23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

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.

Thanks!

I'll probably try it just because I'm too tired/lazy to get a whole other bed set up.

Robinsons, in England, who grow award winning onions as well as producing seeds for exhibition, heritage and general edible use, have been maintaining a 200 year old onion bed. I, myself, because of endemic white rot on my plot, have a raised bed area where I grow garlic, every year. While crop rotation is a precursor to plant health, it is only one strategy out of many and for some crops (most notably beans) a permanent trench system has been in use for centuries.

I also committed the cardinal sin of growing potatoes in the same place for 2 successive seasons (and am still waiting to be cast down into purgatory by the god of gardening). Go ahead, Bart - life is too short to get hung up on everything....if it works, great and if not, well then, a lesson learned....but who is harmed by your little experiment?

Baby rabbits can get through a 1" hole! I've watched them. Whatever you use, make sure it's less than 1" - I use 1/4" plastic coated metal from any hardware store and sink it into the soil 6" and up over the rest of the metal barriers to a height of about 2". Bunnies are tiny!

They have special wire fencing called "Rabbit Fence" The opening near the ground are smaller but wider toward the top. I think its about 24" high. Anyway, it is designed to fend off rabbits.

Sold at HD.

The following link takes you to a video where the webcajun shows the five stages of the pink eye purple hull peas. He has quite a few videos on growing, harvesting and canning them. I pick my peas beginning at the "Racing Stripe" stage and continuing until just turning all the way purple but still soft.

This post was edited by yolos on Tue, Jul 29, 14 at 21:10

Well heck, what happened to my link. here it is.

Here is a link that might be useful: When to Harvest PEPH peas

Agree with Zach. That is why I was thinking of four rotating paddocks, so one is always fallow and ready for the onslaught. They clean it up in days anyway.

Our bird population is pretty healthy, although robins are generally seen more in January/February. I have plenty of other predators (lizards, skinks, garter snakes). I think this is probably one of those waves. The density I am seeing now is definitely an anomaly compared to the past. They are not swarming but the numbers I see are staggering, and these are just babies, I hate to imagine what it would look like if they all reached maturity.

The chickens are only going in 2 at a time when I can supervise, although if the grasshoppers they clean out everything, I may let them rummage some more. If I were to move and start a new garden, I would probably do the four paddocks for the chickens or a chicken moat around the garden.