23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Maybe go for a second planting?

I started seeds last week for my replacement cucumber planting. They're just starting to come up now and they'll go into the garden in a week or so.

My cucumbers always bite the dust about this time in the growing season from Downy Mildew (even when rotating and following other practices for preventing disease spreading). I have been searching the internet for downy mildew resistant cucumbers. What I found was that in 2004 the disease adapted/morphed and many of the cucumbers listed as downy mildew resistant (DMR) are no longer very resistant.

I did find a study by Twin Oaks done in 2013 that shows the following varieties were the top rated in their trials. I do not know how reliable this trial was though:

Green DMR (Cornell) NY12-264
Suyo Long (Twin Oaks)
Ivory Queen (Cornell)
Shantung Shuyo F1 (Fedco) 341

Has anyone grown any of the above varieties. Where do you buy the Cornell seeds. I went to the Cornell website but could not find these seeds for sale.

Here is a link that might be useful: Twin Oaks DMR trials

That is correct leafy stuff has thrived also cukes (21 jars of pickles in basement) so I should not complain. I will try to leave tomatoes on plant longer maybe that will help

Must be a matter of type, too. We've only hit 80 once or twice this July, with nights in the 40's and a couple days only in the upper 50's -- my sauce tomatoes are ripening v. slowly, and are nothing special taste-wise. However, my Sun Golds are stupendous, as always (also ripening v. slowly)

If you have butternuts nearby the bees will probably take care of things for you. Last year I had two smallish moschata plantings -- a butternut and Dickinson field pumpkins -- and the fruit set was fine.

Thank you! I've had so few female blossoms everywhere on my squash that I was thinking of hand-pollinating just to make sure I don't waste any.

I'm a nervous new gardener :)

TxGardener, did you look at the images of the eggs to compare with what you have?

They look like squash bug (stink-bug) eggs to me. Pick them off and crush them against a piece of wood or something else hard.

Very interesting about brassicas, I'm glad I read that! I have some fall seedlings started and was planning to put them in my new hugelkulter bed, but maybe I'll save that for greens and put the brassicas where the squash bugs just did in my zucchini.

These are the beds I just built at the beginning of the month. I lined the bottoms of two of them with chicken feed bags to slow infiltration since we're in such a dry environment. Hoping that will speed up the rotting process. This was a low-tech solution after planning to put together some more complicated self-watering beds.

The beds look very good. It is a lot of OM and a lot of water capacity. No need to fertilize with anything but nitrogen for the next ten years, and plants, once they touch the mycelium, will have access to the whole woodpile in terms of nutrients and water. You should experiment, but I think it would be worth assigning those beds only to those vegetables.

I always grow Tall Telegraph. I use nylon net or cattle panels. They can get very tall and with good production for a pea. I've always had to grow in part-shade in AZ because the early spring weather can be too hot. Now, in NC, I'll try them in as much sun as I can find on my fully wooded acreage.

The EMT posts are 8 feet tall. There are two varieties of peas planted in the bed. Green Arrow shelling pea and Wando shelling pea. Both varieties grew to the same height. The package for Wando says 18 to 30 inches tall. A little variance in the height from the package. It was real aggravating because they were so tall they climbed up the trellis that I was saving for the cucumbers. The Green Arrow pea package says "plants reach only two feet tall.". I used home grown compost (mostly leaves & grass) as a fertilizer and even though they grew real tall they were also very prolific. Therefore, I do not think the height was a result of excess nitrogen. The same thing happened to my pink eye purple hull peas (Coronet). The package said "compact, 24 inch tall plants that don't need staking". Well they are 8 feet tall and hanging over the top of the trellis.

The thick mid ribs make me think this is not a beet, but what I would call spinach beet. This is a misnomer as it isn't spinach at all. It is really a kind of chard. It is the leaves which are eaten, not the root. Old chard plants can get massive roots, especially if overwintered. Sometimes they are really tough to pull out at the end of the season.

Here is a link that might be useful: Spinach beet

Looks like a chard, which is nothing more than a beet that has been selected for heavy stalks on its leaves. Or you might say a beet is generally a red chard that has been selected for its roots instead of its leaves and their leaf stalks.

It is fall weather already here in the NE, on a whole it's been a cool summer and though it is my first time as well, it is looking to be a good season for the fall crops... I'm wearing a light sweater today (!) Just about ready to give up on all my peppers, they just didn't get the hot and fairly dry weather that they needed :(

I think in IL you are having even colder weather than here.

Here in Minneapolis, we are getting into the 80's nearly every day now. My sweet banana and Anaheim peppers have been bearing for some weeks and now the Cubanelles are starting to set, and I am getting all kinds of tomatoes daily off my two 4th of July plants. No squirrel problem this year for some reason. I have to admit to not having felt the need to install the window air conditioner this year, though. I have seen hotter summers, and some of my sweet potatoes aren't vining all that well, but then they didn't last year either. Just OHenry is running well. Vardeman and Jewel are not so vigorous as I would have hoped, but then there may be close to two months, at least a month and a half, before we get a freeze, too.

Peppers don't get much more reliable than the Sweet bananas and the Anaheims; so if you are having problems getting fruits on your peppers consider them. They are the main types I plant anymore.

Yesterday I planted onion seeds (Copra) for sets (an experiment), all kinds of coles including both leafy types and winter radishes and turnips, lettuce, and carrots. I may just move some tiger lily bulbils today and I am watching daylily seed pods which should ripen here very soon. I have never had any luck with the daylily seeds but one of these times I am going to get it right. I get volunteers; so somehow I just haven't found the knack yet. A while back in the garlic bed I harvested first, I planted some Minnesota midget muskmelons and the little squirts are blooming already.

Very soon now I will start to work up beds for this fall's garlic, potato onion and tulip plantings. I think I will also give the elephants one more chance. I am going over to Core and away from peat moss this year.

I don't can or freeze, since I do not have a big enough garden for that and a bit of everything else I would like to try. So now that garlic has been taken up, it is back to planting. :)

BTW I especially like things I can snack on while working in the garden. Some days those snacks will be my whole set of meals. I use as few pesticides as possible; so a light washing with the wand is usually enough.

I planted my first watermelon this year with three Sugar Baby transplants. Since it's my first year growing, I've been taking lots of notes and pictures. I documented the first melon on 6/15, about a month after planting and was the size of an almond. It grew surprisingly fast and stopped at 8 inches turning from a striped juvenile to a typical solid deep dark green.

Then I started watching the nearest tendril which turned completely brown at about 30 days, but the bottom stayed dark. It was sitting on a piece of wood since it was found and no sign of white or yellow bottom. I've read this thread and others that mention Sugar Babies are tricky. Lots of videos on YouTube of people cutting into their first Sugar Baby, some darn right funny. Especially when they aren't even red, or they look good and they taste them and you can tell they are trying very hard to like it.

I was dying to try one, and decided to sacrifice my first born at 41 days on 7/26 despite his dark bottom. Needless to say he was a tasty, crispy little boy with surprisingly very few seeds.

... and he was 8 pounds!

I've had very good luck with just before pollen shed, immediately after and then once about 1 week to 10 days later. Don't use old Bt, for sure. I use a hand pump sprayer and shoot the liquid down into the tip with a low pressure stream. Bt does photodegrade quickly so putting it on the silks outside the ear won't help as much unless your ears are well protected by a dense canopy. Just for grins I tried a bicolor SHII triple stacked GMO, RR, Bt sweetcorn this year called Obsession II, out of 120 ears I had 2 with 1 tiny live worm each and never sprayed.

Ya, that BT works great when there aren't any ear worms...;-)

They produced well and there was nothing wrong with them flavorwise but nothing spectacular either. I prefer the traditional long green kind--easier to peel.

my vines are at least12 feet long. I pick about 20 cukes a week. Sell at farmers market