CarolineScott said:Yes, in gardening there is always next year.
But it is frustrating to have all your work come to nothing.
We have all had similar experiences.
Thank you. Honestly, I'm new to this.. I started two years ago mid summer and only had a fall garden then. Last year was my first full year and I started the tomatoes too late and didn't get much harvest. I started them much earlier with grow lights this year and it was TOO early, which might have had something to do with this.. but I've been tending these tomatoes for months and months. It seems like I'm never going to get it right so it does really mean a lot to me to hear that it isn't some kind of sign that I am a failure at gardening to have this happen.
I think I might get a really solid (not organic) fungicide and spray down the dirt and garden area this fall once the plants are all out. Make really sure everything from this year is cleaned out. I can rotate the cucumbers over to where the beans are, and put the beans where the cucumbers are. I can't really rotate the tomatoes out though as I don't have anywhere else to put them. I already lost much of the potatoes to a similar issue - I put the potato bag dirt in these compost bags to store it over the winter and I composted the potato plants with the dirt. I shouldn't have done that but they seemed to have died back naturally in the fall, not from some disease. The ones growing in the tarp-material bags rotted away very early and the ones in the felt-material bags did really great this year. All felt material bags next year and NO potato stems or leaves go into the composting. Oh, also I saved cucumber seeds from last year from a cucumber I picked at the end of the season because I was trying to let it get over ripe before getting the seeds - so of course it was exposed to the worst of the die-back of the cucumbers from the end of season. I'm not going to use saved seeds at all next year.
Still just trying to figure it all out. Every time I learn something, it is like I learn that there are 8 MORE things I still don't know about yet!
