Failures

I think everybody likes to hear about the other guy's failures.  It is a leveling experience.  After hearing about the other guy's struggles you think, "Hey, I am doing pretty good!  Maybe those setbacks are just part of the game.

Potatoes

Half of my potatoes did not come up.  Something ate the seed pieces.  Wire worms are suspected.  I remember thinking some years earlier that I needed to put out traps when I planted this part of the garden to potatoes.  A trap is little more than digging a hole, spraying the bottom with bifenthrin and then planting a "seed" of bread dough a little larger than a golf ball just above the insecticide.

Many garden plants have "plasticity".  When planted close together they respond to the stress by setting fewer/smaller produce.  When planted farther apart they sprawl and produce more/larger produce per plant.  Potatoes have plasticity...except when I already planted them extremely far apart.  I will replant but expect little from the additional plants.

Persimmons

This is my row of persimmon seedlings.  I got busy last year.  I tried to over-winter them in the large pot I started the seedlings in.  I put them in the barn.  I crowded them together.  I lavishly covered them with leaves.  And all the roots died.  Oddly enough, the root collars, the transition between the roots and the tops lived.

Beans

I have woodchucks up the yin-yang this year.  I am pretty sure I have at least three active dens within 70 yards of my garden.  I have been catching enough possum to open a hat shop but my batting average for woodchucks is not very good.  This hole is active.  I pitched some sticks and other trashy items into the mouth of the hole last night.  They were gone 24 hours later.  I need to buy another 160 body grip trap.  I wish I knew where last year's trap went.

Woodchucks are hell on beans.  I need to get on these guys.

Apples

This tree is dying and I don't know why.  The branches are drying out.  The main stem looks fine.  It is almost like all the roots got eaten off.

By way of comparison, this is her sister.  This is what these trees should look like.

It will not be a huge deal if I lose the one.  I will replant.  It bothers me that I don't know why I am losing it.  How do you respond to something you cannot identify?