Come to think of it, that may be the difference between this year and last year. My next-door neighbor had her (full of wild plants) lawn mowed, so now it’s full of mulch, rather than full of living wild plants. Maybe all the bugs who would have been eating those plants have moved over to my yard.
If so, that implies that I definitely need to establish a groundcover mix in my lawn, so I can have some living drought tolerant plants in midsummer (other than bindweed). Right now, my “back lawn” is all dead mulch. It’ll be lush and green in winter. That’s how grass grows here.
This definitely implies I need to do what I was planning to do already, and get more of the salsify and hoary cress to spread everywhere that isn’t garden beds. Those are green and growing in summer. I should also start gathering seeds from yellow dock, because that grows lush and green in midsummer. They’re all weeds, so they’ll do fine with no irrigation; they always do.
I tried cutting the bottoms out of some plastic cups and putting them around some seedlings a few weeks ago, and they still got eaten to the ground. I was bummed out about that.
I use a lot more seeds, just in case. Can’t say if that would have helped for situation, but there is change that more would have made it. I think I sowed about 3000-4000 watermelon and melon seeds for about 50m2. Had maybe 10% max 20% emergence of which maybe half got killed by cold, bugs or were too late to emerge and were eliminated mostly because of being smaller than best. I had planned for about 130 plants and only few patches remained were I didn’t get any. Maybe there was more bug pressure? Some places I had to cull extras and although that is not fun always, it’s better having none. I oversowed also other cucurbits, but mainly didn’t have problems, especially with own seeds that I could sow far more. Certainly there were damaged seedlings, but somehow everything else from own seed had closer to 100% germination. Most likely cold what made difference between those.
I’m wondering if maybe I need to presoak the seeds and plant them two inches down, where the soil is little bit moist, and not water. Rather than planting dry seeds about half an inch deep and watering the top of the soil to get them to germinate. Maybe the latter attracts way more roly polies? And the former would be way, way more water efficient, anyway.
Come to think of it, I completely forgot – I did presoak the seeds last year!
I use TP rolls, but the same concept. The problem is that if there are already bugs inside it’s no protection at all. At this point maybe try DE inside the collars?
Sorry to hear this! From what I understand of your growing habits and piggybacking off of Peter’s point about risk management, you already have backups that are extremely well looked after to deploy this season or next. Enough to plant some more presoaked I’d imagine.
That’s a big change to your local micro-ecosystem, the negative impacts of which seem likely to be most keenly felt this year. There could have been cover, food, and security for all kinds of different invertebrate and vertebrate species who now have to branch out or starve. That may not be the source of your squash woes but it certainly draws attention.
I think you know already, but my understanding is the Hopi traditionally planted corn up to ten inches deep. This idea of watering seeds to get them to germinate has seemed weird to me from very early in in my gardening journey - - I presoak and/or wait for rain. If I were in an area as arid as yours I suspect I’d try strategies like what you’re describing
I cannot recommend active pest control. Like many forms of human management, it is often more effective at perpetuating itself than in addressing the problem to be managed. You don’t have to intentionally kill living beings to grow abundant food.
Our first year growing kale we got nothing - - the cabbage loopers ate everything. The second year they did not become a big issue until after the kale had matured. This year they are very obviously present but there are signs of predation. So far so good with the brassicas.
If you play the role of predator you will always be killing. If plants are able to signal predators (which I suspect they are), your plants will have no differential selection to encourage this ability. It will be difficult for a stable and recurrent local predator population to establish itself if you are repeatedly raiding the larder.
On a related note, you can also raise insect-eating, egg-laying animals without slaughtering them for meat. Nowhere is it written that ducks and quail can’t be members of the family.
I’ve wondered if toilet paper rolls would work! I wondered if the pill bugs would just eat right through them. If they’ll work, great! I’d rather use cardboard than plastic!
Yes, that’s exactly what I’d noticed: the pill bugs and the earwigs were already in the collars. My frustration was quite acute. I like the idea of putting diatomaceous earth right inside them.
@H.B, your point about taking on the role of the predator myself creating dependence on me keeping up that role is well-taken.
I think if I’m very sparing about the diatomaceous earth and only use it in order to get seeds from a first generation, so that I can sow those seeds in abundance the next year, it may be worth doing. But if nothing else, it would be wise to make it a goal to use it sparingly and avoid it entirely unless it’s a plant that I can’t easily replace and I really want to get seeds from, even if it isn’t ready to deal with my ecosystem without help in the first generation.
I do have backup seeds, but not nearly as many as you might think. Some of them, like the many purchased seed packets and the Going to Seed mixes, I can’t easily replace. I only planted half the seeds from seed packets, and I only planted about 1/100th my own saved seeds, but I planted almost all the ones from trades and the Going to Seed mixes.
As for my neighbor having her lawn mowed, yeah, that may be important. She had it mowed in about August last year, and it happened in June this year. That could make a difference.
When I did my dry garden in Utah I gave the seeds a gallon of water when I planted them, and that was it. They germinated, grew and fruited on that amount. In a few cases I ended up watering a bit in August, but again it was a couple quarts or a gallon.
That’s not very much water at all! Wow, that’s great.
I’m starting to suspect that maybe watering them was the problem. That meant there was water on or near the surface of the soil, which may have attracted loads of earwigs, and it definitely would have attracted roly polies. The sprout I had that lived for a week and then died? It died the day after I watered the swales. I’ve been watering once a week.
I’m thinking I should follow your lead and just dry farm them all. Weirdly enough, I’m starting to think they’ll stand a much better chance of surviving that way.
How deep did you plant them? How thick was the mulch on top of them?
Does it have to be wood chips, or could it be any mulch? All I’ve got is autumn leaves and twigs. I do have an awful lot of autumn leaves and twigs. I could also rip up cardboard and paper, if needed.
I’d love to get wood chips. I requested some from ChipDrop . . . in February. And I’ve kept renewing it every month since. Still no sign of them. I asked an aborist company who was working in my neighborhood two weeks ago, and he said nobody in Provo does wood chips anymore; they just take logs to the Provo Compost Yard, which chips them and composts them and sells the compost on-site. Arrrrrrrrgh.
I could buy composted wood chips there – it’s only $3 a cubic yard – but I’d have no way to transport it back to my house.
I think it’s awesome that a public service like that exists, and it frustrates me that I can’t use it.
If the plants aren’t showing water stress, I don’t water. I let the plants get established, then let them tell me what they need.
In the mulched areas they could go all summer, depending on the plant. Pumpkins almost always needed extra water when they started fruiting. Watermelons never did. I used grass, leaves, and woodchips. Grass and leaves broke down much faster so I was usually watering by mid July, when I could see the soil through the mulch. But again, a few gallons every two or three weeks isn’t a big deal.
Note that fruiting patterns changed under extreme dry conditions.* Fewer seeds in fewer fruits, which matured much faster and were sometimes smaller than expected.
*Straight sand, leaf mulch mostly gone mid season, watered once a month.
I like the rule of thumb that “if you can see the soil through the mulch, it may be time to start watering.”
How thick of a mulch did you use? How deep in the soil did you plant the seeds? Now that the top of the soil is dry (and therefore mulch won’t attract pill bugs), I’m thinking I could put loads of mulch into the swales. The swales are about a foot deep. How much mulch is too much? What do you think makes sense?
No. If I could see the soil it dried out faster, but I still waited for the plants to tell me they needed water. For leaf mulch, it was collected bags piled beside each other. It probably started as 18 inches or so in the fall, mulched down over the winter to about six inches. Woodchip mulch started at about six inches. I just poked the seeds in the ground, no real standard on that.
If you mulch the swales I suspect your plant roots will chase the water into the swales. I’ve never done it that way so I can’t say whether that will be a positive or a negative.
My guess is that the swales will hold the water in the subsoil, allowing for dust mulch around the plants themselves. It will look very, very dry, but if you dig down under the dust mulch it will be damp under a layer of dust. The dust mulch stops the capillary action that constantly draws moisture to the surface to evaporate.
I have no idea how that would interact with the swales, but it’s definitely worth a try.
Gophers ate all my seed onions then moved on to my 1st year trial onions, looks like they are about to get to my leeks. I am about to have a caddy shack moment I swear.
How about putting a sign saying ‘experimental’ or something? And chatting to people saying if you have god results in 2 or 4 years time, you’d be happy to share the seeds with them. Or if they’re up for it, they could help grow out some of the year 2 or year 3 seeds, that way they’d actually be contributing to the project! Then even if most people thought it was ‘bad’, at least you’d have some other locals on your side And they could share your excitement and hardships, and the project would go faster, the crosses getting more space and more varied local conditions for better selection!
Also, 3 years really isn’t much time to wait, and if you did well, in that little time the chat could go from criticism to adoration!
You’ve inspired me to try mulching the swales, and not water any of my cucurbits again this year, unless something wilts and looks like it needs just a bit. I hope it works!
I suspect the roots will head into the swales too, and I’m perfectly fine with that. I suspect it’ll make the swales more stable long-term to have a network of last year’s roots holding them together. I could be wrong – I guess we’ll see!
I also have had a discouraging growing season. This is my first year, and i knew going in that there would be lots of varying results. I know my plan is long term which means each year results are not guaranteed. In this first season, i had more than a month of literally no water. And then immediately following, its been more than a month now of significant rain almist every day. So a lot of seedlings died in the dry weather, and now everything that did grow is getting pretty decimated by slugs. In addition, a woodchuck is making himself to home. So far he has only lightly browsed, but this makes me very nervous. I do have some crops that are doing good so far, so i am trying to focus on that, and keep dreaming about what i can experiment with for next year with the crops that arent succesful this year.
On top of all that, i have a lot of new soil plots which i also have multi year plans for establishing cover crops and soil health. So a lot of the plants currently growing in those patches are staying small and are showing signs of doing tiny little male blossoms.
I will attach a couple photos of a plot that i only have field peas in. Its pretty remarkable as the stems are still there but every single leaf has been eaten off. This is the case in a lot of my other plots as well
On the bright side, corn and beans seems to be growing ok in most spots that i have planted. Tomatoes are growing well, both conventionally grown and direct seeded. The tomatoes are being heavily eaten by the woodchuck but still are looking good so theres at least some positive info from that even if the woodchuck gets especially hungry one day.
Well, I’ve identified the bug that’s been eating my cucurbit leaves: earwigs. I went out this morning and found the last remaining leaf on the last healthy fig-leaf gourd for GRIN absolutely covered in them, with the leaf eaten down almost to a skeleton. Sigh.
I figured it was probably earwigs, because earwigs were really gung ho about eating my cucurbit leaves last year, too. I planted about 50 melon seeds last year, and only had one surviving plant.
They also were gung ho about eating my squash leaves last year, but most of the squashes survived despite that. I’d say only half of them died last year, and I barely noticed because I sowed them way too closely together on purpose.
So, probably the answer is to just ignore the bugs and only save seeds from the ones that don’t attract earwigs as much, or which grow so fast that they outgrow the damage. The usual “survival of the fittest” strategy, in other words.
The squash vine borers took out the last of my “mystery” squash, all seeded from a delicious orange kabocha-looking thing I was given a couple years ago. I had such high hopes for them, but they died FAST. Now there are clear signs of borers on pretty much every other planting of squash in my garden except my Tennessee Sweet Potato, as expected. So far, nothing has succumbed, though, and I’m wondering if it’s possible some will survive to make at least one fruit despite the bugs? It’s been a wetter season and they’re in pretty fertile soil, so maybe the lack of other stressors is helping?
My leek bed looks like a war zone… something started eating them soon after transplant, stunting them, and at last check I’m down to maybe 10 out of the original 50. It was the Belgian Blue mix from Wild Garden, so hopefully a couple survive to flower together… I would love to have a grex/landrace/diverse mix of local friendly blue leeks. Currently I just have a depressingly empty space with a few pathetic greens here and there. It’s a good thing the HOA inspector can’t see my backyard garden space!!
And they could share your excitement and hardships, and the project would go faster, the crosses getting more space and more varied local conditions for better selection!
