The Vegetable Garden Sucks

First we had a heat wave then we had a flood thus the garden is not doing at all well although I am harvesting radishes, big juicy bulbs with a nice sharp flavour, the lettuce has barely sprouted if at all, the dill has some weird bug causing its leaves to curl, only two of the three zucchini came up, the spinach is barely two inches high and has already starting to go to seed, germination of other things peas, carrots, turnips, collard greens, swiss chard etc is spotty. If that isn’t enough to make me want to cry consider this, I’m also plagued by mushrooms.

I know very little about mushrooms so I’m pulling them up and chucking them into the bush. There are at least five different sorts. I’m sure I could sell them to various markets if I just had an inkling of which ones were which. Maybe It’s an excuse to visit a bookstore.

The other BIG problem is horsetail, Equisetum. It an ancient plant, a living fossil, which once dominated the understorey of the late Paleozoic forests. Last year I thought I had successfully killed it with roundup. Ha, to horsetail roundup is just a challenge it has to overcome. Digging Horsetail out is difficult since it has a complex, extremely deep rhizome network of roots, as well it reproduces by spores that easily spread all over the place. Horsetail likes poor damp soil with a low PH. The soils around here are clay. Clay is generally acidic and damp especially when there is a lot of rain. I rushed out to the hardware store and came back with several bags of dolomite lime. The other thing of course is to improve the soil. Well I have no interest in improving the soil in the bush. I spread manure on all the gardens. My only hope is that the other plants coming up in the bush will out compete it. The horsetail in the gardens, except the vegetable garden, is spotty and weak due I hope to the nutritious, slightly alkaline, drier and lighter soil.