I agree, Kristi!
I am so glad I started this thread as I have finally gotten some answers as to why I've been so unsuccessful growing edible plants.
I had to go grocery shopping last night but had to stop at Home Depot first. I really wanted to go to the garden center and check out the tomato plants, but I didn't want to leave any I bought in the car while I did my grocery shopping at another store. I will be making a trip over there this week though. I am rather excited about getting some tasty tomatoes.
I had also bought some sweet peppers at the grocery store last week (first time ever). Unfortunately, I forgot about them and they were starting to turn when I realized they were in my veggie bin (refrigerator). A couple of them were still good, so I washed them off and took a bite! Yummy! I saw that they had seeds, so I collected quite a few seeds with some rind to help them grow and will be sowing a bunch of those seeds. I then chopped all the sweet peppers up and put them in my bullet blender with some banana peels, blended them up with a little spinach and poured the contents into some sandwich baggies. I freeze the bags. Then defrost them (as needed) to feed to my worms in my worm bin. I have a thriving worm population in my worm bin and they can break down a large amount of waste in the bin within a month now. I just harvested almost 5 gallons of worm compost (castings) and will be using it in my new raised bed. (Though that new bed is not for veggies, but for daylilies!
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I am trying to garden as organically as possible. I love my red wigglers worms! I have noticed when I amend my beds, I am now finding lots of earthworms in the soil. That is a drastic change from 5-6 years ago when I never saw even 1 earth worm in my garden beds. So the amending is working .... however slowly. But the nematodes are still a big issue.
I wished I had a list of edibles that nematodes do not attack.
I made some self-watering buckets a few years ago and am going to use those for growing some veggies in.