Hi - My family and I have been gardening in the same spot for decades. We use raised beds, rotate our crops as best as possible, and add compost to ou...
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Total garden failure #879307
Asked July 29, 2024, 5:11 PM EDT
Hi - My family and I have been gardening in the same spot for decades. We use raised beds, rotate our crops as best as possible, and add compost to our beds each year. Every year has its successes and failures, but this year we have had a near-total failure of all of our garden crops. The first sign of trouble was when the seedlings we were growing in our greenhouse (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, okra, squash, tomatillos, eggplants, broccoli, lettuce, etc.) stalled out after putting out their first 2-3 "true" leaves. Thinking perhaps something was wrong with our seed starting soil, I began buying commercially started plants (again, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, eggplants, peppers, etc.) in late May to transplant into the garden, while also attempting to transplant the most promising of our own seedlings. While most of these did not die, none of them found their footing. In desperation I bought another round of commercial starts. To date, maybe 60% of the plants I have transplanted from the various rounds of planting have survived. None of them have put on more than 2 or 3 leaves from their size at transplantation. All of the plants look stressed, some are yellowed, a few are making feeble attempts to flower. My watering methods, fertilization, and all other aspects have remained the same as in previous years. This is obviously disheartening.
I plan to conduct a soil test, but are there other considerations I should also be looking at? For example, is it possible that we are dealing with some soil pathogen, and if so, is there a way to test for this? Could the compost we purchased be to blame (it seems unlikely, since we had a big load delivered last year and were using from the same pile this year)?
Thanks.
Jackson CountyOregon
Expert Response
A soil test will help diagnose your problem. You should check out your source of compost and look for symphylans that are sometimes to blame for problems with plant starts. Garden symphylans, also known as garden centipedes, are white arthropods that live in soil and can damage crops. They are slender, about 0.33 inches long, and have 10 to 12 pairs of legs and antennae. They move quickly through the soil, up and down with moisture levels, and can be found more than 3 feet underground. They are most commonly found in moist, well-drained soils with high organic matter content, and are often associated with partially decomposed crop debris. They also tend to be more prevalent on farms that use manure fertilizer.
Thank you so much for this helpful reply. I had never heard of garden symphylans before, but on googling them, they look distressingly familiar, and the damage to roots described sounds like what i saw this spring (corky, stunted roots on severely damaged plants that i pulled up). I’ll do the potato test suggested, but are there any recommendations for managing them? I would prefer not to use pesticides if possible.