23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Just finished harvesting the last Ambrosia bicolor, se, corn plot #3. All 3 plots were delicious and productive. Some earworms in this last batch but that's expected in the late season. Biggest pests were squirrels during the day, and opossums at night. Had to fence in and net this last batch or all would have been lost. I find that planting corn any later than July 1st here results in small ears and less per stalk, most likely due to the shortening day length.
If the plants look good, why fertilize? Doesn't make sense to me. If the leaves are starting to yellow or if they have had poor growth then I could understand. Just let the plants do their thing and the fruits should ripen up for you.
And the fertilizer you have is basically micronutrients. At this point I doubt they'd be of any benefit to the plants and with an N-P-K of 0.1-0-0 they wouldn't force new growth (not that you want to force new growth).
Rodney
Thanks, Rodney. Between my post and yours, I found this:
Foliar feeding can be done during early growth of the plant, during or after blooming, when is plant is under stress, or just prior to plant maturity to increase brix. Information on increasing brix can be found here. Foliar feeding can be done as often as every three or four days, but even applying once will be advantageous.
The article makes the point that foliar feeding doesn't replace nutrients from the soil, but enhances them.
You're right--I don't want to force new growth. I'm just hoping to encourage ripening.
nfriday- As I said in my OP, I don't think we have SVB here in CA.
Sunni and Rodney, all of my beds are raised and lined with hardware cloth (gophers). I didn't see any gopher action, but I'll look around for others. I've never seen evidence of moles in the last 30 years here, but maybe voles? I have a lot of garden cats, but I'll look around! Nancy
Cucurbits so far not minding the mud, but the brassicas and tomatoes are doing even worse than the peppers. Some tomato plants gone almost totally yellow, and today I saw that the outer leaves of the cabbages are yellow.
I did spot a low-growing cucumber gone all moldy from lying in the mud. I think I'll put something under the butternut squash fruits.
We have had more rain than last year, which is lessening the severity of the drought. My place has gotten less than other areas of my small town. It has been nice to see what is possible with some of my perennials with the rain (like the roses) and it has kept some of my vegetables alive that I was prepared to give up on because of pests.
Last September, we received gobs of rain and my red mustard was about 6 feet tall. I loved seeing that.
I've had nothing but trouble with bugs in my veggies whenever I've used any kind of mulch: it provides them with too good a living environment and especially a good haven in the winter. A friend of mine who owns a CSA organic farm says he's done with mulch for the same reason. I've used both straw and wood chips. I would do whatever is easiest to remove the straw. Tilling it in would be OK, but that sounds like more work than removing and composting it.
I've read the opposite - that straw is good under squash plants. It deters the cucumber beetle from laying eggs in the soil at the base.
If you are not bothered by cucumber beetles your best bet to deter squash bugs is bare soil. Then the squash bugs have nowhere to hide.
I don't till in straw, it doesn't break down enough by spring in my long winter. I rake mine up and put it in the compost pile.
I've been growing this for a number of years. It's a staple of Italian cooking, great recipes available, and it's not bitter at all. It's mild, with a texture all its own. I mostly use it in several soup recipes and in a couple with cannellini beans. Great fall crop.
Lettuce is hardy to a few degrees below freezing, but it does tend to lose quality after repeated exposure to hard frost especially if daytime temperatures are also cold.
A tunnel on its own can make things worse. Since your coldest nights probably follow a fresh snowfall, and because snow has excellent insulating capacity, plants outside under a blanket of snow will fare better than those in a tunnel.
If you can get your hands on some spun-bonded row cover, lay that on the plants starting in November and then erect your tunnel over. If not, skip the tunnel.
This was my first year at growing onions and it went better then I thought. I started the seeds in garden last October and then in April I moved them to there final location. Right now there in the final curing stages. This October I will do Walla Wallas again, and then a long storage type and then a long storage red onion.
Walla Walla Onions
I had very late development of the hard seed coat on my cukes this year, and suspect it was weather dependent. The temps varied little from day to night, and we had numerous showers and it was like growing in a greenhouse. Some of the fruits I nearly discarded because of their size turned out to be quite palatable yet, with small, tender seeds and lacking the tough kernels. If your marketmores (and it's a variety I grow every year along with my picklers) were still green, they were immature. A ripe cuke goes yellow. Poor pollination on a marketmore would have yielded no or misshapen fruit, not one with no seed coat.
The fingernail test is the best way to tell if they are not ready. If a thumbnail easily pierces the rind, not ready. With pumpkins color is a good indicator, and with others you can check the bottoms of the fruits for a color change toward yellow or orange.
My Baby Pam pie pumpkins are on the curing shelf along with a few buttercups, but most of the fruits aren't ready. The longer they stay on the vine, the better, but bad things don't happen to them on a shelf in warm shade. I do leave the field pumpkins out until the vines start dying back.
Thank you, defrost49! I was wondering if the sugars would be better after sitting. I would have made a mistake. I will let them cure before eating them.
planatus, I so agree! Bad things can and do happen on the vine. I am debating it right now just for that very reason. I will look at the bottoms for coloring and keep doing the fingernail test. Thank you!
Wood remnants grow fungi dedicated to the breakdown of dead materials. As far as I know, this is an entirely separate plate of beans from the predatory things that may be affecting your living plants. For instance, the two main "mildews" that affect cukes may gather in wood chips but they would also do the same in bare dirt, straw, pine needles, old gloves, and so on. The spores are everywhere, but wood is no magic safe nurturing harbor for them.
I'm trying to figure out how to post multiple pictures... If anyone can advise, please do.
I may actually have some cucumber beetles. I found some very small black/yellow fly/beetle looking insects. Not sure if they are beetles or not.
Another pic....