You might want to use raised beds. It helps with drainage and wet ground. Lots of info on this site if you do a search.

I live just west of you and I can tell you that this year was awful for tomatoes with blight and poor production in general. Even the farmers say so. It's been very wet and cold. For early blight, you can spray with 1 tbs. baking soda in a gallon of water and cut off the first diseased leaves. That has worked for me. I just got late blight and the plants were gone in a week. The cherry tomatoes did well.

I never have had good luck with melons in this area. They are either juicy with no flavor or just don't do well, so I rely on the farmers market or local fruit market (Adam's) for this, or California!

Eggplants and peppers like it warm, but I don't grow them anymore because I don't eat them. Others can give you info on this.

I dig in compost in the fall and then some in spring, but I don't mulch. I use an oscillating hoe for weeding. Slugs like mulch and this year the earthworms got out of control due to all the organic matter, I believe. So I haven't wanted to feed those critters this late with more mulch. But that's another story.

Some years are good for some plants and some years are bad. You learn as you go. There's a lot of info on these forums if you do some search and reading.
Enjoy the autumn!

I could be off base, but it does sound like your trouble is with choosing heat-loving crops in an area that isn't really that hot for that long. Was your summer cooler than it has been in recent years like ours was? My peppers, melons, and okra all had their troubles this year in the cooler weather. Not that excessive rain wouldn't be its own problem.

What both of the previous posters say. If you want more heat, use well tucked hoop houses and raised beds. Hoop houses also protect from excessive rains, and in my experience, once roots get into the water table, no irrigation is needed. In the wetter spots, grow greens and celery. As a matter of fact, gardening in raised beds on top of a high water table is relatively easy. The soil warms nicely, yet there is plenty of water for plants to prosper.

At my current site, the soil is heavy and cold in the spring, melons do not do well, but even at my former site, in sand, it was hit and miss, certain summers were just too cold. That is fine, they were originally desert plants. Michigan is just not optimal for summer crops, often too humid, sometimes not warm enough, and the cropping season is short limiting yields. To me is not a big problem because I consider greens and roots/tubers healthier vegetables. CT is even more humid, and only marginally warmer.

Thanks for the feedback.

I do use raised beds by mounding the earth, not wood etc.

Also, I have friends in my area that grow eggplant, tomatoes, peppers.

Would not mulching help my cause next year?

But if your site is colder you will still be at a disadvantage. In my case, tomatoes near the driveway do a lot better than in the garden, which is located in a cold spot. Mulching preserves moisture, so it might be of limited use there. It helps with rain not splashing soil onto tomato leaves, and therefore limiting disease.

Not saying you can't grow tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, just that you should be thinking about how to make it warmer for them for longer. Melons like really hot weather and a lot of it, you might need to go to extremes to get a crop of those. Mostly it was just that you had (possibly) misidentified what your problem is. If it was the wetness your greens show signs of trouble too. Cheers!

My suggestions, in line with others are:
(1) Raise the beds, anyway you want, by framing or hilling.
(2) Hoop cover can have two benefits ; One to hold the rain off and two, to keep the bed/plants warmer early and late season. So both of these implementation require work and initial costs.

My garden is extremely wet in the spring. A few things that have worked for me to some degree are paper mulch and raising my beds by piling compost on them. I plant into the drier fluffier compost in spring, then by the time the garden dries out a bit the plants have their roots deep.

I also have a rough time with spotty tomato plants. I'm going to try increasing air circulation by interspersing other crops with the tomatoes rather than planting them all together.

~emmers

We have gradually been moving perennial veggies into the low end of the garden that tends to stay moist. The rhubarb loves it, so do the raspberries and asparagus.

Melons don't do well for me, but pumpkins grown in a pile of rich compost do awesome and really cover space in a cool way. This year five Dickinson field pumpkins grown in a pile of compost (including chicken house bedding) produced over 100 pounds of good canning pumpkin. Next year I plan to grow compost pumpkins in a large dampish spot that often stays too wet to mow.

Because of the high water table and less than ideal warm temps, raised beds are a great idea. But I'd go high with them -- not just a 6" piece of lumber, but more like 2-3 feet high. That way, you're soil just doesn't wick all that water up from the native soil.

Another thing--- containers. Though people grow tomatoes in containers, I don't. I just think that the root systems are too immense and deep. Maybe a determinate variety in something like an oak barrel or trash can/55 gal drum. But lots of warm veggies do very well in containers, especially peppers. Once again, the larger the better. And you may want to look for black containers to help warm the soil.

Whatever the case, it CAN be done. Although, sometimes, it's a challenge and is that challenge really worth it? For example, there are GW members who grow hot peppers(from the tropics) in zone 2 in Canada -- for them, they feel that challenge is worth it.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Kevin

We tried a hugel for the first time this year. It rained almost every day for 2 months. Everything thrived except the heirloom tomatoes. I won't grow anything without a hugel from now on. Plants went crazy well in it!

Zacky,..... Well, not every body can make a Hugel.

Mark..., raisin bed 2 to 3 feet, sounds great but it requires LOT of WORK and plus lots of SOIL to fill it.
Such beds are also ergonomic and BACK FRIENDLY too .lol

I made my RBs about 12" high. The ground under neat is ok too. So the plants can grow roots deeper if necessary. But when it rains there wont be puddles in the beds. By adding more organic matter/compost regularly, the beds will have good drainage. And that's all I want.

Thanks for all of the help everyone!

I know the drawbacks of plastic, but is this something that could help me with heat loving plants? I saw Johnnys has a red plastic.

Thoughts?

TOTEMs: Black plastic would warm up more.

I haven't tried that red stuff --- I'm not entirely sure if it's not just another gardening gimmick.

Kevin

Black plastic or even black mulch, absorb most of solar heat and reflect ZERO percent.

Bur the red plastic, from what I have heard, reflects red light wave onto the plant. SORT OF LIKE MIRROR. And that is claimed to be beneficial.

I tend to use grass clippings as mulch, which turn light color and reflects the sun. I think on my property this is why I have has so many problems with tomato diseases and poor prduction.

So is it a better plan to do plastic or no mulch on my heat loving plants next year?

One thing I forgot to mention: wet spots are cold spots. Always. A swampy spot along a bike trail I use fairly often loses its snow in the spring one month after the rest of the land. My garden, likewise, loses the snow a good week after the surroundings, despite the heat trapping hoop houses. Yes, it will stay warmer in Fall, but to grow things you need warm air and warm soil. The solution for me is to black plastic warm the beds for summer vegetables, and grow cool weather crops otherwise.

You don't say what part of CT. I'm in the NW hills, 1000ft elevation, on ledge. Raised beds are the only way for me to grow, sandy soil mixed with compost and manure, and I *still* had problems with tomatoes this year. The best-producing ones are the ones that I put in the last week of June (replacements/leftovers). The ones I put in 1st week of June never really recovered, though for a while in July they were looking pretty good (small, but good). The heat, the dry weather, and the foliar diseases they picked up in June finally did them in.

Organic mulches will keep the soil cool early in the spring - I don't know about red plastic, a PhD at UCONN told me last year at a workshop on high tunnels that clear plastic is best to warm the soi, next best thing is BARE soil, not mulched. Of course, tunnels (high or low) early on will do the same thing. I need to invest in plastic, I have hoops, but the plan is to cover the soil in April (he said you can really only extend about 2 weeks early, 2 weeks later unless you want a heated greenhouse) to warm it, get planted out early May instead of late May - our last frost is on average over with by May 10 but I usually wait until 23rd or so b/c we HAVE occasionally had cool (not frost, but too cool for nightshades) nights into the later part of the month. After the soil is warmed to 60 degrees, plant them, and keep them covered with plastic (if days aren't too warm yet) or row cover until nights are consistently in the 50's.

Anyway, that's my plan for next year - I had great tomatoes last year even with the drought (just had to water a lot - was afraid the well was going to go dry) but peppers weren't great, eggplants didn't produce much. 2011 was wet and tomatoes didn't do well (that was before the raised beds) but the peppers were beautiful - again, no time for bells to get to size but chiles were great, I grew Hinkelhatz, Thai, jalapeno, serrano, cayenne, the plants were 3ft tall and 3ft wide and loaded by October.

Try to stick to small peppers, and early-mid season tomatoes (though I have a weakness for Brandywine) and you should do fine in a "normal" weather year. Use plastic to warm the soil/protect the young plants, plant out early, and you'll be ahead of the game.

MULCH:
Mulch is for summer, when it is hot and dry. You wouldn't want to mulch early in the season. Another function of mulch is to help reduce/prevent weeds growth. I Did mulch my maters with grass clipping. DID NOT LIKE IT. even I sun-dried them but still they get mushy when wet and caked when dry. I like pine straw but there is none around here. Wheat straw is even better. Again, not available. Coarse compost is way to go for me.
I don't believe in using plastics, newspapers, cardboard. They seem to be TOO FOREIGN in my garden.

I live in NWCT, east canaan to be exact.

Not mulching in the spring is a very good point.

Bare soil or cover with clear plastic in the spring, then once the soil is warm and you (trans)plant, you can mulch with dry grass clippings, straw, shredded leaves, whatever. Main purpose of mulch is to conserve moisture and we usually have plenty of that in the spring. It does help keep the weeds down but you have to put it on thick to do that, and I think it's counter-productive in wet springs (tends to grow mushrooms).

Landscape fabric helps keep the weeds down - if you want to go to expense, put it down before transplanting and cut holes for the plants. Then you can cover it with mulch later to hold moisture in during the summer. I really like burlap though - didn't do it this year, used hay instead, put it down late (my 1st cutting got wet and the bales I was going to use for mulch started sprouting 'shrooms!) and I got crabgrass growing everywhere, big job to dig it all out now.

Yeah, you're way up there close to MA border - what's your elevation? You're probably about as cold as my parents in Hartland - while I can get things out around May 20-25 (and have been tempted for Mother's Day), my dad doesn't set anything out til the last week of May. Makes for a really short season. Early varieties and frost protection (even after last frost, May/June nights can get too cold for peppers and eggplants, so cover them) is the way to go.

You say our neighbors grow them successfully - ask them what their secret is.

I use my paper mulch (just a roll of Kraft paper) to suppress weeds and because I thought it'd be more breathable (not retain as much moisture) and not plastic, which I'd have to pick up at the end of the season.

I tried black paper a while back and it definitely warmed the soil.

~emmers

I live in cool summer climate Pacific NW at 500' in a clearing in the woods. Shade from tall trees, lack of air circulation from woods blocking airflow, wet spring weather, and lack of direct sunshine until sun position heightens in early summer = cool, wet spring soils that dislike mulch, tilling, or germinating seeds.

To combat this I add lots of organic matter in the fall, do not till in spring, wait until tulips drop petals to mulch the strawberries and spring planted vegetables.

Prewarm soil for heat lovers by removing mulch, adding black plastic, or red plastic for tomatoes. I do not direct seed any heat lovers, but do transplants waiting until soil is 60 degrees as well as day & night temps. Before then they need cold frame protection.

Hope it helps.