What to do when your vegetable garden doesn’t go as planned

Work out what actually went wrong before you start again

The temptation when a veggie patch disappoints you is to pull the lot out and have another go with different seed, and most of the time that just gets you the same result a few months later, because the seed was rarely the problem. The plant has usually been telling you what's wrong the whole time and it's worth learning to read it, so here's what the common symptoms actually mean.

Nothing came up at all

Four usual culprits, and old seed is only one of them. Seed has a shelf life and a packet that has been in a hot shed for two summers will let you down. Sowing depth is the next one, and the rule is roughly twice the width of the seed, so fine seed like carrot and lettuce goes barely covered and will not come up at all from 20mm down. Soil temperature beats both of them for things like beans and cucumbers, which will sit there and rot in cold ground rather than germinate. And the bed drying out between sowing and germinating kills more seed than any of the above, because seed that has started to swell and then dries out again is finished.

Seedlings came up tall, thin and floppy

That's light, every time. A seedling stretching like that is reaching, and once it's leggy it doesn't really recover, so move the tray somewhere brighter and start again rather than nursing it along. A windowsill that looks bright to you is often a lot dimmer than the open sky.

Leaves going yellow

Yellow from the bottom of the plant upwards is usually nitrogen, and it's the commonest thing in a bed that's been cropped hard without being fed. Yellow all over with a soggy root ball is the opposite problem, which is drowning, and the fix there is drainage rather than fertiliser. Yellow between the veins with the veins still green is a trace element locked out by pH, and that one wants a test kit rather than a guess.

Holes in everything

Check at night with a torch, because most of what eats a veggie patch does it after dark. Snails and slugs leave a clean scalloped edge and a trail. Caterpillars leave ragged holes and droppings on the leaf below. They want completely different treatment, so it is worth the 5 minutes with the torch before you buy anything.

Everything went mouldy

Fungal problems come from wet leaves and still air. Water at the base rather than over the top, water in the morning so the foliage dries through the day, thin the planting out so air moves between the plants, and move the crop to a different bed next season so the spores in that soil have nothing to land on.

The carrots are stubby and forked

Either the bed was manured too recently, which sends a root crop all leaf and no root, or the tip hit something on the way down, a stone or a compacted layer. Save the rich stuff for the leafy crops and grow the roots in ground that was fed the season before.

Pick the forgiving crops while you learn

Silverbeet, zucchini, rocket and bush beans are very hard to kill and they crop for months. Cauliflower, broccoli, celery and head lettuce are fussy about timing and water and they punish a beginner for no good reason. There's no shame in stacking the odds while you work out what your soil does.

And ask. There are no stupid questions in a hardware shop, only expensive ones you find out about later, and somebody has almost certainly brought the same leaf in this week.

Shop related products

• Brunnings Seed Raising Mix 5L. Fine enough that small seed actually gets through it.
• Manutec Soil pH Test Kit. For the yellowing that fertiliser will not fix.
• Brunnings Garden Compost with Seaweed 25L. The general answer to tired ground.
• Seasol Seaweed Concentrate 600ml. For plants that have had a hard time and need a hand back.
• David Grays Tomato Dust 3-in-1. Once the torch has told you it is caterpillars.

Did you know we also stock Multiguard and David Grays snail pellets, a 4m snail barrier strip, pea straw bales and the full D.T. Brown seed rack in store, which is a lot wider than the range listed online. None of that is on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf.

It's all in the garden centre, and genuinely, bring the plant in. A photo helps and the actual leaf in a bag is better, and it takes about a minute to tell you what you are looking at.

More from the garden

• What to do when your soil is too acidic or alkaline
• When a garden pest is worth spraying, and when it is not
• 5 easy to grow tomato varieties for beginners

I have a bed that grows weeds better than anything I deliberately put in it, and I have made my peace with that bed.

Candeece

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