23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

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

I know that smell loribee! It is a good one. Reminds me of fishing in the rain once when I was little.

I usually get a soaker hose set up, but gee darn, had to take 2 weeks in Hawaii!
I do like hand watering! It's "therapy" for me! (anything to do with water is therapy to me!) It also allows me to poke in around the plants, look for veges (especially hiding zukss! and hiding green beans!), look for bugs and critters!
Just FYI, Cath, there is a forum for disabled gardening. I check it out from time to time cause I have a bad back and contribute from time to time cause I've worked with many people with physical disabilities. My chiro LOVES my adapted things in the garden! Nancy

>>djkj -- most useful video, thank you so much. I was very reassured as that is just what my plants look like. I had thought they were spindly and unhealthy, but I guess that's how they are. I have to say I haven't fertilised every three weeks, though. Whoops. Would a tomato fertiliser do?
>>>>

Yes a tomato fertilizer does just fine. It will give the okra the nutrients it needs and will also help with the blooms!

ditto on farmerdill's comments. My experience with Clemson is the same. I too prefer Emerald.

Sweet potato leaves are very popular in Asian & Pacific Island cultures. The shoots are sometimes sold in bundles in Asian markets. The good thing about that is, you can pinch off the tip & tender leaves, throw the stems into a glass half full of water, and cook the leaves. If you like the flavor, the stems will root quickly, and you can plant them.

Not all sweet potato leaves taste the same. I've tried some that were horrible, with almost a chemical aftertaste. The ornamental varieties with colored leaves fall in that category, among others.

Filipinos have an edible-leaf variety called 'kamote', which is the one I usually grow. In hot weather, the leaf production can be astounding.

But for a hot weather green, I much prefer the closely related water spinach. It too is often sold in bunches in Asian markets, and the shoots root even more readily than sweet potatoes. Water spinach can also be grown from seed, but unfortunately, it has been declared a noxious weed in the U.S., so seed is hard to find.

You can find a lot more info on both vegetables in the Asian Vegetable Forum.

oh...My parents survived from famine by eating them. That's what they told me. Food shortage is no long a problem when I was raised. But my mother occasionally prepare those food by steaming sweet potato leaves mixed with corn powder and seasoned with peanut oil. They are absolutely delicious. But my father don't like them possibly he just ate too much. LOL

I use a two gallon sprayer.

The only things I spray are Spinosad (rarely), Bt (often), neem oil & clove oil for fungus (often), and micronutrients (occasionally during plant establishment - I have highly alkaline soil). I use the same sprayer for all these. If you use herbicides, make sure you have a dedicated sprayer for that.

Here's a little something to remember: many of the pesticides (insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc.) that we use in our garden are not stable once they are mixed with water. RoundUp, Bt, Spinosad, insecticidal soaps, etc. are perfect examples of products that lose their viability or potency quite quickly once mixed. This is very true with the strong, toxic chemicals, too.

That means that we should not be making up more solution at any time than we are going to use immediately. Each and every time we need to apply something, we should estimate how much water will be needed to get the job done, then calculate the exact amount of product for the volume of water.

Being careful about mixing up only what we intend to use at any given time solves the issue about what to do with the excess. There shouldn't be any! USE IT. However, should there be leftover stuff, it should be applied to the same location until it's all gone. Then, fill the sprayer up with clear water and apply the rinsate to that same area, too. It's not lawful to dump these products down a drain or on the soil.

I saw the subject line of the post--Prune Peppers--and what popped into my brain was, like, spicy peppers + prunes. (I know you can dry peppers but that's not what I thought of.)

Is this a new remedy to "keep you regular"? Give the Phillips laxative lady some competition! Sunsweet ad:

"Use in your favorite recipe! Flavor AND regularity! (Use at your own risk.)"

Prunes + hot peppers = Liquid Fire.