FIVE Reasons Your Garden is Growing Slowly

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my Gardener Channel in today's episode I'm just out in the garden today I'm going to be uh kind of fixing up our Tomatoes they've grown quite a bit and so I need to get them staked to our posts here but uh I wanted to come out here to really talk about some reasons why your garden could be growing slowly now this is brought to our attention by quite a few different gardeners throughout the past couple days and it's becoming a little more prevalent of a question so I wanted to tackle it now your garden might be growing really fast where you're at but where we're at our garden is actually growing quite slowly Now by this time last year we would have already had ripe Tomatoes generally we start to get our first ripe Tomatoes right around the 4th of July this year that's not even remotely possible we barely even have tomatoes forming and we're almost into July as it is so we are well behind our schedule for our kind of where our garden should be at but I'm not concerned either like I know that we are definitely going to have ripe Tomatoes by the end of the season like there's no no question about it it's just you have expectations and then you have reality and when the two don't align that's where you start to have some questions and so in today's episode I'm hopefully going to just you know not only put your mind at ease but also kind of educate you on reasons why your garden could be just maturing at a slower rate [Music] so the first reason to consider is temperature now this is obviously a real important thing when it comes to plant growth especially your warm weather crops like your tomatoes and peppers cucumbers and stuff like that they don't like cold temperatures and cold temperatures will typically slow down plant growth and so that's why in the early season your garden will grow a lot slower and then once you start to get those warm nights that's where everything just seems to explode with growth and so depending on your season you could be having an abnormally cold season in our case we've had quite a few warm days but I know that at least our spring started off really slow and that's because our spring was very cold we had a very late Frost we generally don't have a frost past past past Mother's Day but we actually had three frosts past Mother's Day so it really resulted in a very slow start for us we didn't end up getting our garden planted until about two weeks after Mother's Day which is a is incredibly rare for us so temperature plays a huge role now if if you are experiencing temperatures that are at or around 60 degrees or so generally it's kind of a threshold for what will stimulate plant growth or reduce plant growth is 60 degrees that's kind of the threshold that we look at so the nighttime temperatures are obviously going to be lower than the daytime temperatures but you look at what's called just a an average temperature you take the high and take the low and you basically take divide it and divide it by two right so if it's 70 degrees and 50 degrees you have an average daily temperature of about 60 degrees right so basic math um don't make me do more than that I'll fail oh I'm a gardener not a math teacher so uh that's generally that threshold you look for is around 60 degrees average to either promote or uh you know stimulate plant growth or reduce it all right the second reason why your garden could be growing slowly is a lack of rainfall now I know it goes without saying that obviously plants do need water but plants actually really love rain water and the reason why is because rainwater has two things that plants absolutely love they love oxygen when rain is falling from the sky it actually oxygenates it's way different than tap water which does have dissolved oxygen but not nearly as much as rainfall does that oxygen actually stimulates the aerobic bacteria in your soil the beneficial bacteria that we're trying to Foster in a healthy uh healthy soil ecology but it also helps to stimulate root growth as well because roots are part of plants and plants need oxygen like you and I do right the roots love that aeration in the soil and so uh it provides air or oxygen but it also provides nutrients there's lots of subtle dissolved nutrients very small Trace Amounts of nutrients in rainwater that will help to fertilize your plants as well and that's a big reason why your plants grow so much after that first rain and that's because of all that beautiful there's lots of nitrogen because there's nitrogen in the air right but there's also lots of other little Trace uh trace minerals found in rain water that you're not going to find in your city water which has often been taken out or filtered out and it's very it's very kind of sterile but then there's also other chemicals added to city water that end up killing plant life like chlorine and chloramine which are meant to sterilize the water meant it's meant to make it potable or drinkable but it often kills the soil bacteria found in your soil when you water very heavily with City water so that's why rain water is so much different than just regular water but the second reason why rainwater is so important is is because plants will conserve water during a period of drought and the reason why they stop growing when they're dry is because of how they respire and that respiration is how they breathe now they breathe much like you and I do only the reverse right so we breathe out carbon dioxide and we breathe it in oxygen but plants do the exact opposite plants they will bring in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen they use the carbon dioxide to actually generate energy through photosynthesis and it actually helps the plant to grow but one of the downsides to a plant respiring it happens at night generally when the sun is not out because it's a built-in protective measure so it doesn't um you know overly dehydrate but what happens at night is those stomatos will open and when it opens it'll breathe out the oxygen but it'll also breed out water as well and the water is what keeps the plant nice and healthy but also helps it to continue to grow and so much like the stomata does not open during the day day to risk dehydrating and during periods of drought the stomata will open very little if not at all because it doesn't want to doesn't want to dehydrate it's a protective measure and that's why your plants will grow slowly during a drought is because the fact it's conserving water plants are incredibly smart and they've grown to be incredibly smart over the years in order to survive and so during periods of drought you will find your plants are going to grow slower and that's exactly why all right the third reason why your garden could be growing slowly this year is a lack of air quality now air quality can take on many different forms you could have dust pollution you get a smoke pollution you could even have smog pollution and that pollution is basically particulate in the air and essentially what you can look at particulate in the air as is essentially a filter or a screen and you've probably heard of using things like shade cloth in the garden shade cloth is essentially a mesh net that you put over your garden and it blocks sunlight well it doesn't block all the sunlight it just blocks a certain percentage of sunlight and what happens is when you have air pollution it could be let's say dust well the dust essentially is acting as that screen that the sun is coming down through the clouds but it's hitting that dust and it's basically helping to filter out some of that sunlight from hitting your plants and so having poor air quality absolutely can affect slow plant growth and so or affect plant growth slowly right and so we have our plants here and I think that is a huge reason I mean yes we did get a late start but we had the smokiest error we've ever had because of all the wildfires that been going on in the area and that smoke 100 does affect plant growth in fact I've talked to many farmers there's also many farmers that document their stuff even on YouTube and uh so you can go check out um the veggie boys this is a great channel uh they're great great guys and um they were saying how you know they rely on farming obviously for a living and they were saying how the smoke has really slowed down their growth this year but now that the sun has come out things are starting to grow again but that is 100 a reason why your garden could be slower this year than other years is just those those air quality concerns and so um yeah you know obviously this is something that should eventually kind of fix itself it shouldn't last forever but in the early season when growth is really important that can be the deciding factor between being a week behind schedule or a couple months behind schedule all right the fourth reason why your garden could be growing slowly is a lack of nutrients now there's one nutrient in particular that is responsible for plant growth and leaf development and that's nitrogen so in the case of this tomato here if we noticed that the plant was starting to slow down it was really kind of just stunted and the leaves were starting to turn yellow or yellow green kind of like a like a lime green color we could come in with some nitrogen it could be things like blood meal it could be fish fertilizer it could even be compost really no there's no certain type of nitrogen or a certain source of nitrogen that plants are going to appreciate more than the other they're just going to appreciate some nitrogen and so making sure that you add some nitrogen into your garden will definitely help to ensure that the plant keeps growing now I also want to make a really important distinction here that a plant being stunted and you being impatient are very very different I know a lot of gardeners that end up really trying to almost force their plants to grow faster because they think their plants are growing slow that is really where you have to understand maturity dates it does take a couple years to kind of understand how fast a plant should be growing because a lot of times when you're a first time Gardener you look at your garden you say man this is not growing fast enough and you have to assess you have to take a step back and assess is the plant growing fast enough is it growing just fine or am I just being impatient because oftentimes you can then try to come in and almost intervene and you can almost do more harm than good by doing that because what if the plant doesn't need nutrients well then you're over fertilizing then you're either wasting money or you could even harm the plant by giving it nutrients that it doesn't need and so it's really really important to kind of understand that as well but assuming you do know that your plant is stunted and slow or your plant is turning shades of yellow then you absolutely can come in with some nitrogen and that'll certainly help to fix that all right the fifth and final reason why your garden could be growing slowly it just has to do with the varieties that you chose now this again is something that you can control it's something that you can pick in the very beginning of the Season you could pick a variety that has a longer maturity date or a shorter maturity date a prime example is in the case of our Tomatoes here our Tomatoes range in maturity days some will mature in about 60 days others will mature in about 85 days that makes a huge difference with how the plant grows because biologically the plant is going to be growing in accordance to its maturity date and its maturity date when it's when it's you know more days to mature it's going to take a lot longer to grow and that's why the maturity date is what it is if it was a fast growing tomato it wouldn't have 85 days to mature it'd be more like 65 and so knowing the maturity date going into it knowing what you're planting will help so much with your expectations and I know that you know the the plants that are 85 days are going to grow slower and produce fruit slower than ones that are at 65 days some of your you know half your beef steaks will grow slower than your cherry tomatoes which are smaller and they take way less energy to produce that fruit it's all about energy conservation like I said if it had all the energy in the world I'm sure that 85 day tomato would look more like 55 days because well there's endless amounts of energy right but because it has to produce a one pound tomato that takes a ton of energy to produce that and it oftentimes won't do that until the plant is ready for it there's not enough plant growth to sustain that big of a fruit and so uh just knowing your maturity dates going into it can help a ton and those are really the five reasons why your plant why your garden could be growing slowly this year and obviously there are a whole host of other things tiny little things that I don't really want to get into because they're not all that important these are the big five and so I wanted to stick to these five and maybe we'll touch on some other reasons later let me know in the comments box down below if you have any questions or if this made sense to you and also let me know something you learned in the comments box down below or something that maybe helped you have a little aha moment I'd love to know I think that's a super cool thing about what I do is I love to see the light bulb come on in people's heads yes this these videos are entertaining yes they're meant to you know maybe make a giggle or look at things in a different way but it's the aha moment that I love and and it's that light bulb that I aim to have pop on in your head so let me know a little light bulb moment that you had and uh if you did enjoy make sure you hit the like button subscribe if you haven't already and I will catch you all on the next episode all right take care everyone grow bigger bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 69,174

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: CpNySy5dNO0

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2023