23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

I can't remember where I saw this, but there is a marvelous YouTube video around about using diatomaceous earth to deal with stink bugs. Yes, everyone says to use it, but they don't really say how!

What you do is get your shop vac out, and connect the hose to the output, so you use it as a blower. Then mist the tomatoes. Now grab a handful of DE and, while standing in front of the tomatoes, blow the DE all over them. It sticks! My understanding is that this *completely* removes the stink bug problem. Yes, rinse off the harvested tomatoes before you eat them. This treatment needs to be done just every few weeks (unless it rains hard.)

I had a bad problem with stink bugs and tomatoes last year, before I heard about this strategy. I was picking and vacuuming until I was blue in the face. I've been prepared to use this strategy, but haven't yet seen a single stink bug.

If you are gonna spray, then I agree with Dan.

But for this time of year, if it is not the stink bugs it will be something else. I would pull them out, and replant for the fall crop. Organic tomatoes in Texas are only good for spring and fall. Forget about trying summer unless you want to go to war with bugs.

Spring: harvest by May, then pull.
Fall: start seeds indoors now for fall crop

June-August is prime bug time.

I got a late start (not harvesting by May for tomatoes) on everything & now all the veggies are infested. I plant stuff to attract beneficial insects, so I'll give them a chance to eat the enemies first before I pull.

Home tests are unreliable, so save your money.

It's in a container, right?

Your best bet, at this point, for feeding would be to get a water soluble all purpose fert like Miracle Gro All Purose(24-8-16) or Foliage Pro (9-3-6). If you go with the MG, you'll still need to supplement with Calcium and Magnesium--- Calmag.

Giving weekly doses at half strength is better than full strength every 2 weeks like the label says.

Herbicides will stay for quite a while, so stop adding them and you should be ok. It's pretty tough to kill a pepper plant.

Good luck.

Kevin

It is your soil mix.
Never uses grass clippings that were sprayed with anything, even if it was months ago. I'm assuming you didn't fully compost them before adding. The grass clippings are burning your pepper plants (too much nitrogen, and herbicide residue)

While tomatoes and cucumbers love high levels of nitrogen, pepper plants are more sensitive to the extra nitrogen, and will curl leaves, and usually won't produce or produce very little.

Tug on the plant. If it seems loose in the soil, pull it out and look at the roots.

Cauliflower is a cool season crop. When did you plant? I'm north west of Chicago, and it's too warm now. Even if the plant survives I don't think it will produce a head of cauliflower

"I'm growing 127 Cossack Pineapple, 16 Cape Gooseberry and 16 Goldie plants this year."

My eyes glazed over after "127". Yikes!!! That will be a lot of bent over, off the ground harvesting... and you'll need to do it often. Chances are that you will need to control rodents somehow, even in my small planting I found many chewed, empty husks. They eat the ripest ones first, probably attracted by the smell.

Yes, I think I went a little overboard this year ;-). I had rodents in mind when I planted so many, since I know I'm going to lose some of the fruit. They even went after my beets and turnips and chewed a hole through the side of my tunnel to get in. Inside the tunnels, where I have 48 ground cherry plants, I'm going to set a lot of traps baited with PB and hope they find PB more attractive. The crows could do with a meaty snack, right? Outside, I'll just hope for the best - there are lots of hawks and feral cats on patrol.

I was wondering the question about the multiple photo thing myself, I couldn't figure it out so I just create a collage of the pics I have and post them. I have posted at the most a collage of 4 photos and it seems to work out ok since most computers these days can zoom-in on a picture.

On the transplanting, I can say that I'm pretty good at it even though I'm new. I've even successfully created new plants from clippings which was fun, and a bit of a science project too. I prep either the ground or a pot with soil on the bottom, then squeeze the container the plant came in so it loosens, then I carefully tip the plant upside down, the plant and soil, and roots drop out, place it quickly in the new pot or ground, and quickly cover it up and around with soil, give it a good water, and leave it out of full sun for a few days to recover. The plant has to process sunlight and draws nutrients from its roots to do so. If the roots are in shock, it will be stressed to process the light. Lots of my plants have gone through shock, but I can say that the only plant that died was a nearly fully-grown sunflower I accidentally yanked from the ground with the roots. Don't ask. lol

The cucumbers look OK, I generally don't sweat the seed leaves, but I do keep an eye on them a little closer if I think they are fading before they are supposed to.

Colorado gardening is tough for many unique reasons (as is everywhere). The high altitude means our sunlight is far more intense then it is at sea level and our summers, though sometimes short, can be blazing hot. Denver is regularly ranked in the top 3 driest cities in the country. 70F for a week and then 1' of snow. 80 MPH winds (which in the summers heat feels like your standing in a blow dryer) just saps every lick of moisture out of EVERYTHING, including your plants. The climate is really just a b!@#$.

We do, however, tend to have fewer pest and disease issues, and the 40-50* drop in temperature between noon and midnight makes for mighty tasty produce, if you can make it to that point lol.

Don't be a stranger over at the Rocky Mountain forum either.

I'm not 100%, but it looks like it could be a severe nutrient deficiency.

What are your watering and/or fertilizing habits?

What type of soil is it growing in?

In the 2nd image, the dry leaf edges indicate the plants ran short of water.

Which could have damaged roots, thus caused deficiency like symptoms in the leaves. It's rather like dominoes -- one thing leads to another.

That quality question is a sticking point. I've been looking since last year. And I too found hoots of search hits, but it was kind of a wasteland. Many were no longer active. Others just junk, etc. It seems like surely there should be some good ones out there!

As with so many things in life, it is often difficult to find any correlation between quality information and personal opinion. :)

As with YouTube gardening videos, each reader has to evaluate the credentials of the blog author (if any ever provided) and determine if any personal agendas are coloring the information provided. Then you still have to take it all with several grains of salt.

Dave

LOL Deeby. Your comment reminds me of the California cheese commercial (happy cows make better cheese) with the earthquake. Typical Californians making fun of our natural disasters.

Here is a link that might be useful: Happy Cows Earthquake Commerical

You were right, loribee2; I checked with my son (in Berkeley) and he says it's been about 10 years since anyone felt a bump or rattle.

Here's the 2014 list of hurricane names, though, just in case you want to follow them from your west coast perch, the way I follow earthquake tremors (online, on a weather site) from the east coast:
Arthur
Bertha
Cristobal
Dolly
Edouard
Fay
Gonzalo
Hanna
Isaias
Josephine
Kyle
Laura
Marco
Nana
Omar
Paulette
Rene
Sally
Teddy
Vicky
Wilfred

Carol (not a hurricane)

Zucchini are the only plants in my garden I don't fertilize after planting, mostly because I don't want to encourage even more zucchini, LOL

Once the fruits are setting I stay out of the vines, neither weeding nor feeding. I like buttercups, too, but they can run 15 feet or more. You can nip off the ends of the vines if they threaten to take over city hall.

I too have seen no females all season! been like 3-4 weeks and all male flowers every few days, until this past weekend when i saw ONE female starting to grow ( hopefully will flower soon). i really hope my zucchini plant doesnt produce only 1 fruit all summer lol

I've got the opposite - all females, haven't seen a male yet. Thinking of asking my neighbors if one of their plants can make a pollen donation ;-)

Mine are golf-ball sized at best. They emerged only in late May and early June, thanks to an extremely cold spring and a very late thaw. A full ground thaw occurred at my place only in late May and in some other people's farms it wasn't until June.

My ground was frozen too. This may be one good argument for bins, to get an earlier start than the frozen soil allows.

Egg plant seeds don't digest and act as laxative. If that's what you want, wait till it "give" feel otherwise pick when not.

As least for purple asian eggplants, if you wait until they're full sized, they'll be soft but have noticeable seeds. If you're going to broil them or stir fry them, I'm not quite sure why you'd want them to be soft. They'll soften up nicely just by being cooked.