I have been under the weather a bit this year. Between rain and cold it's crazy, forecast is low 50' to 44 at night the next few days..this is July?? All I can hope is that the peppers pick up soon or the harvest will be small.
 
I had a green tomato starting to shrivel up too. Almost big enough to eat.

It does sound like you could have some dead soil. The snap peas may have sucked all the goodies out of the soil. Have you added anything to it after them?
 
We had rain every day for weeks in May and June. Was nice for us as it cooled things off, but I think the colder nights and waterlogged soil cost me a Holy Mole plant. Other than that it has been ok.
 
I'm in Michigan too, tonight into this weekend we are looking at lows in the upper 40's - 50. My peppers are doing well, I have experienced some blossom drop, but all have been setting pods and growing well, even the habaneros. I'd say most of my peppers are between 14" - 30" tall and have between 3 - 50+ pods on them.

Most of my small peppers are ones that I've bought late in the season as they were on sale, who can pass up 50% off peppers???

My tomatoes are about 4' - 6' tall except for the one yellow pear that I bought late in the season (read late june, probably about 2 1/2 - 3' tall. The tomatoes actually look like a small jungle back there.

All of my plants are in containers, so I'm sure that helps them stay a little bit warmer, and allows me to control their environment more.
 
my toms are big and tall with lots of green ones, but nothing red yet.

my peppers that get the morning shade and afternoon sun are growing much better than the ones that get morning sun / afternoon shade.

last year i planted jalapenos in the exact same spot - they are by far much smaller and less producing so far.

this has got to be one of the coolest summers i can remember. heck today the high is 70F - this is july 17th right?
 
This a.m. it was 55F and they're calling for a high of 72F. That's 15 degrees below normal for the high and 10 degrees cooler for the low.
 
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