WAITING TOO LONG TO HARVEST
It can be tempting to wait just a little longer to pick your tomatoes, corn, or beans, or peas in hopes that maybe they'll produce just a few more fruits or get just a little bit bigger. But this is not a good idea.
Most veggies have an ideal ripeness stage and taste the best when they're just getting to it. If you leave them on the plant for too long, they may start to rot on the vine, which can cause other fruits on the plant to rot. With crops like peas and beans, once they get too big, they lose their flavor and start to feel dry, mealy, or stringy.
WATERING INEFFICIENTLY OR INCONSISTENTLY
Watering your garden is a bit of an art. There are several common mistakes people make with watering.
The first mistake is watering a tiny bit very often. If you're watering your garden every few days, but only for a short period, it causes a few problems.
First, shallow watering can encourage plants to keep shallow roots, so they're less stable, more susceptible to wind, and dry out faster. Water less frequently, but deeply. Check the soil to see how far down the water has soaked about an hour after turning the water off. The deeper, the better.
Watering inconsistently is also not great, as it causes your plants to go through stressful periods of drought. They don't produce well and are more susceptible to disease and pests
when they experience water stress.
Watering during the heat of the day means you lose a ton of water to evaporation from the heat. It's better to water in the early morning or late evening, and water low and slow, so it has time to sink in.
Water on the leaves of your plants can create a perfect environment for things like mildew. So if possible, water from a low angle, near the base of the plant. Soaker hoses are ideal for this.
LETTING WEEDS GET OUT OF CONTROL AND THEN GIVING UP
It can be incredibly discouraging to tackle the weeds in your garden if they've become overgrown and spread a lot. All gardeners struggle with weeds. Life gets busy, and weeding quickly falls down the priority list.
In reality, you can get a lot of weeding done in just 5 minutes a day. Break it down. If you have raised beds, do one bed per day. Or one row of your garden per day, or one type of weed per day. Just spend 5 minutes.
These of course are just a couple ideas and techniques you can apply to prolong your magnificent garden. Do you have any ideas for a longer gardening season. We want to hear from you.
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