23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
I just bought my house last june and was told the previous owners brought in the soil for this garden. The neighbors said he had a good garden every year. I have not done a soil test yet. I have increased the watering and the plants are looking a little better (except for litte black flies on the new growth on the bean plants I think they are thrips..) but nothing Is growing great. I have another jalapeno plant that I planted by the house and not In the garden that Is probably 2x as big as the one planted at the same time In the garden. It Is planted In a small bed that looks like It had regular soil mixed with gardening soil. I prepared the soil by turning it with a shovel as deep as I could get it and adding about half a bag of black kow brand composted manure and turned it in real well. This is not a raised bed garden. I have some tomato tone and some garden tone coming that I was going to use on my next days off. I am also thinking of doing a soil test.and then adding the tomato tone and garden tone. Any other ideas on what I should do?
Just to make you guys feel better...low of 0 F expected tonight! I've installed two layers of Agribon 19 plus six-mil poly for protection. The most sensitive among what I've already planted out includes beets and chard which don't really like anything below 25.
I've mostly got brassicas out, but one row of lettuce. I'll cover that. Got two flats of brassicas not yet put out, luckily.
The onions can fend for themselves. The potatoes are under straw.
The soil is supposed to be at 50 F four inches down, so the seeds may be OK. Can always reseed.
The question is : PEPPERS FERTILIZING.
I am also interested to know: ARE PEPPERS DIFFERENT FROM TOMATOES? how/ what/ why ?
This year is going to be my major pepper adventure. Probably mostly in containers, using 5-1-1 soil mix. I have dolomitic lime (with Ca and Mg.), plus CRF (MG Shake n Feed). These all go in the mix. WHAT NEXT ?
I have grown hot pepper with some degree of success in the past but not the sweet ones. I have given up on BELL types all together.
A lot of things cause flower/fruit drop, it's my experience that peppers are kind of touchy in that regard. Too hot, they drop flowers. Too cold, they drop flowers. Too wet or too dry? You guessed it, they drop their flowers. It's like goldilocks living in your garden, they like it to be just right! I wouldn't automatically assume it was the nitrogen. As Dave said, that will cause them to be big, beautiful, bushy plants, but will fail to develop very many flowers to begin with.
I too, have almost given up on bell peppers. I have tried containers and I never get any peppers. This year, they are going in the raised bed, if they don't work out, I'll be done with them for good.
I second the Vegetable Gardeners Bible. That is a great book. I have several on my bookshelf, but, find that many of them are, at best, good intentioned, at worst, downright misleading. Keep in mind,when reading books, that there is simply far too much info and even more variables to put into a single volume. They can be helpful places to start, but don't always take their word as gospel. Don't be afraid to experiment and fail ("negative results are still results", as I learned from the Big Bang Theory) and go against the grain. Really that goes for the advice given here too. What works in my garden may not work in yours, and vice versa.
I would suggest you at least check around with some of your friends to see who may have a van or truck that could help you out. Two people and a larger vehicle would make the job much easier. Also consider using a wheelbarrow when you get home with full containers and put the wheelbarrow up to the trunk and tip the full containers into it.
Well, that wouldn't be plain water then, it would have a broken plant stems leaking out lots of nutrients. And if you're trying to make a correlation to sprouts, you are not supposed to have them sitting in water either. It's part of what I like about my trays, good drainage.
I used black plastic for one season. It was 4ft wide black on one side white on the other. Got it on eBay just search plastic mulch on eBay. I didn't like how the weeds still came up in between the rows and it seemed to stop the water from getting at the plants. It was also a pain to clean up at the end of the season. You have to bury the edges of it so you get weeds in between the rows. The plastic I used it would of been impossible to use it another season. Definitely wont use it again.
This post was edited by hartford on Sat, Apr 5, 14 at 18:48
We switched last year. I built a beder to lay the plastic and drip tape. I don't expect we will go back the other way.
We still do all our cold season crops conventionally but all our warm season crops are done through plastic. The weeds that come up between rows is managed with a mower and mulch.
Well, success! The bed is in place and ready to work on the second bed tomorrow. We have the entire vegetable plot marked off with stakes and string and the rest of the beds will be assembled where they will end up. [g] It wasn't as bad as we were expecting. We didn't disassemble because the corners were glued. We discussed all the different ideas offered and we had four people and the bed was sitting up on wood blocks, so we tried just pushing the bed onto more blocks until we got it where it had to go. It moved quite easily on the blocks without any strain on anyone. It also didn't have to go far, maybe 5ft. Exciting to be making progress. Thanks for all the help!! Great ideas and I will remember them in many different situations where something needs to be moved.
We planted our first asparagus last spring and it did take a while to send up the first shoots. By the fall, it was a forest of ferns! I cut them all back and now that it is spring again, we have lots of little shoots. My dog helped harvest a few spears (dumb dog!) but mostly we are going to let it go this year and plan to harvest next year.
Fern, we must be neighbors because I'm also in the banana belt of Idaho. I put my 'gus in last year and it really didn't do anything until almost June, despite noting little white nubs of shoots on some of the crowns when I planted them. Just today I saw my first spear ready to break the surface when I went to pull a weed. You are good, just be patient and let them come up. Mine were very spindly last year, but the spear I saw today was much more robust.
Before I set my artichokes out into their permenent homes, I did the normal hardening process; Day 1 - placed them outside in the shade for a couple of hours; Day 2 - Placed them outside in the shade for 2 hlours and in indirect sunlight for a couple of hours; Day 3 - Placed them in indirect sunlight for 4-6 hours; Day 4 - Indirect sun for 6 hours, direct sun for 2 hours; Day 5 - Transplanted them into the garden. Exact times are unimportant. They did okay.
Just look at the seedling picture posted by Hudson. All seedling growers trim them without exception. It is just too inconvenient to handle them untrimmed and it is not necessary. A 4 t0 6" seeding will grow back readily.
Of course if you do grow your own seedlings you cay choose not to trim or trim very little, if you just take them out of your own greenhouse and plant out in the field. Onion family plants are very tough and resilient.
Here are my Spanish onion seedlings, planted late Feb. I have kept them trimmed to 5-6 in. rather than trimming them before planting. As some have mentioned already, this is just to get a sturdier plant. The roots will self-trim as the containers are only about 3in deep.
The space left between rows is so you have soil available for hilling them. If you want to do the hilling with soil and/or much brought from outside the bed then you can plant the rows much closer. So the plant spacing remains the same 12" but the row spacing is adjustable.
But with a 12x12 area you'd need to leave at least 1 path and probably 2 for yourself down the center so you can reach the plants to do the hilling/mulching.
Dave
Okay. I should note it's a raised bed and it's very deep. Last time I planted potatoes there I spaced them accordingly and when I was done hilling up there were trenches about 3 feet deep! lol The soil was slipping down the side. I mostly hilled that much up to support the stalks which kept getting snapped by some storms.
I know this much although I have straw I don't want to use it for hilling up. I tried that before and all I accomplished was building a nice home for slugs which devoured most of my potatoes in a 20x20 bed.
"Just be aware that IF an aphid manages to sneak in underneath, you will have an aphid population explosion underneath the covers."
That, unfortunately, has been a frequent occurrence for me when using Agribon 15. I use it as a cover for isolation cages, (when growing peppers for seed) and have had some serious infestations. Haven't figured out yet whether the aphids get on the plants during hardening off (in a small greenhouse) or whether they can find holes in the very loose weave of the AG 15.
Fortunately for me, I have a very robust population of predatory insects... the Agribon actually protects the aphids from them. All I have to do is leave the cover open, and within a week or two, lady bugs, syrphid fly larvae, and yellow jackets will eliminate the aphids.
I find eggplants to be quite heavy feeders like tomatoes and I fertilize them similarly.
Nice to know everyone is trying to grow different varieties and the opinions about them. I have had great success growing Black Beauty. Yes they do need heavy fertilizing in the growing season. The results are worth it :) I have been using an organic fertilizer with lots of bacteria in it and it seems to provide good amount of soil activity (lots of worms!)