Most of my prefered garden vegetables are fall, winter, and spring crops (spinach, carrots, radishes, scallions). With the intense heat of summer, my gardening tasks have actually decreased. I got a small harvest of shelling peas (delicious!), but the strawberries have barely grown since I planted them months ago. I think the main culprit is the cheap (in both price and quality) soil I bought. With the quantity that I needed to fill up all my containers, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I'm (wait for it) paying the price. The "soil" is mostly tiny woodchips.
The carrots did not like it either.
On the bright side, the worms have been very busy eating up everything I put into into their original bin, and it's almost all completely broken down into rich castings. They've also been busy multiplying, so I had plenty of worms to move to a second bin and start the process over. Come fall, I will mix the finished worm castings with some of the woodchippy "soil" and some higher quality new soil, and my next batch of crops should be much happier.
