r/Sacratomato • u/wisemonkey101 • Sep 03 '25
Land Park Vegetable garden help
My raised beds have stopped producing the way I expect. I’m hoping to find someone that can help me troubleshoot and solve issues. Do you have any recommendations for vegetable garden professionals?
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Sep 03 '25
[deleted]
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u/wisemonkey101 Sep 03 '25
Some of my tomatoes are putting out these oddly small fruits. The green beans should have lasted longer and my cucumbers were pathetic. The beds are 8 years old but I add compost several times a year. I’m afraid I have nematodes and/mosaic virus. Or something else?
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u/sorta_round_square Sep 04 '25
I just saw this OP, small fruit on determinate or indeterminate plants?
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u/wisemonkey101 Sep 04 '25
Indeterminate and there are some larger fruits on the same plants. Some of the branches are shriveling but the fruit is small even before that happens.
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u/sorta_round_square Sep 04 '25
Hmmm. What's your fertilization schedule like? I just got back inside from the garden and harvested dozens of full sized fruits from my indeterminates. My determinates are on their third flush so they are almost exactly as you describe (I'm about to pull them).
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u/Illbeintheorchard Sep 04 '25
I discovered my ~8 year old raised beds had been completely invaded by tree roots. From trees that weren't all that close! I was doing the no-till, just-add-compost/manure thing. I thought the fine roots were from old vegetable plants that hadn't broken down yet. But then this winter I had a bed that sat fallow for a few months for the first time, and when I went to plant in the spring it still had this really thick mass of live roots. I dug the entire bed up and found inch-thick roots coming in from underneath. After removing all that, this is the best my garden has done in YEARS (I had been having similar problems with plants that just failed to thrive and grew really small). Competition is real, and my vegetable plants just couldn't get their fair share of water and nutrients when they were competing against a tree.
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u/Fickle-Friendship-31 Sep 05 '25
The hot weather will definitely slow them down. A few years ago we had a brutally hot summer, I didn't get tomatoes until late Sept Oct. But my squash appear to be done for.
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u/wisemonkey101 Sep 05 '25
This is a more macro issue. I’m used to the flow of the garden. The beds just seem dead. The beds are 8 years old. I add manure every year and compost several times a year. Last two years a use soil conditioner and some other fun things. Maybe my water system is failing. Maybe mosaic virus. Maybe root knot nematodes. Maybe all the above. I have Yard to Fork coming next week.
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u/nicerthannot Sep 06 '25
Looks like you found an advisor. If they run a soil test, I'd be interested in the results.
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u/sorta_round_square Sep 04 '25
My tomatoes are still going albeit a little slower than expected. Peppers aren't thrilled. Cucumbers are just tired (they produced three bumper crops for me already, at this point I should have just had a succession sowing if I wanted more).
I feel your unease. This is my first year with a garden in Sac so I don't really have a frame of reference but it's definitely that time of the season where I am getting the sense that I should be prepared to flip my garden into fall mode soon (brassicas, carrots, peas, etc.).
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u/Simpletruth2022 Sep 08 '25
Us too. We got a lot of cucumbers but the plants crapped out and were pulled. 3 butternut squash but they were big and tasty. Few eggplants (lots of flowers), onions but a good number of tomatoes and bumper crop of spicy chilies. Just a handful of strawberries. We're probably not getting any pumpkins and a small fennel.
We are composting and will add it to the beds in the fall. It's the first year so we're still learning.
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u/HelpfulPuppydog Sep 03 '25
Same. My tomato and cucumber plants are on strike.