23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
These were transplants from inside. I took them out daily for just a few hours at a time and gradually introduced them to sunlight. Guess I didn't harden them long enough :( Should I pinch off that single cuke so the plant can revive or is it fine? It's the only one. The one on the right seems fine though.
Ahhh, Lesson learned. Yep. Hardening off really should be described as about a TWO week process. I did the same thing myself this year with some of my peppers and I've been growing them for over 12 years...lol
Should be fine though.
It's up to you on snipping that 1st one. Are you hungry? lol Snipping it will give you a quick bite now or leaving it will give you an early treat. Snipping it will tell the plant to start putting out more foliage and flowers.. always a good thing for a healthy young plant.
Me? I'd leave it, but I have a very long season. All depends on whether you're pickling or not. If pickling, snip it. I like to have a lot to pickle at one time -- the older the plants and the more the plants allows that to happen.
Kevin
Phee, please say that you'll call Bonide! They are there to help you! Who knows, maybe they'll tell you to give your harvested veggies a vinegar bath or something to dissolve the gook. I doubt it, but you won't know until you ask.
Rest assured that you aren't the first to make this mistake and it won't be the last. They will be used to answering this question.
Agree with all the advice given.
Rule of thumb---- IDENTIFY pest FIRST, then treat with the least invasive(humans to bacteria alike) method on upwards.
Example: Aphids.......
Research Integrated Pest Management(biocontrol)
Squish
Water treatments with a jet spray every 3-4 days
Insecticidal soap treatments(same interval)
Neem oil(same interval)
If you have to go further than neem, you're doing something wrong... refer to biocontrol. Think diversity.
Now, not ALL pests can be dealt with as easily as aphids. But the same general rule applies... Identify, THEN treat.
Good luck.
Kevin
Same kind of worm and damage happened to my collards and broccoli .... you can see the chewed up mess the worm leaves from the inside of the plant... the leaf wilts but not the entire plant, look closely and you'll find the little hole... and finally the worm... I love Bt, just didn't spray it early enough.
Nash, yes 2 gal/day, a few days a week does seem excessive. Remember you are only watering the root zone of each plant with drip and not the space in between. What your target should be is to approximate a 1 - 2 inch weekly rainfall with your irrigation. When there's no rain of course. Where you fall in that range depends on temperature, soil texture, crop stage, etc, etc. To really simplify things I try to deliver about 1 gal for every square foot of root zone per week. I believe a one-inch rainfall would give you a bit more than a half- gal over every ft2. That may mean having diff numbers of emitters for diff sized plants if that's an option for you. And of course leaving the system on longer as plants reach mature size.
If you're giving a young pepper plant 2 gal/day that's really enough for the whole week. If you had more organic matter and/or mulched more, you'd need alot less. That's the way I think of it so I have a good starting point and then I can tweak it as the season goes on. As I suggested before, actually dig with a shovel down to 6 or so inches to give you an idea of how moist it is after irrigating. It takes water several hours to percolate down 6 inches if you have a decent amount of clay, so keep that it mind. Maybe you could have an emitter that doesn;t have something planted by it so you could dig without disturbing roots. Just some ideas, hope it helps.
I do pop the blossoms (or small fruit) off until mine are showing good growth after planting, generally two-three weeks minimum. Once they show me the growth in both height and bushing (and healthy color), then I can't wait! I do read that some disagree and say that you're just losing the first tomatoes, but I don't think there's a set number of fruit on an indeterminate plant. So, I don't know if it's a climate thing, a soil thing, or what, but my tomato plants average about twice the size of others in my community garden. I see so many foot tall plants with clusters of fruit on them, which only get about two-three feet tall after, compared with my 8'+. I think it keeps putting energy into the fruit instead of root growth which is what I want to force deep first thing to withstand the sun once it gets hot.
Agree with the other responses. Very hard to tell until they bloom. The flowers are white instead of yellow, and (in my experience, may not apply to all species), wild cucumber flowers are very fragrant. Of course, once fruit forms you will know immediately...with the giant spikes and all. :)
dave_f1 SC, I took your "Maybe you can just eat your leftover tubers." as insulting. If I'm mistaken, I apologize and I can remove my post.
I just planted my purple sweet potato today. This is the one I have been talking about:
The slip has almost no root. The boots are actually at the tuber. So I cut a small piece of the tuber and planted the whole thing. I just want to attach the roots if the slip has no roots.
Here is a regular slip:
Field planted:
The front (left) are the slips with full roots (two with attached tubers). Most of the back row (right) are the rootless slips I chopped off the main slips. The rootless slips were housed inside for about a week and have grown roots about 1/2" to 1" long.
Thx for the "help"....
Last night I went to plant some more various garden beans (Burpee brand) and noticed that the soil in my beds was crawling with ants. Not your typical house ant but a bit lighter in color. So after planting my new beans I decided to apply DE to the entire area with my puffer applicator.
Still wondering why my Rocdors germinated just fine and not my 274s? The Rocdors were listed as being treated with Captan (don't know what that means) in the seed catalog meanwhile the 274s were untreated.
I just realized today that it may not have been the best idea to sow the new beans last night with the good amount of rain we may get between Sun and Tues.
My 201`5 attempt at growing artichokes in Northern Virginia is underway. I have planted some imperials (from 2014 seeds that were germinated under lights inside) and some globes(from 2013 seeds germinated inside). I started out with 22 plants that germinated from 25 seeds. I now have 5 planted in my raised garden and six planted among my landscaping plants. Some died from overwatering. I vernalized them starting on March 1, so that should have been enough to get fruit. Here are pictures at various stages. The last was taken today.
That could be a difficult one to hunt down. Not sure if it's available in the US. What do you find special about it? Are you making a collection?