I find myself reflecting on 2020 a lot here in January. Looking back on a year that had a lot of unique challenges, we had many successes in the garden. On the same token, we had a number of "failures".
In reality, no garden is perfect. You might see what looks like a perfectly spaced garden with perfect mulch and no weeds, but the reality is every year there are many "lessons learned" moments every year, even for the most experienced gardeners.
Our top 3 garden fails in 2020:
1. Raccoons REALLY like sweet corn. I know this. I do. But it seems I got overly confident after they didn't touch our small sweet corn patch in our main garden in 2019. When planning our garden for 2020, I decided I wanted to plant more corn - one of my favorites! - so when we expanded to another garden on another spot on our property, I didn't even consider the raccoons in my planning.
In early August after tending to the corn for months, we walked down to the garden to find about 20 stalks completely pulled over. It doesn't take many raccoons to do this, even one can go through and pull the ears down, damaging an entire row of stalks in one night. Usually they strike a day or two before I plan to pick the corn - which let me tell you, is beyond frustrating!
As we plan for 2021, we will need to have a plan in place to keep our corn rows safe. There are lots of ideas out there, everything from fencing the garden in to a motion detector sprinkler to having a radio playing overnight underneath a bucket to chase the raccoons away. I've been pondering this these first weeks of 2021 as we plan for the growing season ahead of us.
2. Squash bugs need to be dealt with in a timely fashion. 2020 marked the first time I had experience with squash bugs. We plant a large pumpkin and squash patch each year and unfortunately I did not notice them until there was already a couple generations of them snacking on our squash and pumpkin leaves. Since we only use organic practices in our garden, we used Neem Oil - which is an organic pesticide - to spray them. We caught them too late in their season though, and by that time there had already invaded. Despite being vigilant, we lost some of our squash and pumpkin fruits to squash bugs. Like any pest, it's easier to handle them right away.
We now have a good supply of Neem oil on hand at all times, and in 2021 we will be much more vigilant. I think we will need to invest in a larger sprayer though - pumpkins are one of my favorite thing to grow and we end up having quite a few plants year to year.
Our 2020 pumpkin and squash harvest. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the squash bugs and the damage they caused, but we ended up needing to compost a number of squash and pumpkins because of squash bug damage.
3. Japanese beetles are awful. We have battled Japanese beetles every growing season since we have lived here, and unfortunately they are pretty bad on our property. In the month of July, twice a day I am found with my bucket of soapy water (Dawn dish soap works well) hand-picking the beetles off of my grape vines, raspberry bushes, rose bushes, green bean plants, and unfortunately many, many other plants.
We have spread Milky Spore for two years in a row now. It is best spread Milky Spore in August, at the tail end of their active season. Milky Spore is a product that when the Japanese beetle grubs eat a spore which kills them. When the grubs die off, the spore is multiplied exponentially. Within a couple years it is supposed to infiltrate the entire lawn where treated. Japanese beetles love to burrow in lawns, not as much in gardens. The best part of Milky Spore is it will only target the Japanese beetle grubs so it is safe for all the good bugs out there!
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