Three things: Gardens

This is not specifically about using home gardens to decrease your food budget and increase your food independence. 

I'm not against that in general, though initial attempts are often going to cost more money than they save.

Personally, I love growing pumpkins. I don't particularly love eating them or their seeds, so I can't say that my efforts are really for that; it's just something I like doing. It also helps me get away from lawns, which are not environmentally sound. 

I am not the best gardener, but often even the only partially successful attempts bring me a lot of joy. 

This year was especially bad.

In early summer, I planted many pumpkin and sunflower seeds. I also planted some green beans. 

Nothing grew.

I was worried that they were older seeds, but I had tested some. They all sprouted in the test, but then -- when it was not a test -- nothing.

Then it got weird. As we were getting into autumn, with fallen yellow leaves were dotting the yard, I thought I saw some yellow blossoms. In fact, I had one pumpkin vine in the front and another in the back. 

One even got fertilized, so there was at least one little green gourd growing. They just didn't have time at that point. The first frost was going to take them out, and did.

(There were some bite marks on the plant, probably from a squirrel, so that was my contribution to nature this year.)

I might not have thought about it too much, but talking to one friend, she had the same issue with her eggplants. 

That friend lives in Tigard, not too far away. Talking to another friend more recently, her tomatoes had a real case of failure to thrive. She lives almost 200 miles away. Other neighbors of hers have had similar issues. That's kind of the same region, but not merely a local issue.

I keep wondering why.

Usually there is something you can point too. For example, when the heat dome shriveled up all my lush clover, I understood that.

When extended rains poured and poured when it was time to prepare for planting, there was no mystery.

When we were replacing the carpet with vinyl plank, and all of the old carpet was piled in front of the house as they worked and it left this circle that really didn't grow anything for another year, it made total sense.

This didn't make sense.

If you have a reason, sometimes there are things you can do. 

People overcome longer cold seasons with greenhouses and cloches and tunnels. You can do things to retain water or improve drainage. I'm not sure anything would have helped with the heat dome, but there are things you can do for shading that might work if it is less extreme.

If you can't tell what you are up against, what then?