What silly thing can't you grow?

Kathy Vargo wrote:My guess is the soil is perma-basic.  It was a sheep then dairy then hay farm and many many decades of lime where used.  What few soil tests I have recently are macro nutrients only and yep it'd dead neutral at pH 7.14 or there abouts.
Speaking of which, where can you get a really thurough soil analysis?  Who should I send it to?

You can get many tests from your local extension service:  UNH Extension Service Soil Testing
Then there are places that do biological testing, like Elaine Ingham's Soil FoodWeb Institute

Yep. With a 7.4 Ph, there is no way you are going to get blueberries. My soil is at 6.5 and it is already iffy.
One thing I did is dig a trench 4'X4'X30', fill it with the best soil I could find, a little peat, compost. To bring in water I used an 8"pipe that comes directly from the roof and all the rain water is going in there. [I'm in a sand box, by the way. No loam. just yellow sand. It would make a nice beach]. You get the idea.
Well, even with that and all that work, I have a terrible time getting enough blueberries. I used to live on the other side of town, a clay soil, and lowland. The blueberries were twice my height and grew without care, giving me too many for our own use. But here. No way. The best ones are shoulder high and don't always give me anything. I have 8 plants, pretty scrawny. Around between 4.3 to 5.5 pH. is what is recommended.

The first year I grew okra it went gangbusters. Since then at best I can get it to grow fair at best but I keep trying.

For those of you who are having problems don't forget to check at night for what bugs might be eating your seedlings. Another bug that has created problems for me is spider mites. Since it's nearly impossible to see them they used to go about their destructive ways unseen.

Good point if you see some insect damage on your okra or any other damage: A lot of insects are active at night, when we are in Slumber Land.
I was thinking that another reason for a crop not being successful in following years might be:
*The crop depleted the nutrients it needs.
* You just got a "bad year" for that crop.
* Malevolent insects are now harbored in the ground. [Think Good Fall cleanup and crop rotation.]
This year,  I had stretched a plastic film that I just happened to have to grow squash. I figured: less weeding, right?
Well, I'm not sure what happened but that idea turned out to be really bad: Every squash vine died long before frost and was ravaged by the squash borer. My squash had been wonderful before, but just a little change and not one squash was left untouched. I don't know what to do with the crop either because they are full of squash borers.
That land had been laying fallow for 2 years after strawberries, so I still don't know what happened. I may have to treat that soil but I don't know how.

Rutabaga. Ugh. This summer my friends showed off theirs, a fair bit bigger than my head, and still spotless (after a winter in the root cellar), telling me how easy it was. Well... Last time I tried the biggest ones were more of a size with my fist, and full of rotten, gicky holes. Okay, that was some time ago, so maybe it would be different now, but still.

To be fair, though, I'm glad said friends get lucky with the rutabaga, since they live in a cold hole. Last year and the year before, the frost killed off most of their potatoes and pumpkins. In July.

I live in Spain and I can't grow lemons.  My neighbours can, my friend who has a tree in a pot says hers is laden.  Not one of my three trees show any signs.  I thought it was because the trees were too young, but, three years on, I don't think that's it!  Ho hum, I guess I'll just keep trying

Hi Helen,

Welcome to Permies

Thanks John, it's nice to be here!

Previously when I'd try to grow muskmelons, I'd get one or two tiny, very late, but sweet fruit. My notes say last year's melon was the size of a small apple. This year I started seedlings and planted one bed with two starts on black plastic, and another bed with 5 direct seeds, no plastic, basically a pit full of semi-composted cow manure. The first bed gave 18 melons of two types, all fragrant but none of them sweet, all in one inconvenient rush, and then another rush of 8 at one time. The direct seeded bed now has one plant with 8, and several others with 2 each, and I've harvested two or three, and again they are fragrant but not sweet. I've been making smoothies with lemon or other sour fruit and sugar, and those are delicious but not really what I imagined when I made an effort to grow melons!

These include Lofthouse landrace muskmelons that I thought would be good for high altitude desert; Farthest North Galia that had produced few sweet late ones previous years; and a hybrid seed packet.

Well, at least I learned a delicious thing. We chunked up some melons from that inconvenient flush and froze them. Then if you let them semi-thaw and grind them up in a strong blender (I use an Indian mixie) with some other sour fruit and some sweetener while still semi-frozen, it makes a most gorgeous sorbet. So that's there, at least.

Potatoes. I've tried a few varieties over a few years. One time I had a paltry harvest, but the others died before producing anything. Ants and poor timing with the weather have been my biggest hurdles.

I'm with all the people with carrots. Carrots are my kryptonite, my Achilles heel. We visited some neighbors when we first moved here and they were harvesting carrots. They had so many huge carrots that they have us buckets full that lasted us for months. In the five years since then, I think my maximum harvest has been 10 finger sized carrots. I have spent so much in carrot seed that I could have bought bags and bags of carrots. But I refuse to give up!!! I have my battle strategy ready for next spring, my half dozen packets of new varieties to try

Here's another one - winter squash. I'm going to try it again next season, but I have had no luck getting any seeds to grow or bought seedlings to fruit. I think location might be one of the problems, so I'll try a different spot next time.

Wine cap mushrooms, comfrey, and cherry trees.  We will start with wine caps that I have tried twice, and not a single mushroom popped up.  
I read how comfrey is so easy to grow. I plant a ton of comfrey roots, several methods, and times of the year. I finally got one common comfrey crown to grow and survive 5? Maybe 6 months now.  
I have planted many fruit trees, and most grow no problem. I'm cursed when it comes to cherry. They do well in my area. But something always happens. The first my father-in-law bought and planted a cherry tree for us. It was doing well for a few months, until my son, maybe 4 or 5 decided to climb it. Snapped that baby in 1/2.  I have planted many over the years, and something always happens.  I told my daughter I'm going to buy and plant 2 cherry trees every year until they grow, or I die whichever comes first.
Failure doesn't make me give up, it makes me more determined.
Happy gardening

I'm with everyone on carrots. My poor sisters ask me to grow carrots every year and every year I have nothing to show for it. I still can't grow strawberries long term as I'm terrible about weeding. Trees and annuals are fine because I "weed" with mulch.

I want to change my comment about muskmelons, above. The ones I started indoors and planted out in a bed covered with black plastic produced too many fruit all at once in August, fragrant but not sweet. We may have harvested too early, I think...

But the direct seeded melons ripened in October (after my post above), super sweet! In fact, two of my friends said they were the best melons they'd ever tasted.

I'm going to keep trying to grow the things that don't seem to work. I have had so many things fail one year but produce delicious and abundant other years. So I figure if something doesn't work one year, it's worth trying again. I haven't had much luck with peppers, hot or sweet, but I'll keep trying.

Until last year we had never grown carrots bigger than a pencil but last year's are still feeding us and should last another month. Wherever I've lived in the UK, courgettes (zucchini) have always done well but last year's attempt at growing butternut squash was a failure. We never managed to grow onions from sets until Mr Ara decided to grow some from seed one year. They do brilliantly and last year's crop is hanging in the shed. Peas don't survive the mice here even though they are supposed to once they reach a certain size. Of the brassicas, only purple sprouting broccoli does well (so well almost everyone passing gets some thrust upon them) but we've given up on cauliflower, cabbage and brussels sprouts even though we managed to grow the latter in a past garden much further south than here. As long as some things grow and the slugs/snails/mice/voles don't get everything, I will be happy.

Corn is my #1. 7 or 8 years and I'll I've gotten was baby cobs with a few kernels.
Peach trees is #2. We have apple, plum, fig, Japanese maple, but for some reason the peaches die every year. I'm getting tired of replacing them.
And general flowers from seeds. I have 3 daughters and life is going to get real difficult when they get older if I don't figure it out. But somehow the 6 yo, at the time, got morning glories to grow in clay, in pots, in shade, behind our house(N side) last year while I struggled with 6' sunflowers that only got 3' tall. (Yea. Wtf is what I said too.)

Broccoli!! I don't know what I'm doing wrong but even at my best, I get tiny florets. I've resigned myself to this fact and I'm not going to buy seeds this year.

Sarah Cedar - I've struggled with broccoli as well, but I've finally found a variety that works for me. It's from Johnny's Selected Seeds, a hybrid mini broccoli, called Burgundy F1. It's supposed to harvest in 37 days, and maybe it does in spring, but over my winter, it took 3 months. I'm in zone 8a and am now harvesting lots of broccoli in spite of the below freezing overnights.

I've realized that large heads just don't seem to happen in home gardens so have opted for a variety with lots of side shoots. That being said we can get a meal's worth of broccoli from this variety with one or two plants for my family of 5. I will try to post a picture tomorrow.

Stacy - my wife and I did that variety last year, and that is the only reason that broccoli is not on my list.
None were harvested (they bolted), but we didn't kill them so in my book, it counts as success.

Zucchini for me. It’s ridiculous. I hate paying for zucchini. This year I’m engaging in a personal battle. Planting a zucchini-centered polyculture. As many varieties as I can get my hands on. Planting extras in any free spot.

John Bolling - it's a great variety, isn't it. My parents are coming up in a few weeks and I promised them I would start some seedlings for them. I generally prefer non-hybrids but maybe I can start a landrace with them. Exciting.

Stacy Witscher wrote:Sarah Cedar - I've struggled with broccoli as well, but I've finally found a variety that works for me. It's from Johnny's Selected Seeds, a hybrid mini broccoli, called Burgundy F1. It's supposed to harvest in 37 days, and maybe it does in spring, but over my winter, it took 3 months. I'm in zone 8a and am now harvesting lots of broccoli in spite of the below freezing overnights.

I've realized that large heads just don't seem to happen in home gardens so have opted for a variety with lots of side shoots. That being said we can get a meal's worth of broccoli from this variety with one or two plants for my family of 5. I will try to post a picture tomorrow.

Oh I'll try that variety!

Ok, I have three.

#1. Eggplant.  I can grow it but bugs just love it.  It seems like I can’t grow it to the point of harvest unless I use cheesecloth or similar.  On the good side they seem to draw pests away from everything else.

#2.  Pumpkin.  It will grow and start fruits but once they get more than a softball size the whole thing wilts and dies.  My neighbor grew them for sale but used seeds treated with ‘cides so toxic that he planted them with double gloves.  Ick!

#3.  Pole beans.  They will certainly grow and climb just fine (enthusiastically even) but they only give up 1-2 beans per plant.

I would just love any possible help with any of these (though I think I know what I need to do with the eggplant).

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:

#2.  Pumpkin.  It will grow and start fruits but once they get more than a softball size the whole thing wilts and dies.  My neighbor grew them for sale but used seeds treated with ‘cides so toxic that he planted them with double gloves.  Ick!

Eric

I've had the craziest results with pumpkins. If I plant them in my actual garden, they just sit there and do nothing. Here are the actual pumpkins I've gotten fruit from:
Year #1 A single seed planted by a two year old in a paper cup at the fair and then stick in a random corner of the years gave us 4 large pumpkins.
#2-4 Piles of pumpkins from random plants growing on the edge of the woods and in a chicken coop, where we tossed old rotten Halloween decor.
#5- Four children planted one seed each in tiny pots (from a $1 growing kit) and then transplanted to a random spot on the yard and then pretty much neglected them the rest of the summer. But each kid got one descent sized pumpkin off their vines.
#6- Last summer I started about 8 pumpkins inside and ended up with five to transplant. But I only had room for four plants in my irrigated garden rows so I randomly stuck the runtiest, weakest looking plant in a bare spot of dirt away from my garden so that if it grew, it wouldn't shade out anything. Well the irrigated plants didn't grow AT ALL and the unwatered neglected plant grew to cover a 15'x15' plot of weedy gravely ground and grew 4 GIANT pumpkins. I didn't have a scale big enough to weigh them but they were each about 3' in diameter.

So my hypothesis is that pumpkins are shy and don't want you to look at them or touch them or anything. Just plant them in some quiet spot and ignore them! 😂

Edit to clarify: The results above were all random pumpkins from little kids or volunteers plants. But every time I personally plant a pumpkin and try to take care of it, I get stunted little plants that don't do anything!

Eric Hanson wrote:

#3.  Pole beans.  They will certainly grow and climb just fine (enthusiastically even) but they only give up 1-2 beans per plant.

Warmth and water for pole beans...
I have never had success with pole beans until last summer when I participated in a pole bean seed trial and then we had so many beans. The difference with these and ones I've planted before was this time I planted in raised beds against the south west side of my house. I propped poles against the house and they grew so well that they ended up growing up into the roof. We do not have a long growing season so I think the extra warmth at the beginning and end of the season is what helped them take off, that and lots of water.

I've been trying to grow them for 8+ years and NEVER had success until these ones so don't give up hope! 😁

Rebecca Norman wrote:

I'm going to keep trying to grow the things that don't seem to work. I have had so many things fail one year but produce delicious and abundant other years. So I figure if something doesn't work one year, it's worth trying again. I haven't had much luck with peppers, hot or sweet, but I'll keep trying.

I didn't ever have success with peppers until I stopped trying to grow big ones and found some tiny varieties that could grow in my short season.

I also just learned that peppers will grow as a perennial and so if you have space inside, you might want to try growing peppers in pots and bringing them inside every fall and then putting them outside again in the spring when it warms up. I'm going to give it a try this year because even with my successful peppers, they don't start producing until the very end of the season. I'm going to try it with eggplants too (which can also be perennials). I dug up my pepper plants this last fall and tried bringing them inside but most of them were shocked and died. One did survive though and I just got a red ripe pepper from it last week.

THANK YOU JENNY!!!

I probably have the heat, but I might not have had sufficient water.  I have had great success with bush beans so I thought pole beans would essentially be the same.  I will give pole beans a shot this summer again.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:Ok, I have three.
#3.  Pole beans.  They will certainly grow and climb just fine (enthusiastically even) but they only give up 1-2 beans per plant.
I would just love any possible help with any of these (though I think I know what I need to do with the eggplant).
Eric

What kind of beans are you going for? snap or grain? Phaseolus vulgaris or vigna unguiculata? Inoculate or just plant it in the ground? In the Central Sands of Wisconsin they all grow pretty well, but the fact that yours are not giving you beans hints at a pollination problem or too much Nitrogen. Are your plants full size but no blossoms that set?
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/beans/bean-blossoms-no-pods.htm#:~:text=Bean%20plants%20that%20have%20too%20much%20nitrogen%20will%20have%20trouble%20creating%20pods.&text=Soil%20is%20too%20wet%20%E2%80%93%20Bean,unable%20to%20support%20the%20pods.
What about the other flowers that need pollinators. Are they doing OK? or is there a general lack of flower-produced fruit?

Eric, that's so odd. I can't grow decent bush beans to save my life, but I struggled to kill pole beans. I just soak them the night prior to planting and put them in the ground. With where I am, I could almost get two seasons out of them. I'll look up the varieties we do and post it.
As for the pumpkins, omg. I wish I was that successful.
Peppers, my neighbor does almost all the peppers. I can only get bell varieties to grow, but he starts his inside in January and produces all the way through Sept.

Regarding pumpkins - I used to constantly kill my transplants or run into issues with stunted growth, early diseases, and so forth. I ended up direct sowing some seeds in an effort to use up the rest of a seed packet out of frustration - and all of those plants thrived!

Here in Zone 6, pumpkin harvests can be a race against time before frost hits - but if you haven't tried direct sowing them before, give it a try and see if it works better for you. If nothing else, you don't have to deal with reserving space/materials/light indoors for the seedlings

If you think poor soil is your issue, you can also try the "pumpkin pit" method that David the Good has popularized - I've seen several YouTubers have great success with it, even in soil that weeds/grass cannot grow in, so it's something I plan to try this year as well.

Cecile, John, Everyone,

Thanks for the interest.  Just for some background on the growing conditions, my region, Southern Illinois, is known for its hot summers so I don’t that lack of heat is the issue.  I am growing the vigna varieties.  And other plants that flower pollinate just fine—I have no problems at all with bush beans.

Our soil is normally  heavy, heavy brown clay but my beds are quite different.  Originally I heavily amended the soil with lots of organic matter, mostly mounds and mounds of leaves with additions of bagged topsoil and bagged manure so it began resembling loam.  However, since 2018 I have been growing in raised beds situation right on top of the old beds and filled those beds with wood chips that are heavily broken by Wine Cap mushrooms.  It is extremely fertile soil.  

If I had to guess from the responses given thus far, maybe I have not given enough water.  But this is still odd that I can grow prolific bush beans.  Is there that great a difference in the growing requirements for bush vs. pole beans?

BTW, thanks for all the input!

Eric

Logan,

Thanks for the reply.  As I mentioned above, my soil is typically thick, heavy clay and the growing season is long and hot.  I have only direct-seeded.  But my garden beds are heavily amended with lots of organic matter and bagged topsoil/manure.  In fact, the last time I (tried to) grow pumpkins I planted them in fertile holes filled with manure amended with blood and bone meal.  I don’t my soil was to poor.

Typically, when the pumpkins start they quickly grow long, dark green, very healthy looking vines and leaves.  They flower prolifically and set fruits.  About the time the baby pumpkins start to grow the leaves get a whitish residue on them—powdery mildew if I had to guess—and the leaves start wilting, eventually turning yellow and dying altogether.  Somehow I think I have a disease issue and not a nutrient issue.

Maybe this helps,

Eric

Eric, this year I also have not gotten any beans to save my life. I try long beans as well as pole beans, usually at least one does okay and we eat lots of beans before the cucumber beetles and mildew get them.
This year, I have planted at least 5 times and they just stall at maybe 4 inches tall until finally the beetles finish them off. We have not had one green bean yet this year, and it's past midsummer. Meanwhile, the pigeon peas are rocking along...
Notably, this year the okra also stalled, but I am having a bumper year for peppers (that has NEVER happened here, we're too cold), and everyone I talk to has pumpkins that are out of control (meanwhile, my spaghetti squash all died really early in the year, I got one squash)..... Earlier, it was also a great year for cucumbers and zucchini (two things that usually give me trouble).
My point, our weather just gets weirder and weirder, and what doesn't work one year sometimes works the next. I feel like I just keep journaling and keep trying in some great experiment...

Eric, thank you for the additional information! Our soil here is also hard, heavy brown clay - I can dig almost a foot down with a shovel if I put a lot of effort into it, but digging any deeper than that is impossible without a backhoe or similar.

How do you water your pumpkins (if you do at all)? We had powdery mildew issues for a while, but they stopped once we either stopped watering them with the hose directly (instead filling up a bucket and pouring it around the plant to prevent soil from splashing up), or placing woodchips/mulch around the plant so that there's no soil to splash onto the plant.

It might have been a variety issue for us as well - cucumbers still constantly get powdery mildew (the only variety we have successfully grown was the Lemon Cucumber) and now that I think back about it, the pumpkin variety that we found to work well here is the Early Sweet Sugar Pie. We have tried growing a few others (Jack O Lantern and Triple Treat are the two I remember trying) with no success.

Someone who know soil chemistry better than I do, Could it be Eric's soil & watering situation? I typically grow my beans in pretty crappy soil and they do great. Our soil is mostly sandy clay, so during the winter it's a pond and the summer it can crack if I don't water enough. I did an area last year that I knew I was going to tear out (I dug it out after the season and leveled the slope to extend my yard and build a level area for a swing set). I only tilled topsoil (the stuff under the grass) down to the clay and removed any roots or annoying pest plants, then I hoed rows and planted, only watering if I remembered. I had, ultimately, too much success as they did so well that I had, at one point, to use a machete to get in deep enough to harvest. They even did better than the one's I planted in my wife's kitchen garden which is full of compost and fertilizer and is watered on a timer.  

Varieties we have success with are:
Kentucky Wonder
Blue Lake Stringless
McCaslan

As far as pumpkin, I've only had success with direct sow, but the most successful are the "Throw that rotten one over there." kind.

John Bolling wrote:Someone who know soil chemistry better than I do, Could it be Eric's soil & watering situation? I typically grow my beans in pretty crappy soil and they do great. Our soil is mostly sandy clay, so during the winter it's a pond and the summer it can crack if I don't water enough. I did an area last year that I knew I was going to tear out (I dug it out after the season and leveled the slope to extend my yard and build a level area for a swing set). I only tilled topsoil (the stuff under the grass) down to the clay and removed any roots or annoying pest plants, then I hoed rows and planted, only watering if I remembered. I had, ultimately, too much success as they did so well that I had, at one point, to use a machete to get in deep enough to harvest. They even did better than the one's I planted in my wife's kitchen garden which is full of compost and fertilizer and is watered on a timer.  
Varieties we have success with are:
Kentucky Wonder
Blue Lake Stringless
McCaslan

Great idea, John, to bring in varieties. There are like 400 different kinds of beans in the world, so I'm sure we can help folks find beans they will like *and* be able to grow. This first site has pictures as well. Beans are high in protein [if you want to ease safely toward a more vegetarian diet]. The seeds store very well with no muss, no fuss. They are a great "comfort food". Some will be a bit 'windy' but if you rinse off the first water, things will be fine.
Bonus, for those with gluten issues: You can dry the beans, grind them them into flour and proceed to made a gluten free bread, or use it to thicken sauces/ gravies/ soups. [see video below]
https://www.jessicagavin.com/types-of-beans/#:~:text=Beans%20are%20a%20great%20source,of%20beans%20to%20be%20exact.
Also I found this on how to grow them. They do have different requirements, but I'm still stumped as to why some gardeners who seem to have done everything right can still experience problems.
https://www.southernexposure.com/bean-growing-guide/
This one is from black bean flour, just for something a bit different;
https://mizchef.com/2014/12/01/black-bean-flour-bread-with-herbs/

Helen Siddall-Butchers wrote:I live in Spain and I can't grow lemons.  My neighbours can, my friend who has a tree in a pot says hers is laden.  Not one of my three trees show any signs.  I thought it was because the trees were too young, but, three years on, I don't think that's it!  Ho hum, I guess I'll just keep trying

Hurray!  I have lots of baby lemons growing this year!  I've been giving my trees lots of tlc and it worked!

James Freyr wrote:Eggplant. It's always the flea beetles that decimate my plants, and here in my region flea beetles seem to be one of the first on the scene come spring.

I got revenge on the flea beetles with a garlic and hot pepper mixture. It's been years since I made it, but it was in a spray bottle. Would recommend searching that up.