What’s Wrong With My Garden?

We are three weeks in to our gardening adventure and, as expected, we’re running into some problems. Some of the plants aren’t as green as we would like, we have ants, and aphids and I think we may have some nutritional deficiency in our soil despite ordering ‘Organic Planting Soil’. So, we’re taking action and waiting to see the results.

Step 1: Epsom salts: For the tomatoes and peppers, we treated with an Epsom Salt spray. In looking at our pepper plants, which you can see on my Instagram post from September 24th, the leaves look like a textbook case of magnesium deficiency (developed holes with brown spots.) Through my research, I’m finding mixed reviews about how often to spray: from 2 weeks to once a month. We are going to monitor the plants to see how they are doing and make a decision in about 2 weeks on if we should spray again. We “forgot” that in New Jersey, we would treat each new tomato and pepper plant with the Epsom salt spray AS SOON AS WE PLANTED. Whoops – lesson learned!

Step 2: Our pavers have ants, and our ants are attacking one of our eggplants. When we stopped by our local ‘Do-It-Yourself’ store, she said “if you have ants, then you have aphids.” So we purchased Ferti-Lome Triple Action. You can apply this every 14 days and up to the day of harvest. The good news, is this is also good for treating black spot for my roses. Win win for me!

Step 3: Treat the pavers! We also purchased an insecticide that is applied to the pavers; it is a sand that fills into the cracks of the pavers and is applied about once every 6 months. Hopefully between the application of this and the Ferti-lome, we will tackle the bugs!

And Finally, Step 4: Soil assessment – we have this targeted for our upcoming off-Friday to see what is missing. Our plants aren’t vibrant green as we would have expected, but more of a dull yellow-green which tells us that we’re definitely missing some nutrients. We did add worm castings when we planted (organic fertilizer) however there may be other deficiencies we need to address.

Migrate on over to our YouTube channel to see all the products in action and how we applied/addressed each problem. Stay tuned and cross your fingers that we’re on the right track to solution! Happy gardening!