Slow...or no growth this season

Has anyone else in the PNW experienced a slow or no growth in their tomatoes and selected other veggies this year? Several other gardeners here in Dayton have told me that their tomatoes are just sitting there, not growing at all. Same with my zucchini, and French filet beans--both the pole and bush varieties. Are we in an environmental slow-down, or maybe herbicide drift viva the stronger winds we've been getting this year? I dunno, maybe some of you are experiencing the same thing and know the cause. Wierdest growing year I've ever seen here in my 15 years of gardening.

My tomatoes grew like mad---then stopped---will not set---and now appear to have fusarium, which I have never had before. The beans finally took hold, but there are lots of skips and one planting looks sick. So, I replanted and the newbies are coming along pretty fast. We'll see though. I don't trust anything. One really good crop of mine are cucumbers. They look wonderful so far.

everything in the veggie garden looks bad this year, will be lucky if we get anything but potatoes and onions.

D

Think it is the weather because if any of you are like me I could not plant until mid June because of all the rain, and then the heat hit hard the first weeks of july.

Lettuceman, I think I said the exact same thing last year. It gets weirder and weirder. I was unable to start tomatoes this year. They just didn't go anywhere because it wasn't warm enough, I presume. I bought tomatoes, though, and I do have fruit and blossoms.

I think it was just too cold and the bees and the seedlings couldn't get started if they weren't in a greenhouse. Lettuces seem to be doing well so far. And my Heuchera are better this year than ever. I think they definitely liked the colder weather!

I'm not in the PNW, but my tomatoes have done nothing either. Most of my pepper plants just fizzled out and died. We had so much rain in the spring. I finally got the plants in ground in late May and then more flooding. And then a 6 week drought with temps of 105! Now, more flooding. I guess my tomatoes just don't know what to do. I was sure looking forward to trying out some new varieties this year, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

irislover---You'll have to come over to the coast, where it's not quite warm enough. I used to live in Corvallis and remember the warm summer evenings and sitting outside until 11PM. 'Course I was younger then and could stay up that late. LOL Here, though, we rarely sit outside in the evening because the wind during the day cools us down so much and it gets chilly. We have had foggy mornings, too, this summer. It takes awhile for the sun to come out and when it does the wind starts up. Even with all this, though, I cringe at the thought of heat over 90 degrees.

Mine are growing. Not a lot of flowers and fruit, tho I think it's a combination of diminishing bees (altho I import two different varieties of bees each year) and the cooler weather which is still really ongoing. Very very cool mornings and often afternoons here. I'm going to replant a bunch of cool weather crops - lettuce, broccoli, spinach, and see if I can't get something going! I think the cold May really hurt us. On the other hand, my lavender has never looked better! (If only it didn't have so many weeds growing thru it.)

Yeah, this seems to have been a good year for lavender. I wonder what's up with that. The foxglove is very happy, too.

Butterfly Chaser, do you think maybe it's been too hot for your plants this year? I know you guys got hit with a lot of heat early on.

We have had huge swings in temperature on both coasts, so that has to be tough on the bees. I'm not sure I ever saw a mason bee this year.

The heat is probably part of it, but we had constant rain all spring and they got flooded. So they just didn't grow. Once the rain stopped, they did finally start getting taller, but they didn't grow an inch with all the rain. We're not usually so wet. The ground didn't even begin to dry out until 3 weeks ago.

I have some grape tomatoes planted in an area that is sheltered and doesn't get as much rain, and those are doing much better than the ones in the main garden. I've even gotten a few tomatoes from them.

That's right - I forgot about your rain and floods. So maybe it was just too cold a spring for you, as it was for us.

I have one tomato plant that got early fruit. I ate one of the red ones and it tasted very watery. Didn't have any of that homegrown tomato taste. Very disappointing.

Our spring was warm. It just wouldn't quit raining. I didn't get to do much gardening this spring because it was either raining or my ground was so mushy, I couldn't walk thru it. Then of course, in early June we hit 105 degrees. We usually don't get that until Aug, but we did the same thing last year. Then our summer was pretty mild last year after that June heat wave passed. We're all hoping the "early summer" means our real summer will be milder.

You know, it's really strange. Last year my gardening friends here and I had a tremendous bumper crop of tomatoes. This year we'll be lucky if we get tomatoes at all! Picked the first flush of green beans (French Filet), this morning and got what I call and average picking from my bean bed. I'm hoping they'll flush again soon, but I'm also not holding my breath. Also on the tomato front, my cherry toms seem to be doing better than my large hybrids and heirlooms, but that's not saying much. And, there's not nearly the number of cherry toms as there should be. Heavy rain this Spring, unseasonably hot in early June...maybe they're just confused!

I had a huge crop last year too. Best year ever for me. I was so hoping this year would be a repeat. I have 30 plants in. They all look great. Just few flowers and no fruit. :(

Maybe we will have a long warm fall and everything will still kick in......We can always hope.

Nile liles - nothing. ONly about 8 inches tall at this point. Ditto on the cannas. Dahlias are early, already blooming. Sheesh! Why bother to plan combinations?

I have some berry-less blueberries. I think they never got pollinated. So sad. A few of my plants have berries, and I think they must have flowered at a different time.

In our garden we have had lots to strawberries and will have many raspberries. We have started collecting tomatoes (sweet 100's) our bees are solitary types early in the summer so they have not had the challenges with the wet cold that we all have experienced. Our soil did not warm up this year till end of June and plants were delayed. Our tomatoes were in pots in a warm sunny location.

We had only a fair-to-middling cherry harvest - although truth be told the robins got the bulk of them anyway. I now have the grosbeaks pecking away at my blueberries. I would get more angry at them if they weren't such clowns. One I was trying to shoe away apparently got disoriented and kept running into the fence boards. Too early for them to be drunk.

Just returned from Michigan to find most of the 60 tomato plants (10 det/50 heirloom Ind) have some fruit, blueberry bushes are fairly full, lettuce growing like crazy, carrots getting to good size, bush beans starting first pickings, pole beans flowering & beginning to pod, some squash doing well while others are slow, peppers fruiting ok.

Tomatoes seem slower this year here. Started from seed, planted out late due to weather. Many "new" varieties for us this year. Indeterminates are approx 5' now, flowers but not good fruit set for the volume of flowers. All organic this year, don't know if that makes a difference in our crop. Cherry toms seem slower than ever before as well. Not nearly as many bees this year.

Beans were started, pulled out by our resident Robins, we grew extra in the seed house and slugs ate most of the leaves, planted additional seed out to see if we couldn't win the war... seems to have worked. 5 varieties of pole beans and 2 varieties of bush beans. Bad year in the garden for slugs.

Ladybug---Thanks for the great report of your garden. Must have been quite a shock to return and see so much going on. Mine is doing very well, too, now after a slow start. Especially the cucs and squash. Corn is great, too. Beans are slow but I can see tiny beans now. Peas are regaining growth after a deer pruned them back a lot. I will be interested to see if I get pole beans---Kentucky Wonder---because I planted them very late in frustration with the poor results I was getting from the bush beans. The poles just leaped out of the ground as they were planted during a nice warm time. (Now back to cool) Onions were great from the beginning of planting and now bulbing nicely. So, all in all, I can't complain either.

Bee - I will look forward to your report on KW beans, might need to add that for next season. Still getting adjusted to PNW growing. My emergency trip to MI means that I need to figure out a timed drip system for the garden... my helper (DH) did a great job on daughter's daylilies with the sprinkler system but not so good on son's tomatoes/beans/squash.

My tomatoes here on the east coast have been very slow. Same thing as some of you - cold, wet spring and then hot - hot - HOT! They are starting to bear nicely now, but this is quite late for us. I have heard on other forums that beans don't like very hot weather, so I'm hoping that I'll get some more with this cooler spell that just started. We shall see...

Almost august and I have had only about a pint of cherry tomatoes and a cup of blueberries & about a dozen beets that were very small. Off to the farmers market this morning to buy what is not growing in my garden to my satisfaction.

My tomatoes seem a little slow but are setting fruit nicely and will hopefully ripen. I have had great luck with lettuces (except for the slugs) and my cabbages are huge...I'll get a pic.

I have had about 5 blueberries this season from my 6 bushes - the rest the birds have gotten. Some years just seem to be worse than others. When I go out to the row of berries, the birds 'flush' out and startle me. Other years, they leave me alone and I get tons of berries. I guess this year is just a bird year. C'est la vie.

Why don't you net one or two of the bushes so you get a few. No reason that birds can't share!

We are having a very poor apple and cherry year here. Berries have been pretty good, but the birds are working fast and furious to get them. I wonder if it's because the other fruit is slim to none so they are feeding extra heavy on berries? We had a couple of pairs of cedar waxwings make nests in the nut trees and they were constantly after the raspberries. Babies, too. They are sure cute but, oh my, can they eat the berries!

This is my small veggie garden.

I love these purple cabbages. Unfortunately so does this cabbage looper.

Lots of bears in closer this year because of fewer berries and/or smaller berries.

Beautiful, Azorina. Must be fun to walk along the paths.

I have been watching for the white butterfly that lays the eggs on the cabbages that turn into that yucky green worm that eats more cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, etc, than seems possible. But, of course, she lays a lot of eggs each time she touches down. I use Dipel Dust. I think they changed the name of it...why, I don't know...but it sure works. I used to be able to mix it with water to make a spray, but they changed that, too.

I just harvested 6 cucumbers, more walla walla onions (I harvest as the tops go down or the necks narrows) and enough beans for dinner. Whoo Hoo! Thought it would never happen.
The tomatoes are finally setting, so hope we have a long fall. We will have our favorite zucchini casserole tonight that uses 4 cups of sliced zucchini. It's getting there at last.