Here is a 3-step approach to coping:
- get bees
- harvest honey
- gift some honey to your neighbors
Your neighbors will think you are the coolest neighbor on the block, they won’t care that your garden looks rough once in a while.
Maarten
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Oh yes for sure. I can not afford a complete loss by starting from scratch. So I will plant what already survives here and add more varieties to it to expand the genetic content. With any luck I can at least get more survivors and hopefully larger crops. Because I like eating, AKA; I hate starving.
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I’m no farmer but last year I decided to grow some tobacco. No one around here had ever heard of anyone growing it. My grandma would try to publicly shame me in front of everyone we knew just for growing it. Said I was crazy, started telling people I was growing marijuana (not true) for extra effect. Tried to get everyone else to tell me how crazy I was. But I stuck to my guns and eventually it didn’t even bother me. When my tobacco plants made it chest high and got beautiful she changed her tune and decided it was awesome.
Those people that are gonna say bad stuff about your garden don’t believe in you anyway. Just grow thicker skin. Realize the goal is worth it in spite of whatever nasty comments you get. If you stick it out long enough, your haters will be proven wrong or you just won’t care anymore because you enjoy it.
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If she’s anything like my Dad, she probably decided it was her idea after you put in all the work.
People are funny.
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Totally! I figure the best place to start any landrace is with the varieties you like and find grow well for you already. Bonus points if you’ve already saved your own seeds from those varieties. You don’t necessarily have to start with a swarm of 20 varieties you know nothing about. You could start by planting 90% of your favorite varieties and just adding a pinch of new things every year, in case something neat turns up that you’ve never tried before. That would be a slow and steady way to adapt your crops to your soil better, never straying far from what you already know works.
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Reading everyones stories and starting my direct seeding with a lot of nerves has made me think a lot about this the last few weeks. I think for me, just like with taking risks in every other aspect of life, i think i am going to try to really get excited and congratulate myself and brag about each little success. And for each failure, i will also celebrate what i learned from the failure and not think of it as a failure but a learning oppirtunity. Its super cheesy and something ive jeard a thousand times in life, but i do really think this will allow me to roll with the punches and keep moving enthusiastically forward. Seeing gardening as an ongoing process, where you are always achieving SOMETHING and can always learn something mivibg forward. But when i get hung up on the big picture of the fact that my garden doesnt look like my moms, then it will be hard for me to be as mentally resilient.
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Angela in the YouTube channel Parkrose Permaculture (very good YouTube channel, by the way) recently said that she counts on 20% of her garden failing every year, and it will be a different 20% every year based on environmental factors.
That seems like a very good expectation to me. I think adjusting it to 50% for me, while I’m trying a bunch of new species and varieties and stumbling my way forward through trial and error, seems reasonable.
That’s how I’ve always handled New Year’s Resolutions. I tend to make a list of 20-25 every year. If I complete half of them, I did great. If I complete fewer than half, I probably made them too hard and need to be gentler to myself next year. If I complete more than half, I probably was too easy on myself last year and can give myself more of a challenge. I find that gives myself just the right balance between having targets and goals, while also allowing for unexpected trials and/or changing my mind on what I want to complete.
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This is my assumption about high biodiversity in general: you’re always growing something that will fail, and something that will do spectacularly, every year because of the particular conditions of that year. The delight of the harvest comes, in part, because it’s so unique to that year in its makeup. That way each year feels like its own specific time and can be remembered as “do you remember that great cantaloupe summer?” which to me feels like it connects me to the time and place.
Last year was good squash and late tomatoes for me; the year previous was beautiful tomatoes and squash that didn’t make seeds.
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Good point! My family moved a lot when I was a kid, and my siblings and I have commented that we can remember exactly which year something happened because of which house we were living in at the time. Having things that make different years special can be great for making memories!
I’m definitely in need of some coping strategies right now. I planted 100 seeds representing about 30 or more different varieties of six different cucurbit species (cantaloupe, watermelon, pepo squash, maxima squash, moschata squash, and mixta squash), and so far . . .
Well, I’ve seen about 20 sprouts so far. All of which got eaten before the next morning. 
There was one that survived a whole week and had me hopeful, but then it got chomped down to nothing as well.
I don’t get it! This should be the “magic third year” for my own pepo squash seeds that I saved in 2021 and 2022! The cantaloupe and watermelon populations both include seeds I saved from fruits I grew here, as well! And as for the rest, with that many different varieties, I expected something!
Maybe I’m just being impatient. It’s just . . .
Man, this is hard to watch. Especially since cucurbits grew so easily for me in 2021 and 2022. I don’t get why this year is different. The spring weather was way wetter and colder than usual, but our July weather right now is exactly the same.
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Right there with you.
I planted something like 8-10 different varieties of basil directly into my garden as companion plants, which has generally been successful for me in the past. Some of it was even saved seed, so I know they’re varieties that do well direct-seeded… I have exactly 2 plants that survived. And one of them is just plain boring lettuce leaf basil… none of my citrus or cinnamon or purple/red basils managed to survive much past germination. 
Add in that the squash borers have arrived and taken out two of my three mystery (kabocha?) squash and are getting started on the cocozelle/yellow squash planting, and I’m just holding my breath hoping something, ANYTHING makes it.
(Hugs!)
Do you know what is eating them? There are things you can do to protect them as seedlings, but it depends on what pest you’re dealing with.
Hard to say. I assumed it was pill bugs, because those ate everything I put under mulch, but they’re not mulched this time. I think it’s probably earwigs.
Do you think it would help if I sprinkled diatomaceous earth into the swales? I do have some.
I’ve noticed similar variability in cucurbit performance year to year, despite superficially similar weather. I suspect it might be linked to differences in soil microbial populations which respond more slowly to changes in air temperatures.
One thing to consider- you don’t have to take an all or nothing approach to how you grow your crops.
For example - if you are trying to do landrace selections to reduce inputs then you can put aside part of your growing area for that experiment (though keep in mind irrigation water moves sideways underground). That way you don’t have to sacrifice your whole season. Pest pressure can also overflow from one variety to another above ground.
If you are planning on doing variety trials to start your own grex then you can focus on one or two species at a time. Once you have your superior genetics narrowed down you usually dont need to do the same experiment again.
If I was already experienced in growing veggies the “normal” input intensive way I probably wouldn’t abandon it entirely all in one go, especially if I was relying on it to produce food for my family. You can also gradually taper your inputs over several seasons to give the genetics a little time to catch up.
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It might work. I’ve never used DE that way, so I can’t say.
Put out a can of oil and soy sauce and see what you catch. That should give you a better idea.
My own inclination would be collars around the seeds.
To piggyback into Shane you also don’t have to plant every seed on day one. Unless your seasons just don’t allow for it you can go to your firsr frost date in fall/autumn then back date the DTM of the seed in question to find your last planting date. Then you can stage seed planting every few weeks from last frost in Spring to last planting date filling up the growing season from first to last frost and get a lot more data points to collect on seed performance under your local conditions. Pests build up and decline in waves so you may discover the lull point in local pest surges that lets those seeds grow large enough to withstand pest pressures to reach maturity. Time also gives you flexibility in having the seed experience different soil temperatures to gauge any impacts on germination rates. In risk management terms you are spreading out your risks. I always find that the very first planting in Spring is most at risk because the pests have been starving for some fresh greens. It may be beneficial to first plant a sacrificial pest first feed crop of something you don’t particularly want but have a lot of seed for cheap. After the pests start getting fresh greens you can plant what you do want and see if they will ignore more of the subsequent planting of seeds you do want. If the first planting is something easily identified you can make it easier to rogue them out later. It’s similar idea to a pest trap crop.
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Most of my neighbors couldn’t grow a garden if their life depended on it, so what they think about how it looks doesn’t concern me. What other people think in general doesn’t concern me, and shouldn’t concern other people either. One thing you’ll encounter often when you’re doing something unique or successful is the majority of your friends/family/ acquaintances will try to get you to stop.
Like when I stopped eating all carbohydrates and slowly transitioned to a mostly carnivore diet. Half my friends and family think I’ll die any moment, even though I’m in perfect health. All the while they still eat as though they are a 21-year-old in college and take dozens of medications for the ailments they have from crap food.
Letting others modify your behavior means they have control, you should never let anyone make decisions on how you live your life, or reach any particular goal.
Life should be about learning, and you don’t learn anything doing everything everyone else does.
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I think that refers more to the point when lots of new phenotypes show up. If you can grow a very large population of the F3 you may likely find some that are better adapted, more resilient and more productive than others. This will continue in the F4 and beyond especially if is a crop that easily crosses, and the current generation is backcrossing at random with the prior ones.
Unfortunately, it does not mean, save seeds, even crossed seeds, for three years and everything is gravy after that. It can actually take a long time, especially in a small garden.
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