I feel really bad for you. I can understand that this would cause you alot of grief and heartache, especially since it takes alot of manual labor to prepare the site for planting, amongst other things. Cheer up! Having a successful garden is quite challenging, but very rewarding - even when the harvests are quite small. One thing I can tell you from experience - is that each vegetable has it's own unique problems, as well as pest. It's funny, how you don't see a bug on your entire property for your entire life, but as soon as you plant something that it likes - it will find it. I keep notes on everything from vegetable pests to watch out for - to numbers of fruit harvested from each variety. I think that gardening is like any other subject that someone wants to be good at - it takes research, studying, and trial and error. I've learned alot over the years, from both experience and other people's input. The old timers have an unbelievable wealth of knowledge - as their livelihoods depended on growing their own food. I realize that I tend to my garden more frequently than the average gardener, but everytime I tend to it - I find something that is definitely a problem. Don't give up, you'll be rewarded for your time and effort. I promise. :)

EG

I swear I've never been so disappointed, every day when I got out there there is some new "issue" and I'm ready to throw in the towel.

Well look on the bright side, at least you have tomatos! :)

I feel your pain, my first garden was even worse.

I think you should review the basics to make sure you aren't missing something important. Is your garden in full sun? If not how many hours of direct sun does it get each day? If not 8+ you are going to have some disappointments.

What is the soil like? I see you had a soil test done, which is excellent, but what is the texture/hardness of the soil like? Was anything done to it to loosen it before planting? Any organic matter added to it?

How much water is the garden getting? You mention a lot of rain and that can definitely cause problems if it is too much for too long.

That your soil tests as very high for all the major nutrients (except nitrogen which likely wasn't tested) means you want to stay away from any kind of fertilizer. Your soil already has more than enough nutrients for any plant. The exception is nitrogen which typically has to be replenished from time to time. I would base nitrogen dosage on plant growth and color, not a lab recommendation. Slow growth and plant yellowing starting on the bottom and moving upward means nitrogen is needed, otherwise skip it.

I don't have the solution to the various problems you are experiencing, but you have a lot going for you including some incredibly fertile soil. Hang in there, it gets better, but never free from all trials and tribulations :)

I can hear that you're very frustrated, but I don't understand why you want to take such drastic measures, lol. Though, I have thought about scrapping the whole thing from time to time. I'm a first time gardener. I have to tell you that we had snow on May first, lol, so it sounds like we have similar areas. If your squash are otherwise healthy, you shouldn't get flowers until now anyway. Spray the evil bugs off with your garden hose and then give em a real good spray with soapy water. I was a little freaked out over a few different kinds of good bugs in my garden (ex: pill bugs eat compost).
Are your cucumbers small because they've just formed? Or do they need to be pollinated? If they're healthy, they'll just keep producing more cukes until a few get pollinated correctly and one grows to full ripeness.
If you planted in mid-May, most tomato varieties won't be ready to produce yet, lol. I have two romas that are two feet tall. Every other plant is four feet tall or taller, but those romas I started a bit later (mid-May, btw) and haven't started their real growth yet. One of them has decided to keep up with the Joneses and is trying to produce, and that has it's own set of issues.
Overall, if your leaves are green, you're doing just fine. Toss a bit of compost on those squash and get rid of those bugs. One word of caution is, if those little bugs you found are squash bugs, I understand they'll saw right through your stems, so you should take immediate, decisive action. It doesn't sound like them from your description. IMHO: you're doing just fine, you're entering the home stretch, don't give up just yet.

Grace,
Carolyn P.

misery loves company. I just returned from a 3 week trip to find out despite all the promises no one watered my garden. I only have 10 tomatoe plants 6 each jalepeno, habenaro,sweet peppers. 8 melon and tub of onion. NOT the largest BUT lot of work my herb garden was almost dead my hot peppers dropped there flowers tomatoes are OK but all the work wont yield much vegetable this year. I keep a diary every year on all the "issues" that come and go I find this allows me during the winter to plan changes or prepare for something as over the last 7 years bugs,mold,wilt ect ect happen about the same time or under same conditions. PLUS Diary is excellent place to VENT!!!
Good luck and anything that you salvage is a plus!!

First get some masking tape, use the sticky side to remove the egg clusters (like getting lint off a sweater).
Next cucumbers have male & female flowers, if you lack polinetors, you'll have to hand pollenate, just get a paintbrush, swab a few boy flowers and dust onto a few girl flowers.
I would yank the midget tomato, and plant some fall peas there, but we really like garden peas, as for the rest keep the watering consistent in zone 10 my first non-cherry is just now breaking color.
Your soil sounds solid on nutrients, you plants just got a bit of a soggy start, I'd ride it out.

I've had a veggie garden almost my entire adult life, and the 'bad' year just happens occasionally and that's part of the nature of the beast.

It's mid July and we are still having cold nights! Not your best nightshade year. I didn't get my garden in until Memorial Day either, because of the rains. The broccoli buttoned up. The corn, well, the deer have gotten at least a hundred plants, so far. ;-( The weeds are so high I may never get them under control in the melon and tomato plots, because it's rained so many days one couldn't even walk in the garden, let alone cultivate.

But, I am still getting enough of some things to cook for the season and can for the pantry. Last year's garden was phenomenal. You win some/you lose some. I am already dreaming about next year's garden.

Every year I have some failure and some surprising successes. 2 and 1/2 square feet of snow peas have given me two pints of peas a week since early June. A great year for peas.
Last year I had tomatoes a month before anyone else.

But...
The squash ? SVB wiped out zucchini and butternut alike last year. The fall crop recovery attempt ended up being a zucchini butternut cross. I finally get a good squash plant and its some kind of franken fruit! This year my counter measures were late and I just ripped out a zucchini plant. I guess it was a trap crop this year. I have replanted again.

Broccoli and cauliflower last year became large plants ready to yield when a heat wave made me panic and harvest the broccoli early and I ended up with one small deformed head of cauliflower. Is that the end of it? Oh no, these same plants I carelessly planted to the south of bush Lima beans and these useless plants shaded them and ended up stunting the beans.
The next year I planted the Lima beans to the south early enough to produce. I was not going to make that mistake. I am just too smart for that now but I am still the fool since all the cold and rain caused them to rot in the ground.
One reason I have success, and failures, is I have many growing strategies. I grow in SFG raised beds, hanging baskets, On ground containers and in ground as well as different varieties. Its harder to be completely busted.

Princess, you're not alone. I would wager that there are more exgardeners than gardeners. The lesson here is to pick your battles VERY carefully, succeed, then build on that success. Start with plants with a high reward to risk ratio. and generous margins of error. Tomatoes, obviously. Red Russian Kale (plant in August). Some fruit trees offer much better oportunities than veggies. Fuyu or Jiro persimmon, Illinois Everbearing mulberry, figs, Jupiter grape in some areas, pomegranates (zone 8 & higher), pineapple guavas, etc can all be very low maintainance, high return. Hang in there.

I agree with one of the previous posters about planting a lot of different things in a lot of different places. And I would add at a lot of different times. My garden is sort of a disorganized mess, but it's (sort of) deliberate. Instead of, for instance, putting out a whole flat of tomatoes on one day in a nice row I start a half a dozen or so plants every week from the beginning of May to the end of June. And I stick them wherever I see a bare hole in my garden. And those 6 are 6 different varieties. Ditto with every other vegetable that I'm willing to eat and I think might have a chance of growing around here.
Totally against that wisdome of planning well and then monitoring stuff every day for issues. I'm more darwanistic about it - throw seeds out, if they grow great, if not, something else will.
Frankly with a husband, 2 kids, a job, a dog and a cat I don't have time to do it any other way.
Of course that's why I have almost no tomatoes this year, but have fava beans comeing out my ears. LOL. I just have to cook creatively.
Stacey

I hear ya! I'm also quite depressed about the state of my garden. We had the wettest June on record here. I planted my first planting of sweet corn in mid-June (very late for me), and then we had 10 days of rain so I couldn't get into it. It all came up very nicely, and so did all the weeds. They are as tall as the corn, and it is doing awful. Much of it is still yellow and stunted from compacted soil - even now that it has dried up some, the dirt is so hard it is impossible to hoe. It is tassleing now, but gosh, I don't see how it can make any kind of decent ears. The rabbits ate all my peas and beans, the tomatoes look awful, the peppers look pretty good, though. I didn't get much else planted. Chalk it up to a crummy year, and hope for next year!

It seems we are all having our challenges this year. My corn and zucs look terrible. Broccoli hasn't gotten any heads yet. It was too wet to plant lettuce and spinach. I always plant beets because it seems they do well no matter what happens to everything else in the garden! And we like them.