Growing Pains

As a little girl I remember my Dad's garden in the back yard. I use to go outside with him and help plant all the different vegetables and later when they were ready I would go out and help pick them or dig them out of the ground. I loved it! I loved plants so much in second grade I bought a rubber tree plant with my honor roll money, that plant is still alive (and huge) at my parents house. I was a regular green thumb in the making.

 A few years ago, when Kevin and I moved to the area of Georgia in which we now live, it was the first time I had an appropriate place to garden. I was so excited and talked my MIL into having a garden with me. We rented a tiller and had Kevin till up an area. We planted a small area, full of all sorts of plants... cucumbers, cantaloupe, tomato, squash, watermelon, and corn. We laid a soaker house throughout the garden, we kept it weeded and fertilized and awaited the fruits of our labor...

As the weeks went by and our plants started to attract bees with their flowers and they started to produce fruit, we were so excited! That is when everything began to go wrong. I noticed a dust underneath my squash plants and the leaves were dying. As I began to investigate further I realized there were little grubs in the base of the plant. Upon researching what these could be, I found out they were Vine Borers (see picture) and they absolutely destroy your squash plants and anything related.

As I watched all my squash and zucchini plants die off after only bearing a few veggies I was so disheartened. Then I realized they were also affecting our cantaloupe and watermelon. This  devastated a huge portion of our garden.

Our tomatoes continued to do okay. Our corn didn't do too well, simply because there were too few stalks to have the pollination needed. All and all my inaugural garden was a failure. I was down but not defeated. I took the "glass half full" view, "Hey, at least I learned something". 

Skip ahead 2 years

Mostly because of time (not gardener embarrassment), this year was the first year I tried my hand at gardening again. I mean, I knew everything now, I was going to avoid vine borers and have a bumper crop. SO EXCITED!

I decided to do some container gardening since we are renting and I didn't want to tear up the yard. I purchased some potting soil and containers and planted sweet potatoes, squash, zucchini, tomato and cucumber. I also had a small plot of potatoes in the ground. I watered and weeded and watched for the dreaded Vine Borer (the only problems squash can have) and fertilized and then...

...it all started to fall apart.

I went to tend to my plants one day and noticed this...

 to the untrained/my eyes this was just yellow dots on the leaves of the cucumber plants. Next thing I noticed the leaves were actually dying. Drat, so as all good gardeners do I Googled the new ailment...Cucumber blight. You see, we had had such a wet, humid few weeks that our plants were developing a fungus. I tried to save them, I bought a spray called Deconil, it did help but in the end my cucumber plants succumbed to the disease. 

The humid condition also contributed to this...

 end rot. This affected my squash and zucchini.

My tomatoes ended up getting this...

 Blight...this is also a fungus and ruined my tomato plants. 

I did manage to plant some squash and zucchini in another area of the yard and at last check they were disease free but they were not producing what I expected...

instead of squash and zucchini, I am getting squashzucchini...

Once again I can say I have learned a lot this year, but I am starting to think that the little girl that was a green thumb in bloom may never realize her gardening dreams, perhaps a fungus killed them...