Totally bummed...

[Lannie]

I didn't even have a garden last year, because Rich had a knee replacement surgery and couldn't help with the prep, and I really missed having fresh veggies. Our garden is our only source for that, so I really look forward to it every year. This year, I started seeds in the house, then Rich had the kidney stone thing, and the doctor's MISTAKE that's had him laid up for a month, but finally we've been able to start working on the garden.

Now we have rain. Every day, except for a couple, so far this month, so tilling the flat beds has not happened yet. I have a bunch of large lick tubs full of compost that I planted out my tomato and pepper seedlings, and melons. They were doing great, and I was so looking forward to canning some tomatoes later on, freezing up a bunch of peppers, and gorging myself on fresh cantaloupe, and canning or freezing the surplus for winter. But we've been having some really bad thunderstorms this last week, and the poor seedlings have been barely hanging on. Today we have 40 mph wind, coming from the south (it usually comes from the north or west, where there's protection from lilac hedges), and my tomatoes are toast. Most of them are broken and lying flat, all wilted and presumably deader than dog poop. I still had some row cover up over the peppers, but the wind has thrown the row cover so violently that most of the peppers are bashed beyond recognition.

I'm just so discouraged. It's June 13th already, and I haven't even gotten my "flat bed" seeds planted yet, the beans and squash and cukes and such. I don't know why I should even bother at this point. I'm sure it will just be a waste of good seeds.

Now I remember the OTHER reason I wanted to move south. To get out of the effing WIND!

Sorry, just needed to whine a little bit. I'm going to go sit in front of the woodstove now. Yes, it's also cold enough that I had to light a fire in there today. In June. I've never had a fire going in June.

~Lannie

[dfleming]

Oh Lannie I am so sorry! Sending hugs your way (I know that doesn't help). I definitely feel your disappointment tho.

Dawne

[Dianne Ader]

I am sorry! GOSH!!!

To make you feel better...I HEAR this year just about everyone is planting their garden late!

I just planted mine yesterday. I will be thinking of you. Hoping you have a small window to plant your garden in...I did...hope you will too.

Dianne

[MameeT]

Our garden is getting in late this year, too. What I keep telling myself is last year, some of the best gardens I saw were the late gardens due to our crazy weather. I'm choosing to believe I will have a beautiful late garden... I choose to believe you will, too!

[Lannie]

Those ARE nice thoughts, thank you. But there's no such thing as a "late garden" in South Dakota. There are no do-overs.

We keep saying we need to build a greenhouse, but we never have the money to do it. So now, again, I'm telling Rich we need a greenhouse. Maybe if we buy the materials bit by bit, a little bit each month, we'll have the material to put up a small one next year. Just enough to put the tomatoes and peppers in maybe, that would be enough. Our first frost can be as early as the first of September, but sometimes it isn't until late October. That's the thing about here. It can snow in May, and then freeze in early September, so if you don't get going with started seedlings RIGHT after the last frost, there isn't enough time to start over. We're usually OK after the middle of May, frost-wise, but that's not always 100% certain, either. So I always give it a couple extra weeks, just in case. Then some years, like this one, we have horrible weather, and there's nothing to be done about it. It's all a crapshoot.  One year, our last frost was April 13th, but I was afraid to plant anything until the end of May, so I lost all that time.  And some years it freezes early, but other years we get an extra month or more. It's enough to drive a person insane.

My own personal problem is, the first year we lived here, we had a beautiful summer.  I planted seeds in the garden and had to jump back so they didn't hit me in the chin, they came up so fast and so vigorously.  And the weather was PERFECT.  Sunny, warm (not too hot) days, rain two or three days a week, and everything was lush and gorgeous and I had so much stuff I was feeding a bunch of it to the chickens because it was too much to eat or can.  So I know it CAN work.  It's just that every year since then, there's been some problem, usually weather, but sometimes deer and rabbits, or grasshoppers.  Grasshoppers cleaned me out the year before I got my guineas.

~Lannie

[Nonesuch Melissa]

Oh honey... I can ship you some tomatoes and peppers... or you could just move to Texas!

[charlesh]

My garden is late, too. I really think this will be a rebuilding/building year for our gardens anyway. It is so clay bound that stuff doesn't grow well. Some of my beds I am just going to pile up manure and periodicially till it into the clay. Another plot I am going to dig a bunch of 2' deep holes and add manure into those. I do have my tomatoes and egg plants looking good and my onions are coming up nicely in my straw bales, so it won't be a total lost year...

[twistedwillow]

I'm sorry Lannie.
I have been super discouraged this year too. It's been a crap year.

[simplynaturalfarm]

What crazy weather - I'm losing things to NO water. I need rain desperately - I am watering non stop and thinking that there is no way these veggies will pay for my water bill. . . My brother (2 hours north east of us) has lost his garden twice to rain and hail. He has replanted and said he's giving up on a few things because he has replanted twice.

We are getting horrific winds here constantly - the wind has wrecked both north and south doors on our greenhouse and is doing a number on it. WE had 60 mph winds already once this week.

[eljay]

Lannie, my garden is late this year too. I got the tomatoes, sweet corn, and pumpkins planted in a reasonable amount of time. At least half of it is still not planted, but I am determined. We'll just be eating a lot more turnips, greens and carrots this winter. The shell beans that I was planning are going to have to wait until next year, I guess. I got 25 potatoes planted, which almost doesn't even count as planting potatoes.

[Lannie]

I've been wanting to get my carrots planted, too, and I have a spot for them all ready, but you can't plant carrot seed in the wind. Back when I had way too much free time on my hands (what happened to those days, anyway?) I would make seed tapes over the winter for all the small or light seeds, then just go dig a furrow, lay the seed tapes in and cover with a bit of potting soil, and it made everything go so QUICK! And it didn't matter if the wind was blowing or not. But I haven't had the time over the last few winters to do that. I really need to get my act together, don't I?

Heather, we had some of those 60 mph winds here a few days ago, with the last big thunderstorm. Rich said it was blowing at least 60, and maybe more, but it was hard to tell because the rain was so heavy, we couldn't see very far through it. Fortunately for my poor little seedlings, it came from the west, so the lilacs took the brunt of it, and the seedlings fared OK. For THAT day. Now it's blowing from the south, and the only thing to stop it is a line of scrub plums on that side of the garden, and they're not thick enough. We're due for more wind through Monday in the 30 to 40 mph range, but it's SUPPOSED to shift back to normal pattern (from the northwest).  And that would be OK.  I just hate it when we get strong winds from the south.  Nothing is set up here to accommodate bad south winds.

I'd gladly send you some of our rain if I could - we've had so much, everything is a soggy mess. But the GRASS!!!!! It's thigh-high in the pastures right now, even with the grazers gobbling it down as fast as they can chew. So I guess it's good for something. The grass came up so quick and so strong because of all the rain, the weeds haven't taken over, and our pastures actually look good right now. If we had haying equipment, we could probably put up enough hay right now to last us through most of the winter.  However, even with 20 guineas roaming at large, we're having a problem with ticks because the grass is so long. I pulled one off my NECK the other day - ICK!!!! I hate ticks!

I was sitting at the table with Rich, moaning and whining about the disaster out there (funny how such little things can become a disaster when - for the moment - nothing worse is happening! LOL!), and he suggested planting a few more tomato and pepper seeds right in the ground (well, the pots) with the hammered seedlings, and maybe they'd come up and replace the stuff that I lost. My first thought was no, there's not enough time left, but then he said, "But what if we don't have a frost until October?" Good point. So that's what I'll do. They probably won't have enough time, but just in case they do, they'll be planted.

I must be insane.

~Lannie

[simchah]

Late garden here too. I swore I would be on time this year but when the garden grew about 6x larger than I planned I have scrambled ever since. But even the parts that were on time didn't grow forever because it was so cold. About the time I was ready to yank them out since it was too late in the season for them, they started growing. It has made things ..... interesting and made a mess of my planning.

[simplynaturalfarm]

If you can afford to buy some tomato plants, I would absolutely try it outside like Rich said. I just planted the last 5 tomatoes 3 days ago . . . first we had so much rain that I couldn't get the garden tilled, then after I planted the seeds we got thunderstorm and rain so hard my entire garden is crusted over and none of the carrots and small seeds are coming up. Thus the reason I keep trying to water to soften that stupid crust.

And my grass is goig to seed right now - how stupid is that! There wasn't enough for cows to graze til May 26th and now it is oging to seed!

[Lannie]

Our grass is heading, too. It's crazy.

I thought about getting some tomato and pepper plants on our next shopping day, but I doubt there will be any left by then. They don't usually carry them past the middle of June. There might be a couple left, maybe. Rich said he'd look, and get a few if he could find any, but if not, I'll just have to hope that not every single plant is dead out there. Sometimes tomatoes can take a lot of abuse and then come back, so I'm not pulling anything up unless it's most obviously dead. Most of them are laying flat on their sides, but if the stem is only bent and not broken, they might just come back, so we'll see. The peppers still have intact stems, but the leaves are all mushy and bruised from being whacked with the row cover. They might make some new leaves and keep growing, but I've never had them damaged this bad, so I don't know.

Oh, but I also have a tray of sweet onion plants and one of cabbages that need to go in the flat beds, so they're out there behind the lick tubs, and they look OK. I punched holes in the bottoms of the trays so when it rains it won't flood them out, and they're looking fine. I just need to GET THEM IN THE GROUND!!!!! Gah! It's so frustrating!

I had planned on filling my pantry shelves with fresh pickles (all the ones I made 9 years ago are mushy now), canned tomatoes, canned melon (I'm going to try that), and sauerkraut. I LOVE my homemade sauerkraut. I still have time for the beans - I have bush beans that only take 50 to 60 days, so hopefully I can replenish my supply of canned beans as well. And I'm planning on rutabagas and turnips, too. The turnips don't take long, but the rutabagas should be in the ground by now. Oh, well, so they won't be very big, but hopefully I'll get some of them canned, too.

I wish we lived nearer to civilization where there was a farmer's market or something. Then I'd just get my veggies there in bad years, but I've never been able to locate one. I don't even know if there IS such a thing in South Dakota. Maybe over on the east side, but I'm not driving 300 miles each way to buy vegetables. I might be insane, but I'm not stupid.

~Lannie

[eljay]

Actually it might not all be lost. The tomatoes might come back from the roots if they are left undisturbed. Pinch the wasted part off as high above the ground as you can. If the roots aren't drowned/damaged you'll probably see growth. I had a lot of opportunity to observe that back when I had little garden helpers. The've recovered from a late frost that way too. Peppers, will also sprout from the roots.

[Lannie]

Zinnia, yes, I do. I shop by "days to maturity" when I buy seeds! LOL! Most years, I save seeds so I have some for the next year, but the year before last, the birds took my whole garden, and the year before that, the grasshoppers ate everything (I was down to only 3 guineas at that time, and they couldn't make a dent in the grasshoppers), and then of course last year I didn't even plant. So it's been a while, and although I still have saved seeds, I'm running low. Planting them out and then not being able to harvest makes a dent in my supply. I did however, find a source for my favorite tomatoes, so if I run out of those seeds, I can always order more.

And I know it's not too late for cukes, yet, but if that garden doesn't dry out enough to get tilled soon, it might be.

~Lannie

[Lannie]

Oh, Laura, THANK YOU, you have given me hope! I know I had some miraculous recoveries from bad hailstorms one after another several years ago, and it took them a while to come back, but they did, and I was able to harvest something. The hail defoliated most everything that time, and the bent stems were just bent, not broken, so I didn't know how these might fare, being actually broken. My peppers don't have any broken stems (last time I looked, earlier this morning), but they're leaning precariously.  Not broken, though.   I'll keep my fingers crossed and keep praying for sun and calm winds.

~Lannie

[brenda]

Well...I decided to not plant anything (except potatoes and tomatoes)! What a freeing feeling that is. ;-) I will probably regret it about 2 months from now.

[charlesh]

Thanks everyone for sharing your frustrations. I do feel bad for all the problems we are having, but being discouraged among friends sure beats being discouraged alone!!

[sdmilkmaid]

Tomatoes will root all along the stem, so dig them puppies into the dirt, and water well.

My garden is kind of a disaster, too, except for the potatoes and garlic I put in early...
And I killed most of my tomato seedlings, including ALL the Amana orange from Heather out of the seed train box.
I have to get the few left into the ground before they blow away.

Rachel