Sometimes you have good garden years and some are horid. This is one of the bad ones and I can only put blame on myself. Last fall I thought it would be a good idea to get all bed loaded with manure to make it more productive, but I did not consider the acidity level that it would also create. And this year I'm paying the price. My soil is so acidic that nothing in the big garden wants to grow. At all. Only few weeds that seem to enjoy any kind of soil. And garlic. At least it's doing ok and starting to size up nicely so I'll have enough for winter and some to cook while still green.
Oh well, chuck it up to learning for later. Once garlic is all picked, I will amend soil with woodash to remove some of the acidity.
Thankfully I still have small garden that is productive. Rain or not (we got over 7 inches of rain in June) I get to pick things here and there. Like red currants, peas, black raspberry that's just starting to come in while strawberries are almost done. Last of the peas were picked last week. And beans have just starting to come in. I'm glad I only planted some of them as they are very prolific.
Next week I'll be harvesting beans at the farm and that will be interesting to see how they'll produce.
Stop by Daphne's page to see how everyone else is doing on their harvests this time around.
Too bad about the manure. At least you are getting some very nice harvests from the rest of the garden.
ReplyDeleteThank you, it's not much but enough for us to eat.
DeleteWhoops. These things happen. At least beans and peas can see you through the winter.
ReplyDeletePeas were just for snacking, but yes we'll have plenty of frozen beans for winter.
DeleteOh, that too bad. We have the opposite problem here - the soil is quite alkaline. Didn't even realize it was an issue until I had it tested. At least you will be able to amend the soil relatively easily to bring it back towards neutral. Doesn't look like your bean harvest was impacted, that's for sure!
ReplyDeleteThe beds in small garden were not amended so beans are happy to be there. Can't say the same about anything else.
DeleteOh dear that happens. A couple years ago I put too much lime on my garden. It was the worst year ever. Not disastrous, but not great. At least our soil turns acidic over time so the problem was fixed after a year.
ReplyDeleteWe have pines surrounding garden on two sides so soil is very acidic on its own. But it's ok, I will add ash and lime and hopefully that will change for next year
DeleteOoh, but fruit loves the acidic soil, and you have so much fruit! Sorry to hear about the rest of it ...
ReplyDeleteI love fruit, but it's mostly supposed to be grown on the outskirts. And it really affected my veggies :(
DeleteOh no, that is terrible. I've done that with wood ashes during the winter, tomatoes and onions did ok but that's about it. Have you tried liming?
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of manure did you use? I used a few hundred pounds of rabbit manure in my garden.
I used cow manure and it's much more acidic than chicken or sheep. I did add a bit of lime and thought it was enough until I got the test results back :(
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