By Jackie Hollenkamp Bentley
For weeks now, I’ve been watching plants in my raised beds die a slow, painful death.
Finally, this happened…
and this…
I looked on the internets for possible explanations for this ugliness, knowing full well the Biblical Rains this summer are to blame. My mom said she’s hearing from a lot of people that this has been one bad summer for gardens thanks to the deluges.
What I found was that it could be what’s called blight, or fungus, bugs, drowning (you think?), any number of things.
Armed with these photos on my phone, I visited one of my go-to nurseries, Gagel’s Farm. I wanted to know, first, what killed these plants, and second, can I replant this late in the season, and third, that I’m not alone.
They came through for me once again.
“Oh, you got hit with a little bit of everything, didn’t you?” said Lindsey Gagel in a most sympathetic tone. I was grateful.
I then showed her my tomato plants, which have produced an "okay" amount of maters, but I was hoping for more to make more sauces (See CGGG: Pride and Reality).
She went on to show me their roadside food stands where they typically sell copious amounts of tomato varieties. There were only a few maters available. Roughly 90 percent of their customers are having a horrible year.
“So can I replant at least the cucumbers?”
“Many of them are replanting right now,” she said. But she added that I shouldn’t replant in the same dirt.
Hope is alive.
I was able to harvest enough cukes to make a nice batch of Kosher dill pickles weeks ago, but I would like to have the same amount in bread and butter pickles. That wasn’t going to happen if I couldn’t replant.
Unfortunately, Gagels’ were out of cucumber plants and seeds.
“Never Give Up! Never Surrender!” kept going through my mind as I left Gagels (bonus points for the person who can tell me where that quote originated).
I hit several stores (one of them, admittedly was a big blue box chain) and no cucumber plants to be found. Aforementioned blue store even returned all their seeds. I...Read more
