Why Is My Vegetable Garden Dying

In May your raised bed looked like a magazine photo. Now it's July, the tomato is six feet of leaves with barely a tomato on it, the zucchini shrivel and rot before they're the size of your finger, the first ripe fruit has a black leathery patch on the bottom, and every afternoon the whole bed droops like it's giving up. You post a photo asking 'why is everything dying?' and get fifteen confident answers that contradict each other. Overwatering. Underwatering. Blight. Calcium. Too much sun. Not enough sun. Why Is My Vegetable Garden Dying: Beginner Troubleshooting for Tomato Plants Not Producing, Zucchini Problems, Blossom End Rot, Afternoon Wilting, and First Raised Bed Mistakes gives you what those threads can't: a method. Instead of another planting calendar or a glossy encyclopedia of every vegetable ever grown, this is a symptom-first diagnostic guide for the moment something goes wrong mid-season. You'll learn a simple five-question triage that sorts any problem into one of five suspects (water, soil and nutrients, sun and heat, pollination, pests and disease) so you fix the actual cause instead of spraying, feeding or drowning a plant on a guess. Inside, you'll learn: How to read where, when and how fast damage appears, and what that pattern tells you before you reach for any product Why overwatering and underwatering look almost identical, and the simple tests that tell them apart When afternoon wilting in hot sun is normal, and the morning check that tells you it's something worse The real reasons tomato plants flower but don't produce, and a checklist to get fruit setting again What actually prevents blossom end rot, and why eggshells and a bag of calcium usually don't What's wrong with zucchini that rot at the tip or collapse overnight, including how to hand-pollinate in two minutes How to fix a badly filled first raised bed, and calm, factual answers to 'is my family safe?' about treated wood, soil lead and garden chemicals How to identify common pests and diseases before treating, and when to save, prune or pull a plant Every experienced gardener has a long list of plants they've killed. The difference is that they learned to read the plant. Whether you want to rescue this season or just make sure next year goes better, this book turns 'what's wrong with my garden?' into a question you can answer yourself.

Imad Muratspahic is an independent author of practical how-to guides, technical handbooks, history and fiction. The books aim to be clear, honest and useful from the first page.