Vegetable Garden Problems and How to Cure Them/Grow-Camp garden system

Question from Jon:
I put in a raised vegetable bed this spring. It’s called a “grow camp” which is a 20″ high box x 4′ x 8′. It has a greenhouse type system with screen netting you can pull down over the top and also plastic covering for when it gets cold. I was reading in your book that skunks, racoons, snails and rats can damage a vegetable garden, so this seemed like the ideal solution to keep then out. I also put in 1/2″ wire mesh below to keep out gophers.

http://growcamp.com/growcamp-usa?mid=1&region=151&region2=157

I planted cukes, summer squash & zuccini, along with lettuce, carrots, beets, radishes & kohl rhabi. Everything was going like crazy, I had baby cukes (both lemon & pickling cukes), and there were tons of squash blossoms. I had left the screen netting down over everythining to keep bugs out of it (and also bees which might have been a problem). Well one day – all of a sudden, the squash developed a kind of white power on it, and the cucumbers started to wilt. I thought maybe I was not giving enough water, so I increased my watering in the morning before the heat picked up. The squash, zuccini & cukes never recovered and they have all died without producing any fruit.

I realized that where I had placed the grow camp was under a sycamore and it was not getting full sun. I plan to move it to another area of the yard that gets full morning sun and all day sun until about 3 pm.

I was going to take some pictures to send to you, but I never got around to it.

Do you have any thoughts on what might have happened? This is my first year of vegetable gardening, so I thought of the whole thing as an experiment.

Additionally, the carrots, beets and radishes are just little tiny things. I pulled up a radish that had gone to seed and there was nothing but a tiny root on it. no radish although the tiny root tasted like a radish.

When I prepared the soil, I used mostly store bought 3 cu ft compost that you buy at Home Depot. I added bone meal and some planting mix in with the compost and also some my native soil which is mostly decomposed granite (I live on a DG pad). I also added a bag of steer manure.

Answer from Pat:
Thank you for relating this fascinating story. Grow Camp™ sounds like an interesting concept, since the netting you describe (and that I can see in the photo on the link you provided,) would keep out night-flying moths, butterflies, snails, beetles, bugs, and perhaps even slugs. Also the slick-looking sides are high enough that no pest animal prevalent in the USA could scale them. The mesh you installed under the contraption would keep out gophers.

I am glad to hear you looked upon this as an experiment. It was a good one, since it showed you several factors that need to be cleared up in order for you to have success.You didn’t say where you live, but other than that you gave me enough information that I can tell you exactly what went wrong and how to fix the problems. Instead of listing the errors I am going to list the solutions, followed by the problems. That will make the list more positive.

1.PROVIDE FULL SUN. Just as you said, you accidentally placed your Grow Camp in the shade of a sycamore. You are correct, vegetables cannot grow in shade. (Also, roots of invasive trees may eventually enter a raised bed from below and subtract all water and fertilizer making it impossible for veggies to grow.) All vegetable crops need full sun which means at least six hours of sunlight a day or more. A few vegetables can survive on five hours but not many. Full sun is best. Many people never notice the sun and shadows in their gardens until they begin trying to find some spot in full sun. Also, in winter, please be aware that the shadows of trees and houses move far to the north in winter. Some areas to the north of houses and trees that were in full sun in summer become full shade in winter. The winter sun shines under south-facing overhangs and into south facing rooms but these areas are in full shade in summer. Additionally people forget that a west facing area may have no morning sun and plants will fry in the afternoon when hot sun suddenly hits them in the middle of the day. If it must be one or the other, east facing is better for plants. So check your winter shadows and avoid putting your box where they will be since it’s fun in warm-winter climates to garden year-round. Lack of sunshine is probably the main reason your crops didn’t grow but there were other reasons too. Read-on!

2. PROTECT CROPS FROM PLANT DISEASES. Grow Camp sounds as if it does a good job keeping pests out but it cannot keep out plant diseases. The white coating that helped to kill some of your plants was powdery mildew. Additionally too much shade increases the chance that crops will succumb to mildew and other plant diseases. But besides providing full sun there are other solutions to problems with plant diseases. Next time order catalogues or go to the nursery early and read the backs of seed packages. Only purchase and plant disease-resistant crops. Cucumbers and squash are notoriously subject to mildew and downy mildew. (For controls, see my video on the subject.) It is very unfortunate that growers of transplants for sale at nurseries do not use seeds of disease-resistant hybrids because they cost more. Always grow cucumbers and squash from seeds. It’s easy to grow them this way. The seeds sprout easily and this way you can grow the best and most disease-resistant hybrid varieties and have no problems. Also be aware that the netting surrounding your crops is cutting out some breezes. Good air circulation helps prevent diseases also. (Please watch my video for how to cure mildew on melons and squash. The solutions are the same for cucumbers.)

3. ALWAYS FILL RAISED BEDS WITH GOOD QUALITY TOP SOIL. Vegetables need soil for their roots. Your carrots, beets and radishes were “tiny little things” largely because they had no soil to grow in. They can’t grow in compost alone. Compost is soil amendment, not a planting medium. Compost is partially rotted organic matter and it is meant for digging into soil in order to add certain benefits. Compost when added to soil, increases water retention in light soils such as decomposed granite, improves tilth of heavy soils such as clay, adds to the organic content of all soils, and promotes good microbial action which creates nitrogen that plant roots can absorb. It would be a good idea to read the opening pages of my book (pages 16 to 46) and get an idea of some of the facts about soil and about the requirements for healthy growth of plants. Vegetables grow very well in the ground (If it’s in full sun) and a raised bed is like a terrace, it is not like a plant-container or a a pot. Never fill raised beds with potting soil because it drains too fast. Even more importantly never fill raised beds with compost or bagged soil amendment because when used alone it drains even faster than potting soil and it cannot retain nutrients. Compost is designed only for mixing into soil, not for being use as a growing medium. A couple of years ago I gave a talk on winter vegetables and a dear woman came up to me during the intermission and told me that she didn’t know what had gone wrong with her vegetables. She built a raised bed, filled it with soil amendment and planted vegetables. She fertilized them and water faithfully and they grew fine for six weeks or two months and then they all died. It was because she did what you did and planted in soil amendment.

4. FERTILIZE VEGETABLES WITH ORGANIC FERTILIZER RECOMMENDED FOR VEGETABLES ACCORDING TO PACKAGE DIRECTIONS (OR FEED WITH AGED CHICKEN MANURE OR SEABIRD GUANO.) Vegetables not only need sun, soil, soil amendment, and protection from pests and diseases, they also need food. Your method of fertilizing with bone meal and manure sounds a bit hit-or miss, but might have worked okay if you’d had grown the plants in soil instead of bagged compost and planting mix. (Whether or not it was from Dixieline doesn’t matter much. The package directions should have said it was for digging into the ground not a substitute for ground.)

5. IRRIGATE VEGETABLES REGULARLY WITH AN INCH OR AN INCH AND A HALF OF WATER EVERY WEEK. I doubt very much you were overwatering as you thought. More likely the plants could not access the water you gave them because the planting medium was too loose and thus the roots were surrounded by too much air. Lack of air in the soil can kill plant roots but too much air in the planting medium will dry out root and make it impossible for them to take in nutrients.

Adding some decomposed granite would have been fine if instead of adding it you simply filled the entire bed with it and then mixed in a few bags of compost. You simply did it the wrong way around. Decomposed granite is one of the best garden or agricultural soils in the world. It drains very rapidly however, so it needs amending to make it more water retentive, but if you add organic matter to it and also irrigate adequately, all you need to add is a good source of nitrogen such as bean or alfalfa meal that rots easily and you can grow anything in it. Decomposed granite contains phosphorus and potassium. The kind of decomposed granite they have in Claremont California (the college town inland from Pasadena in the San Gabriel Valley) is so amazing that you can even grow geraniums and houseplants in pots filled with it. You couldn’t do that with most garden soils. (Claremont sits on an alluvial fan of soil washed down into the valley from Old Baldy, a granite mountain at the foot of which stands the town.)