23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

There are quick ripening red varieties like King Arthur ( use to be Fat'N Sassy) Ace, Bell Boy, Lady Bell, Merlin, La Bamba, Redknight. Still takes patience tho and temps in the 80's. At cool temps 50's- 60's none of them will ripen.

Like tomatoes there are green when ripe varieties. Not popular tho. some varieties are yellow or orange when ripe.

Bell peppers just don't ripen red as easily as other shapes of peppers, probably because of the thick walls. In Ohio, bell peppers are really lousy at ripening in the summer heat. Now in September with sunny warm days and cool (but not too cold) nights, the peppers ripen the best. Then it turns too cold in October.

Or...

Kevin

Here is a link that might be useful: firefox add-on

Thanks everyone! It worked and I'm soooo happy!

This thread made me think about perched water table. If I understand it correctly, the perched water table theory will cause the water of the soggy soil under the beds to go up toward the surface of your raised beds. I assume that the height the water will go depend on your soil texture. The finer your soil texture, the higher the water will go nearer to the bed's surface. 12 inches should be enough to stay away from the soggy ground water for most kinds of sandy soil. If your soil is heavier then just build higher beds.

I've had success in a similar situation by planting in 6-8 inches of municipal compost over my somewhat soggy garden soil. I only have to water occasionally in August and the only overwatering problems I've noticed are enthusiastic growth of weeds and unfortunately tomato foliage diseases. I also have not had any success with mulching - too water retentive - other than with Kraft paper.

My corn does wonderfully, although I grow an open-pollinated variety. I've only really tried melons in this situation once and I grew a variety seemingly not noted for being super-sweet (Amish muskmelon). Nice flavor but could have been sweeter, and they had a tendency to split.

So maybe the corn in a shallower bed and the melons in a deeper one?

~emmers

Guess it's like wild raspberries or blueberries or any other native, wild edible... you can certainly eat them, even if you didn't intend on growing them... lots of info on edibility in the link below. Now I kind of wish I had one to try!

Here is a link that might be useful: Eat the Weeds - Radish, Mustard's Wild, Rough Cousin

To me, both the root and leaves look like some kind of radish, probably long day type. If you have ever grown any kind of radish ,should be able to recognize if indeed it is radish, just by looking at it and smelling

I put bird netting over that bed last d ight and it appears nothing was eaten!! Could be a fluke. Guess we will see!!

Crossing fingers!

Thanks for the clarification, Slimy_Okra! Common names can be tricky. What I was told are Cape Gooseberries are commonly called "Giant Ground Cherries".

I'm happy to grow either that I can find, although it sounds like I'd have better luck with Ground Cherries (vs. Cape Gooseberries)

wayne -- how funny, leave to me to go crazy trying to buy a "weed"! :)

They volunteer readily and mature just fine that way.

I could be wrong, but those holes look more like tears than chewing, just some environmental damage from the wind blowing a new transplant.

Thank you for the responses! Couldn't find anything crawling around at night, but I did sprinkle some epsom salt around the plant. That environmental damage may be spot on...we have had some storms here. Appreciate all your help!

Okay-thank you. May not be able to for another week or so though. I hope they will last. :-/

Thank you!

You might place them in some slightly moist peat moss until you can plant them..I picked some asparagus today. I like to eat them raw. Those Purple Passions are quite sweet.

Nothing says you have to fill the bucket full of mix. If the buckets are what you have to use, for shallow rooted plants, 1/2 full works fine.

But if you do fill it when planting shallow rooted plants you don't have to water it as often since the extra soil retains more water.

Dave

I just checked my basil from last year. The roots filled the tall #5 nursery pots. (5 gal buckets hold more soil than a #5 nursery container.) The longest root measured 17 inches.

The basil in smaller containers did not do as well as the basil in the #5's.

I water the containers every day in the heat of the summer and the smaller containers were difficult to keep up with. My location is warm to hot,dry and windy.

Zeuspaul

Thanks for the reply. Im in Orange County, Ca. The mulch cover is black. Since my City Pick planter is self watering, just like the Earthbox, I top it off every day. If there's too much it'll drain through the over flow then retain water. Soil im using is the Miracle Grow organic potting mix. I have yet to add in EB Stone organic vegetable food.

The last week temps have been around mid to high 80s. From the research I've read that the water evaporates from the plants cells causing the limp look. Once night comes around or early morning they look great again.

Might want to do some reading about the problems associated with using granular organic fertilizers in containers, especially small ones such as this. Since there is no soil food web, no beneficial bacteria or microorganisms to convert the supplements to a useable form for the plants, you need to either add the bacteria and other needed soil organisms or use liquid fertilizers and you have to feed them frequently. .

Gardening organically in a container is a very different ballgame than organic gardening in ground.

As for the black cover rather than remove it just spread some mulch on top of it to reduce the heat.

Dave

"I do not use chives a lot ..." Ah, but up until now you haven't had a good fresh supply at hand. You'll be adding them to all sorts of things soon. BTW don't ever cook them. Add them to cold foods or right before serving. They go with almost anything salady, eggy, mayonnaisey, tomatoey, cheesy, potatoey, pastaey, fishy ...... Don't wait until you find a recipe. Just chuck them in. Experiment.

Zackey- She has new seedlings, not established bulbs. Consider these onion seedlings that have been cut back about 5 times so far.

Artichoke is something nobody mentioned. It can be added to landscape features and is very easy. Plus, I get 15-20 artichokes off of one good producer. Some of those are smaller but they are the best ones. Artichoke is very expensive so it's worth the space.
I love chard and always have it both in the flower beds and garden. There's only a couple of months that I can't grow it during Phoenix hot summer. I suspect you could grow it year around. And, a tiny bunch of chard is $1.99 in my store. The plant is long-lived ( I had one last 2 years!) and cut-come again. We can eat chard almost everyday, lightly stir fried with a tiny bit of EVOO, than used for a bed for poached eggs. I do the same with spinach, which I've had good luck with, even though it's only for a month or two.
Peppers and tomatoes have such variety. Peppers and eggplants grow very well for me, although I don't have great luck with tomatoes due to heat and spider mites. You might find peppers and eggplants will grow for years if you don't get freezing weather! I have a four year old pepper and my oldest eggplant lived three years before it froze!
Beets and carrots. A lot for little space.
Herbs-cilantro and parsley in winter and basil in summer. Rosemary, oregano and thyme are good all year. Mint always dies for me in August but we really enjoy mint chutney so I plant it every fall.
If you have room, consider pomegranate ,fig and citrus trees. Maybe mango,too. And guava, which can grow like a weed in the right climate.

Another that I forgot is asparagus. Takes awhile to establish but asparagus is so expensive from the store.

How do you tell if a broccoli plant is buttoning? My Packman seedlings were about four weeks old and appeared healthy when I put them out on April 11. On April 15 we had an inch of snow and a night time low of 22. It was fairly warm before and after that, and I only saw some minor signs of stress for a day (a couple purple leaves). Now, two weeks after planting out, they appear to be forming heads although they are only about six inches in diameter. Is that buttoning? Or just the beginning of a real head?

You are fine. Buttoning is a head forming on a very small (>6 inch) plant and usually does not get bigger than a quarter (25 cent piece).