It’s our second year participating in Build It Up.
This year, we switched to tall raised garden beds. We’ve had good success with eggplants and peppers by starting them indoors earlier and transplanting them once they were fairly large. The bigger plants seemed better able to withstand pests, but getting them used to sunlight and wind before moving them outdoors took some work.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the same success with our okra. We started the seeds too early and later learned that okra’s taproots can become deformed when kept in pots for too long, causing stunted growth.
We’re also growing decorative gourds for the first time. Our enthusiastic daughter planted many seeds from gourds she bought at the farmers market. They’ve grown quite well with little maintenance. We’re already harvesting gourds earlier than expected. However, I’ve started noticing stalk borers, and I’m not sure the vines will survive long.
One self-inflicted challenge this year is our two rabbits, which somehow survived the local raccoons and now roam freely around our fenced yard. While there are plenty of wild plants available to them, they seem to prefer the ones we planted. They’ve eaten lettuce, pea plants, beet greens, herbs, and just about anything else they can reach, while also doing a bit of digging along the way. Surprisingly, they don’t seem interested in cucurbits. That’s fortunate, since I haven’t been able to contain the vigorous growth of our gourds, cucumbers, and zucchini. I suppose a little garden damage is the price we pay for watching rabbits in the yard, grooming, playing, and living happy, free lives.
Another challenge this year has been fungal wilt in our new raised beds. It killed our tomato plant, our potato plants, and affected some of the eggplants as well. We suspect the fungus may have come from the wood chips we used to fill them. Our older beds, which didn’t contain those wood chips, have done fine. We composted the wood chips before using them, but the pile probably never got hot enough to eliminate pathogens. Next year, we’ll be more careful about our composting process and the materials we bring into the garden.
