Overwhelmed in the garden and rethinking for next year

Whew. I haven't posted about gardening in a long time, and for good reason...I just plain got swamped. This was pretty much the year that everything involving gardens crashed for me! My seedlings all failed for various reasons. I found that I have physically deteriorated significantly since just last year and can't keep up with a garden the size of the one I planted. My niece and her fiance promised to help all summer, but they haven't been able to. I started classes again recently for a change in life direction. On top of all that, I was subscribed to every gardening group known to Yahoo, and my mailbox was overstuffed every day! It just plain got to me, and as I am likely to do when faced with too much, I wasn't able to do much of anything. (Except the classes. I got A's.)

So here's the story. Once this year's garden is done, I am radically rethinking it. For one, far fewer tomatoes and more peppers. The reason for this is that peppers need far less care than tomatoes and have fewer pests, also taking up less space, and are easier to weed. Another thing I am thinking is going to container gardening, even homemade upside-down planting. I'm also wanting to experiment with growing tobacco, so that eliminates the problems of cucumber, melon, and squash vines.

I'm also rethinking a lot of my organic ideas. I hate to admit it, but I don't have the physical capability anymore to garden totally organically. Essentially, the weeds and the perennials are taking over, and I can't keep them back. Not when just a few minutes' of bending over and standing up makes me so light-headed I'm nauseous, and not when standing up for any length of time makes my knees scream in pain. So when I take down the garden this year, I am going to apply some weed killer to prevent them from coming up in the spring, and when spring comes, I am going to apply some pre-emergent herbicide.

Seed starting is a pain as well because of lack of space, the energy it uses, the fact that I have to do it upstairs, and so on. So the only thing I am planning on starting is the tobacco, and I'll be buying starts through sites like www.thechilewoman.com. I'm going to cut back my tomato varieties from approximately 9,000 to one or two--probably Rutgers, which is the one tomato this year that excelled even in the weeds.

Next year: more and better mulching. I just can't keep down the weeds without heavy fabric and mulch.

And...I severely cut back on my Yahoo groups! I cut many of them to digests and special notices only or even no mail, and a few I dropped entirely. The important thing is to not FEEL overwhelmed. I almost totally lost my love of gardening because there was so much to do, and I don't want that. So next year...much less. Much less. And more happiness.

Sitting in the garden on a near-perfect day

I only say near-perfect because there's no such thing as perfect. It's pretty close right now, though. Boo said earlier how wonderful it is, and it is. 77 right now, a little breezy, hardly a cloud in the sky.

The last few days have kept me from really doing anything in the garden. I was out of town for four days, in which we got torrents of rain...and when I came back it was hot and muggy enough that I wussed out on weeding. Well, that got the best of me, for sure, because the weeds out there are MANY. As in, much. Mucho. Lots. Well, they were, at least, until I weeded, and now it's not so bad. I love my scuffle hoe. :)

The excellent thing is that my early-planting experiment, which some of you may remember (with the Wall-o-Waters and the homemade milk-jug and pop-bottle greenhouses) has astounding results. Here it is June 10th in Zone 5b, and those tomatoes are already as high as my hips and blossoming! (And I am 6 feet tall.) The tomatoes set out normally are about a foot and a half high. Guess what I'll be doing with ALL my tomatoes next year. :)

Had some casualties, though. Not a single dill seed produced. Culprits? Birds, I think. They seemed really pleased with my dill patch once it was planted. Some of my patty-pan squash didn't come up, and the same with muskmelons and cucumbers. Short story: planted them in mid-May, and while we didn't get a frost, we had two weeks of wet, cold weather. I checked the seeds near the end of the month. Rotted in the ground. Same with the herbs I planted. Not much of anything. So...a quick trip to the nursery (Vite up in Michigan), a little resowing, and there are now some muskmelons, cucumbers, and patty-pans, as well as rosemary, thyme, oregano, marjoram...and a couple ornamental peppers by the front door on the porch.

The potato experiment (tires and trash can) is a mixed bag, though. The trash can taters are thriving like crazy, but the one stack of tires? Not so much. I think I just finally overextended them. I filled in dirt one last time and the plants never came up again. Maybe I'll put some squash or something in there, too--hate to see something like that go to waste. The other two tater tire projects, though, are also thriving--only two tires high. Maybe I'll even get a couple of taters.

2 waves of poppies, coral belles are incredible, and the, uh, let's call them "native grasses" are doing just fine.

Tomatoes by June! It's not just a hope, it's a rallying cry!