23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

My guess as far as variety is.....Black Seeded Simpson.......an heirloom.

WOW! How awesome! You really do have a green thumb!!

I have some old seeds, too, better use them soon!

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.

Thanks for explaining, Dave!

Zone 6 here, coastal Connecticut, my rhubarb patch is over 50 years old (I inherited it) and every 5 years or so I divide and give away plants. My 16 linear feet yield more than I can usually use. Most definitely not an annual, and we have cold winters.

You can plant it now. Lacinto and blue curled scotch will grow and produce all summer long. I have had lacinto stalks grow over 3 feet tall as we pick the outer leaves all summer. Just keep and eye out for cabbage loopers, lacinto is a magnet for them.

In MN I grow kale all summer long but I lay off harvest during hot spells.

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. :)

Are the wild ones edible, or perhaps I should say, are they palatable?

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"....

Sure. Once they begin to break down the all the soil residents quickly go to work on them. Or field mice, or voles, or maybe it was a message from the garden gnomes. :)

Dave

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.

Thanks. Hopefully it gives me chokes! It's as vernalized as possible without freezing it... should be plenty for sure.

The 4th one didn't make it because I got lazy and stuck it in the ground without hardening off and it burned up.

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.

Maybe... But I just find that hard to believe... I just got soil test results that showed that all the nutrient levels were fine. And, the other cucurbits in the garden, including the large squash on the right are getting the same amount of water and are in the same soil and they're thriving. Add the spots on some of the leaves, and to me, it seemed like it must be disease. But, this morning suddenly the sick plant has begun to flower, so maybe it's not down for the count just yet.

Having blossoms is like having babies and can weaken the plant further. Have you checked for insects on the backsides of the leaves?

We had similar damage to our tomato plants and thought it was my herbicide spraying in the lawn at first. But upon closer look, there were copious amounts of aphids on the backside sucking away the plant. If you don't have any bugs on the leaves, then it must be herbicide drift.

Our plants 2 years ago looked extremely similar. The leaves were curled, deformed and shriveled but it wasn't herbicide. Look very very closely at the leaves.

As Jean says, it could be either contaminated potting soil or compost, or herbicide drift. I'd set aside any amendments you used when potting up those guys, maybe plant some beans in the leftover soil and see if they crinkle up as they grow. If they grow fine, you can rule out aminopyralid or chlorpyrolid in the soil.

Yep. Patience. They will come when ready. They like to "make an entrance". :)

Dave

Cool Beans Guys

Thank You

:)

Just for funsies, here's powdery mildew for real. I let this run to see how far it would go. It goes far.If you get this much, it's too late to panic...

O.O woah... That looks intense!

It takes a while for lime to start raising the ph so it's often added in the fall that way by spring it's done its magic. You can add the lime now and scratch it in but it won't have any immediate effect.

Rodney

Depends: If you add ground limestone (Calcium carbbonate) it does take time to react so you would not get immediate results. If you add slaked lime/hydrated lime ( Calcium Hydroxide) results will be very quick. Most vegetables do ok at pH 5.5 but there are a few like beets, limas etc that like pH 6.5 or more.