View Full Version : Pretty sad year for tomatoes and green beans
I've only frozen about 6 qts of tomatoes and 1 quart of green beans. That's a fraction of what I usually do. I'm discovering that butternut squash and cucumbers love heat, but green beans do not. I planted 4 different varieties of green beans this year in May and they didn't start making blossoms until about a week ago, when it got cooler (even though the pole beans were 7' tall and lush). Now its back up to the 90's. What few green beans I have, are being eaten by bugs. Bummer. I think the vines and leaves are just reaching old age....even though they haven't produced anything.
My roma tomatoes are a bust this year too. Good thing I froze a ton last year........when I had them up into November!
Good thing we don't have to live this winter only on stuff I froze from the garden. Hopefully next year will be better. It was sooooo hot and dry this summer, and it only rained about 3 times. I watered several times a week, but they just don't like ground water like they like rain water.
Guess I'll start planning next year's garden!
Same here. We thought the dog was eating the tomatoes but when we realized no ones tomatoes were doing good we decided that the dog couldn't be eating everyone's tomatoes (apologized to the dog). Squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, peppers, cucumbers doing good.
Simpler at Fifty
9-3-11, 5:25pm
Sorry to hear that CathyA and Goldensmom. We are having a great year for tomatoes in WI. I canned 25 qts already. I will probably get another 10 qts before the end of the month.
The garden has been useless this year. I've been so hungry for green vegetables this week! Tonight I made a curry with a few sad, stringy pieces of okra and a bunch of chard.No tomatoes. No zuchiini. No peppers. Squirels getting tomatoes and other things, hot weather (no rain_ doing in the rest.
Maxamillion
9-4-11, 2:11am
My tomato plants are only just now starting to have some little tomatoes developing on them. They didn't even start flowering until a couple of weeks ago. The squash didn't do well this year, between the heat, the squash bugs, and some sort of fungus, I only got one squash off of them the whole summer. The pole beans did best of all the vegetables so far.
We had great green beans -masai was the type and also excellent pole beans-gold of bacao. Lousy, lousy tomatoes, chard wasn't good so we replanted hoping for a fall crop. Kale okay for one kind. Peppers lousy but amazing results for eggplant in containers. Parsley also good but basil is slow....in central Mass. Oh! and winter squash was lousy, ok zucchini and an abundance of cukes.
I forgot to mention the zuchinni. We got 3 small ones all summer and the squash bugs totally decimated them weeks ago and now the bugs are working on my butternut squash. Hopefully the squash are far enough along that they will be okay when all the leaves die.
I have a cucumber beetle resistant cucumber variety (County Fair), but those dang bugs are eating what couple of beans I have. What a crazy summer its been.
You sure did better than me. Out of 15 tomato plants ----6 tomatoes. Out of four 4x8 beds of green beans-------0 beans.
I've replanted one bed to see if I can get some beans before the first frost. My 8 pepper plants ----6 peppers.
Blackdog Lin
9-4-11, 9:22am
With the 7-week heat wave/drought we've had, our main garden just chuckled weakly and died. No corn, no peppers, no zucchini, no cucumbers. We did get early onions. As for tomatoes (they're in a separate plot), we picked 20 or so in early July, but then the blossoms all started shriveling up in the heat. Nada since then. But we were told by the old-timers that if we could just keep 'em alive, they'd come back when the heat broke - so DH has been faithfully hauling water to them every day. We'll see.....(And the heat wave broke this morning! hurray!)
Usually by this time of the year we have a case or more of salsa put up.....and cucumber relish.....and stewed tomatoes.....sigh.
. But we were told by the old-timers that if we could just keep 'em alive, they'd come back when the heat broke
Wish I'd known that before I pulled most of the garden and fed to the chickens. Let us know if the tomatoes revive and ripen.
In my area this year tomatoes were wonderful. The past 2 years they were a bust, but not this year. Chiles are also good. Along the coast here it was cooler than average this summer to keep lettuce going. Green bean plants that werent eaten by the rabbits and squirrels and birds had good beans, but the damage to the plants was so severe that there just weren't extras. Too bad - I had wanted to dry some.
It will be interesting to see if commercial growers in the heartland have had similar problems with their crops, and if food prices will go up. I've heard of cattle and poultry really suffering in the heat, and corn crops are down. Not sure if anything else has been affected. Here in California, the olive crop (for olive oil) is severely reduced but the cause unknown. Whether the excessive heat/drought this summer is just an odd year or the result of weather disruption caused by climate change, time will tell.
I think there's so many factors in nature that we're probably not even aware of. Like microscopic organisms that are important for something, and it gets too hot and kills them, etc.
One of my fears with us treating nature so poorly is that we won't be able to feed ourselves because of various problems that are a result of our mistreatment of nature. You think "Oh, I can grow my own food"........but if other factors factor in......like poor air quality......seed growers messing around with the genes, air pollution, good bugs being destroyed, etc., then we can't even help ourselves.
I think though that this years funkiness with my garden was within the realm of "normal variation". We'll see. Fortunately, I froze enough tomatoes and butternut squash last year to help us through this winter. But no green beans. Another thing I need to work on is improving the soil. The chicken manure/bedding/compost has helped alot, but we're not as good about paying attention to the soil as we should be.
If worse comes to worse, we can eat the thousands of black walnuts we have on our property......if we can crack them open, or fight the squirrels for them. :)
CropCircleDancer
9-4-11, 10:33pm
sorry you all are having such a tough time. We have had cooler weather than usual, so the squash and pumpkins are fantastic. Tomatoes not as good, but I have enough to eat. My beans did fantastic. Next year folks, try growing a different variety. In the heat, I like kentucky wonder pole and bountiful stringless bush.
treehugger
9-6-11, 12:58pm
Count me in with a disappointing tomato year. We have some nice-sized green ones (finally) but nothing to harvest yet. And we had one cucumber of a decent size but someone ate it, grrrrr (rat, racoon, squirrel?). Tomatillo plant got huge very quickly, but very little fruit so far. Basil is very spindly. Sigh.
Kara
Thought I would join in with my disappointments this past season. I lost three lavender plants which were newly planted in the spring, but our extremely dry "rainy" season and extremely hot temperatures were too much for them. My snow peas never really did much and by early spring I don't think they had grown over 3 1/2 feet, let alone produced more than a handful of tasty pods. And I don't know what it is about me or my place but I just can't seem to grow green onions/scallions...I tried them with a planting last fall and then again in the spring and just nothing, they germinate, grow tall green leaves and never produce a bulb.
But that's what's great about gardening, you always get to try again and I'm already planning for this fall and hopefully learning from my failures.
I'm the only one around here that got tomatoes this year. I only plant one variety that performs pretty much every year for me - Celebrity. I did the tinkle and sprinkle fertilizing (diluted urine -ewwwww), chicken coop litter and mulch like crazy with straw. But that's the ONLY veg that did good. Oh, potatoes did okay. If I could figure out how to stir fry squash bugs, grasshoppers and cucumber beetles, we'd be eating out of the garden every day.
This was the first time I tried the diluted urine. When I saw the growth boom in the tomato plants, it made a believer out of me. Even DH got past the ewwww factor. :o) But if my friends and relatives knew, no one would eat here again.
Tomatillo plant got huge very quickly, but very little fruit so far.
You need two plants for pollination. One year I had the largest tomatillo plant I'd ever seen, includling lots of flowers - but not one single fruit developed.
As for tomatoes, most years here are good, others not so. Locally tomatoes used to be grown commerically - sadly now there are houses on the good land. I grow mainly one variety (early girl), but maybe it would be wise to plant 2 or 3 different ones. It's just a matter of finding varieties that do really well in this micro-climate ('avocado belt').
You need two plants for pollination. One year I had the largest tomatillo plant I'd ever seen, includling lots of flowers - but not one single fruit developed.
Interesting. Thanks for the tip. I could swear I've only grown one at a time in past years though, with plenty of fruit. I will be so sad if all I get are the 3 that are on there right now.
Kara
Marinanne.........."tinkle and sprinkle" lol!
One thing I've learned to do with my tomatoes is to always cover the soil below them with straw. I guess there's alot of stuff in the soil that, if it gets splashed up onto the tomato leaves when you water or it rains, it can really carry diseases up to the plant. It has made a huge difference in my tomatoes not getting the spotted leave wilt disease. (can't think of the proper name of it). And I do rotate them every year.
I really think my bad year this year was the lack of rain and the high temps.
I've quit growing different varieties and just grow Romas and Rutgers (which are a very hardy standard).
I had fairly good luck with tomatoes this year until we started having daily temps over 100 (we had the hottest year on record ever here). But pretty much everything else in my garden was a bust. Even the heat loving Southern peas and okra just died. The heat managed to do in my raspberries and tried really hard to kill my blueberries, too. The strawberries may be gone as well, but I'm hoping they'll try to come back now that it's slightly cooler. Ah well, maybe next year will be better.
Wildflower
9-11-11, 5:22am
I had a few really good tomatoes, but nothing near the amount I thought I would have. I am disappointed. I want to have a much bigger garden next year with many more different kinds of veggies in it, but am wondering if it will be worth the time and effort....
I had a few really good tomatoes, but nothing near the amount I thought I would have. I am disappointed. I want to have a much bigger garden next year with many more different kinds of veggies in it, but am wondering if it will be worth the time and effort....
Never surrender! :o) Some years are just lousy gardening years. Next year you might have a bumper crop.
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