23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Thanks Dave! Yeah I lie awake at night thinking of new schemes to foil the cute little bunnies that ate 30+ Broccoli plants this spring...... When I finally drift off, I have nightmares of my beans being ate off at the ground....... Oh, wait...... that wasn't just a nightmare, that was also the fate of last fall's crop.......
That's very interesting defrost49. I'm going to look into it.
Thanks for posting about it.
One thing I wanted to ask about, is that I grew purple pole beans and purple peppers once, and when you cooked them they turned green. (which was disappointing). Would those still be higher in the nutrients?
I have a lot to learn and remember so I looked it up:
Royal Burgundy fades the longer cooked. Add raw beans to salad for maximum color and maximum anthocyanin value.
Also good Royalty Purple.
Colored fresh peas and beans that are red, blue or purple have more phytonutrients than traditional green varieties.
Odd, peppers aren't in the book.
Phytonutrients are produced by plants. These include antioxidants, certain compounds that reduce the risk of infection, lower blood pressure, lower LDL cholesterol, etc.
I was disappointed to learn my favorite apple varieties do not contains as many phytonutrients as others and the original wild varieties of apples contain a huge amount.
When plants were bred for higher sugar content such as super sweet varieties of corn, they usually lost nutritional value.
If you want to know if there are earwigs, just try removing the mulch from around the basil plant. If there we any will be hiding in the moist under it.
But Earwigs don't eat that much, as compared to slugs. Rats and rabbits are also suspect. So nylon tulle (from any fabric/craft store) can deter many and all.
Today I will be xplanting cucumbers. I will cover them with tulle. Tulle is a versatile thing to have handy and its is very inexpensive cover material. Will let air, light, rain in. It is wind proof, light weight.
"Zeedman, how do you get rid of your ant hills?"
Unless they are causing problems, I leave them alone. Black ants, while annoying, seldom cause problems. The except is when they spread disease from plant to plant, by carrying aphids... then it's necessary to kill the ants so I can deal quickly with the aphids (I use insecticidal soap to kill the aphids). Destructive ants, like the carpenter ants, are another matter; I do not tolerate their presence in the garden.
Ants are the only exception I make from strictly organic practices. I use the liquid ant baits designed for household use, placing them under empty pulp plant trays to both keep them dry & prevent animals from finding them. The hills are usually just outside my garden, and I bait them there. A single bait usually kills the nest, although it may take awhile to see results. Larger nests, or complexes of several hills, may require several baits. If I can't find the nest, I place a bait or two under the plants they are infesting, and let the ants find the nest for me.
If you don't want to use poison, and are able to locate the nest, dump a big kettle of boiling water on it. Do this at night, when most of the foraging ants should be in the nest. Open the heart of the nest, then pour the boiling water in. This may need to be repeated several times.
There is another way which might work, one I use to kill wasp nests in the ground. Get a tin or can, and put some charcoal lighter in it. Find a large, sturdy metal container (such as a very large steel bowl or metal tub) that will fit over both the nest & the tin of fluid. Just before sunset, water the ground around the nest to make it soft. Working at night so as not to get stung, place the fluid next to the nest, light it, and quickly cover it with the tub, forcing the edges into the ground. The burning fluid will exhaust all of the oxygen inside, and leave poisonous fumes behind. Leave the tub in place for at least a day; any insects that were too deep to be killed by the fumes will be killed as they emerge. This has been 100% effective for me when dealing with ground-dwelling wasps; it might be worth trying for fire ants. Keep in mind, ants often form satellite nests, you'd have to get them all at close to the same time, or neighboring nests would just re-inhabit the empty ones.
My asparagus bean plants are aphid magnets. I knock them off in the morning and they're back in the afternoon. They destroy the blossoms and new beans so that few are left for harvest. Will those of you who say that you have no trouble with aphids please post which varieties you're growing? I'm hoping there's a resistant one.
For the reasons mentioned above, I keep BT liquid in our outside (storeroom) refrigerator. It remains effective for several ??? years. It usually takes about 5 to 7 years before I finish the bottle.
This post was edited by grandad on Sat, May 31, 14 at 8:56
I missed it. Sorry. The per 10' thing threw me off for some reason. Since it is organic, I probably don't need to worry as much about over doing it... I definitely tend to overthink things sometimes so thanks for dealing with me!
Since this is the first application, you guys think I could by with adding more? Maybe 2-3 tablespoons per plant? There I go again over thinking... oh well... :-)
thanks again!
It's true that gardening is a tricky hobby if you are a very anxious person as there are so many things you can't control or know and it puts you in touch with your environment and food in a way we aren't accustomed to anymore.
However, (speaking as someone who can also be a very anxious person), gardening could be a way to face some of these things and work on accepting (some) of the chaos in the world and (some) of the things we cannot change or control. For me, as much as I can worry about my soil (found some old paint chips in it from taking out a fence...oy...trying not to fixate and be reasonable about the actual danger) the payoff can really help you get past all the little trials you have to go through to get there.
Perhaps as you get more informed about all these issues, that knowledge will help quell your anxieties and you can embrace the very positive experience of gardening and being "present", which is one of my main reasons for doing it as it gets me out of my head and reconnected to my hands, the dirt, and the miracle of things growing.
I say don't give up yet! but maybe look at it as a learning opportunity, in more ways than one.
Legumes are kind of the garden weirdos when talking about nutrients - since they tend to make their own nitrogen and don't need much of anything else to do well. So trying to companion plant with them is difficult - except for other legumes. So you could always plant bush beans, crowder peas, southern peas (aka field peas) etc. - 70+ varieties of them - or any of the other legumes. Plus any root crop that doesn't require high N supplements like the carrots Lori mentioned. It is the need to keep other climbing things off the bean trellis that I would be most worried about.
But if you don't normally feed during the season - which I have to admit I can't imagine - then maybe it won't be an issue for you no matter what you plant there.
For me the gardens get regular supplements - primarily side dressings with lots of compost since I have a well established soil web - throughout the season as the nutrients are exhausted by the plants and the N vaporizes away. Plus supplemental feedings of various other organics as needed throughout the season.
Nobody wants to go 3-4 months without eating. :)
Dave
PS: the beans from last year won't provide any supplemental N to what is planted this year unless you left all the roots with nodules in the ground or tilled all the plants in. If the plants were pulled, the N goes with them.
Cut off at ground level to leave the roots, pulled what was hanging on the fence off as best I could and threw the tops in the aisle to compost in place with the old hay we'd mulched with (though I admit I didn't look to see if they were still there, DH could have "cleaned them up" and put in trash, I should have bagged them up and brought up to put in compost bin).
I was planning on side dressing (way to the other side) as well as my usual amending the hole if planting tomatoes on the other side of the beans. But I amend the beds every spring with plenty of compost (wherever I'm planting things other than beans or potatoes) so no, I don't feed. Except when it looks like they need it, like last year when I tried foliar feeding b/c of all the rain. I do use diluted Neptune's Harvest while they're still in the pots, before transplanting.
I think I'm skipping carrots this year - the strawberries took over the bed I had them in last year and that's the only one that's been sifted through enough to get rid of even tiny pebbles. Our soil is pretty rocky - even the beds near the house that have gotten more compost b/c we started them in 2008.
Maybe turnips? Onions? There are still onion sets in the feed stores.
In your area I believe most people grow tomatoes during the winter. If it isn't too warm & humid for fruit to set, it soon will be. You may have a little better luck if they're cherries. My mom who is in Boca Raton has already pulled her tomato plants.
"Average high temp this and last month 64F, av low 42F. In between we have had a number of days over 70F. Still too cold?"
Yep. Peppers love the heat. Cold just makes them sit there and not do anything. When it warms up a little more they should start growing.
"Maybe it needs more time. Should I pinch the blossoms off and wait and see?"
I would.
Rodney
Yes the cutting will root - assuming it is a growing tip and not just a leaf branch - just like tomatoes will. But they do take longer than tomatoes to generate roots and need a little more care until they do.
Dave
Here's a picture of it. How do I care for it?