My 4 Garden Failures in 2024

Small Scale Life

In this 226th episode of the Small Scale Life Podcast I discuss my four garden failures in the 2024 Season, why I suspects these plants are failing and how I plans to change things up to make more productive self-watering garden beds.

Yes….I know. I just built the garden in June 2024, and I am already thinking about making big changes (ahem improvements) to the garden and how I am going to grow plants in the future.

What’s the Issue?

First off, let me say that I am super thankful to have a garden and to be able to “do it” again after being a nomad for 4 years. I tore up my garden in North Minneapolis when we moved in 2020, and I have not had a serious garden since. Yes, I planted some great comfrey that Brian and Kori Aleksivich brought to Eagles Ridge, and I planted rhubarb, comfrey, potatoes and some hapless tomaotes at Driftless Oaks Farm, but I did not have a garden that I have here at The Landing. I did not have something that I could really dig into (pun intended) and grow some great vegetables.

And that is where the frustration begins.

In the last episode of the Small Scale Life Podcast, I discussed the problems I was having with certain plants that start with a p and end with an s. This particular plant has become my kryponite, my Voldemort and my mission impossible this year. I shall NOT write their names in this entry today….well, I might have to because of the title. But yes, this plant has just been stubborn, stuck in nuetral and dying out in my hybrid rain gutter grow system.

I usually have issues with getting peppers to germinate. They take a little more time and need heating pads before they start growing. With some heat, light, water and some good potting soil (coir and worm castings for the win this year), I can get them growing and growing. Even this year, that wasn’t a problem. I was pretty pleased with my pepper germination and initial growth.

The issue came after we transplanted all of the seedlings. They all slowed down: peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, squash (yes, I had planted some), dill, rosemary and other plants just had a hard time this year. It was really strange, and I think that seedling stage got a little out of whack after I kept moving them in and out of the garage. They needed solid and steady light to really get a good base and grow well initially. They didn’t get that consistency, and they got stuck in nuetral.

Couple that with how they were handled during transplanting, and it was a recipe for disaster.

As I reflect on the peppers, herbs, cherry tomato plants and squash, I can see how those issues impacted their initial growth. They had a tough time as seedlings, and I will be adjusting how much I grow and my process for the 2024 winter growing season and the 2025 garden season. I have learned my lessons, and I do not want to repeat those same mistakes!

That said, there was something else afoot. Something else was causing my plants to stop growing and denied them from thriving.

What could that be?

Taking Shortcuts leads to 4 Garden Failures

At the end of July, I decided to punt with the peppers. They were not growing, and the ones that did start to grow were dug up by very active squirrels. It was a struggle, and I was not happy with how things were turning out. I was really looking forward to growing my own jalapenos and Beaver Dam Peppers this year; I had big plans for both in salsa and other dishes (hello, cowboy candy).

Alas! It was not to be.

I decided to remove the peppers from several of the grow bags and replant them with pole green beans and cucumbers. I figured I could shake the bad karma from the peppers and grow some cucumbers (to make pickles) and green beans (to make spicy dilly beans). So, I went ahead and planted some of my older saved green bean seeds in the western grow bags. In the eastern grow bags, I planted two varieties of cucumbers: a hybrid cucumber seed from Burpee and seeds from Maria the Inuitive Energy Healer.

According to plan, the seeds germinated nicely. I was excited by how fast plants were popping up, and I figured I had shaken the bad karma. Things were getting on track, and I was pretty pleased. Let’s freaking go!

Sadly, I began to realize that the cucumbers and green beans were getting stuck like the pepper seedlings. Something stopped their growth. They sprouted the first leaves and just sat there. How could this be? They had all of the basic elements needed to grow plants: light, water and nutrients.

Or so I thought!

As I look at those basic elements and really evaluated what was happening, I realized that I had made a serious tactical error in my haste to get the garden planted. I had purchased some lower cost soil from a big box store, and I used that soil in Julie’s Wicking Bed in the front near the garage and in my grow bags. The cherry tomatoes, peppers, green beans, squash, cucumbers, yellow pear tomato plant and rosemary all had a burst of growth and then got stuck in neutral while the big Wicking Beds and ginger were seeing really good growth!

What was going on?

In the big Wicking Beds and in the Ginger Wicking Bed, I used different soil. In one of the grow bags, I had used different soil. In these garden beds, plants were thriving and producing! In the grow bags using the lower cost soil, nothing was happening and plants were dying. Clearly these things were not like the other!

The real moment of truth came when I purchased and used some Miracle Grow fertilizer on the grow bags. I decided to throw a Hail Mary pass and see if the foul beast (Miracle Grow) would make a difference. So, following the instructions, I filled a five gallon bucket with rain water and added Miracle Grow to the water. I stirred it up, applied it to the grow bags and waited.

I didn’t have to wait long. Suddenly the cucumbers started sprouting new leaves, the green beans started to sprout tendrils and green leaves, and the cherry tomatoes grew inches taller and put out the first blossoms.

The problem was the cheap soil.

It literally is like desert sand with a dark color. I really don’t think it has many nutrients for the plants to use for growth. So…the plants get stuck or start to die because there is nothing for them to eat.

Adding the fertilizer gave the plants some much needed food, and they responded in kind. So, I had isolated the problem, and I will need to keep adding fertilizer until this season is over. Then, I can remove ALL of that soil and put it into the compost pile so I can rework it and add leaf mold, compost and other matter to it. The soil will be better someday, but not right now. It has little value in its current state.

My 4 garden failures really is 1 garden failure: taking a shortcut with cheap soil to get everything planted. I didn’t take the time and effort to do it right in my haste to get everything going, and it cost me time and frustration this summer. What should be a great time in the garden turned into a exercise in frustration.

The Epiphany after My 4 Garden Failures

As I was drivng home from Appleton, Wisconsin, this week, I started to think more and more about the styles of Wicking Beds and Self-Watering Planters. I thought about how I was growing plants and how I wanted to grow plants in the future. I thought about the Rain Gutter Grow System I had seen during my Bronx Neighborhood Garden Tour and the trouble my brother and mother have had with blight using grow bags and other homemade small self-watering planters. I thought about my own experience in North Minneapolis: about what worked and what didn’t.

I had to ask myself: how do you REALLY want to grow plants in the future?

Somewhere around Chippewa Falls/Eau Claire, I had made a decision about how I wanted to grow plants in the future. I decided that my best gardens had been when I was planting in a bigger soil block, and that is how I should garden going forward. That’s when I decided to record this podcast episode.

For those of you who do not know what a soil block is, I want you to picture a big chunk, a big block, of soil. In that block, you can have worms, leaf mold, some sticks, microorganism and other organic matter. It is its own micro environment, and that soil block can be incredibly rich, diverse and productive. A great example of this right now is the big Wicking Beds in my metal watering troughs. The soil is incredibly rich as it was made from diverse sources of compost and leaf mold mixed with peat moss and vermiculite. The plants are responding quite well, and I see that I am going to have a great tomato, zucchini, basil and bush bean harvest from those Wicking Beds. The Wicking Beds are essentially a 2 foot wide by 2 foot high by 7 foot long soil block. Plants, or rather roots, interact with one another and share water and nutrients.

The Wicking Beds are great examples of big, productive soil blocks. The Grow Bags on the Hybrid Rain Gutter Grow Systems are the exact opposite of that, however. Most of the grow bags are 3 gallon grow bags; that means they are 9 inches in diameter and (maybe) 9 inches tall. The tomatoes are in 5 gallon grow bags; that means they are 12 inches in diamere and (maybe) 12 inches tall. There is no interaction between plantes other than the water they share in the self watering system.

Why does that matter?

Plants are on their own island, and there is no benefit from companion planting. In the Wicking Beds, I planted bush beans in the middle of the planter. These beans are providing nutrients to the tomato plants. In the grow bags, the green beans are by themselves, and the cherry tomatoes get no benefit from the green beans planted next to them. Soil is not shared, and there is no interaction between the plants.

As I think about HOW I want to garden going forward, I want to have bigger soil blocks. Plants seem to grow better, and I will have less mirco environments to manage. With the Wicking Beds, I have just 2 micro environments to manage. With the grow bags, I have 32 micro environments to manage.

That’s a lot of small soil blocks to manage!

Companion planting, fertilizing, and managing these micro environments is difficult, and who wants to develop and manage complicated systems?

Next Steps for the 2025 Garden Season

My 4 Garden Failures (peppers, cumcumbers, beans and tomaotes in grow bags) has taught me a valuable lesson and set me on a new path. I am going to reduce the number of grow bags I use in the future, and I am going to make bigger soil blocks for my plants to grow in. To do that, I am going to replace the Hybrid Rain Gutter Grow Systems with Wicking Bed Planters.

That doesn’t mean I am running out and buying new watering troughs!

I am going to repurpose my two Hybrid Rain Gutter Grow Systems and use them for herbs and peppers or cucumbers. I am going to take the wooden frames and add half barrels from 55 gallon plastic drums. I have been mulling over this concept for almost 3 years, and I didn’t quite have the correct vision at Driftless Oaks Farm.

Now I do.

In that video from Driftless Oaks Farm, I see that I had some ideas about how to use plastic gallon drums, but I wasn’t using them quite right. Admittedly, I wasn’t taking care of those wicking beds like I would today. I was pretty cavalier in that garden walk video, but in reality I was oversteched and overwhelmed. When you have an old farmhouse, outbuildings, overgrown everything, rotting structures, an orchard and 10 acres of land, you have a lot going on. Still, I am proud of what I accomplished at Driftless Oaks Farm; I worked hard there because it was my labor of love and dream.

Now I have a new dream and a better proof of concept, and I will build everything out as soon as the 2024 garden season comes to a close. To prove that this wasn’t just hot air and gums flapping, I actually went out and bought some 55 gallon drums tonight. I am not messing around and dreaming; I am doing it. I have the barrels here at The Landing, and I am going to cut them and clean them this weekend.

Game on! It’s time to stop whining and complaining. It’s time to make a decision, pivot and move forward.

After all, I am all about learning, doing, growing and being a little better everyday!

And that, my friends, is a GOOD thing.

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Special Thanks

For Small Scale Life Podcasts, I would like to thank Sean at Osi and the Jupiter for the intro song "Harvest." Sean wrote this specifically for us, and I really enjoy all of his work. You can find more Osi and the Jupiter at their Bandcamp site: https://osifolk.bandcamp.com/

I would also like to thank Austin Quinn at Vlog Vibes for the intro and outro music. For more information abut Austin and Vlog Vibes, please see the Vlog Vibes YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY80LeqtJf-YBzJy2TWKpDw

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