23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Oh my! Zone 2???? I find it amazing to see what you are able to grow in zone 2! LOL Good for you! Nancy

nancyjane, Perhaps you could save one bed for winter planting. Cover crops are nice for beds not in use.

I planted the first planting of sweet corn [of 7] a couple days ago. Also we planted part of the potatoes, set out the rest of the early broccoli, set out the early butterhead lettuce and spinach, and sowed beets and carrots. The ground is working up nicely.

I am In Atlanta, and I can say that our weather has been having a few uncharacteristically cold nights of recent. And by recent I mean all month. I think you will see them grow healthier over the next three weeks when our soil temps get well above the 60 degree point. Right now our soil has been hovering around 45-50 which can be a little cold for them. Especially if you started them indoors.

Thanks for the help everyone. I will look into amending the soil and plant again in a few weeks. I have always had good luck growing ornamentals and trees in my soil but this is my first year vegetable gardening.

I'm experimenting this year. I had some left over seed potatoes and planted them in 30 gallon Rubbermaid tubs. We will see how it goes. I used just a general purpose potting mix I picked up at the hardware store, can't remember the brand though.

First, you will need a deep container.
You fill your container about 10" from the bottom.
Place the seeds on it and covert with about 3 to 4 inches of additional soil. So far you have used about 13-14" of depth. Tomato will grow roots (NOT TUBERS) in this portion of the soil and will get the moisture and the nutrient from that part.

After the tomato sprouts and grows, you start filling around/between the stems: THIS IS WHERE THE TUBERS WILL GROW. This part needs NOT to have ANY nutrients but has to be fluffy so the tubers can grow in it easily. This part should have a depth of about 8". So this results in an over all container depth of about 20 -22 inches.

Therefore it is important that the lower 13" (wher the roots will grow) to consist of very rich and balanced nutrients, before you plant in it. I will mix in some compost, manure , pine bark fine, peat moss and some perlite. Or use something like ProMix with added CRF.

anatomy of potato plant. Though not a very good one.

mdfarmer I would recommend getting a soil test from CSI ( Crop Services International ) and get a very good soil test that will change everything in your garden. You will find what is tied up and get minerals and all the good things back into your soil to bring back the teast you once had.

I have got one from them this Spring and am very pleased with what I did not know about my soil. NO more NPK testing any more.

In response to the tomato ripening issue I found out the hard way last year that tomatoes are the true "Goldie Locks" of the garden: they don't like it too cold, or too hot, but juuuuust right.

The below is copied for horticultural website but can be found in numerous places... Hope it helps!

"Ripening and color development in tomatoes is governed primarily by two factors: temperature and the presence of a naturally occurring hormone called "ethylene."

The optimum temperature range for ripening mature green tomatoes is 68��"77 deg. F. The further temperatures stray from the optimum, the slower the ripening process will be. And, when temperatures are outside the optimum range for extended periods, conditions may become so stressful that the ripening process virtually halts.

At the same time, tomatoes do not produce lycopene and carotene, the pigments responsible for ripe tomato color, when temperatures are above 85 deg. F. So, extended periods of extreme heat cause tomatoes to stop ripening. The resulting fruits often appear yellowish green to yellowish orange."

I wouldn't do it, for a number of reasonsâ¦.

One, you still have to fix the browns to greens ratio even if you did it in your vegetable beds, so why take up the space in your raised beds? You may as well keep the compost bin and fix the balance as others have said.

Second, it's expensive to build raised beds and then space is limited. I would rather use that space for higher production.

Third, If you keep it in a pot in the bed, it's going to smell and attract critters if it is not being composted correctly. Without coming into contact with the soil and without the right amount of browns. Plus in a small pot like that, I have to wonder if you have enough volume. I've often read you should make a compost pile at least a 3x3 ft size.

Cardboard is another good brown. You can get all kinds of cardboard from many different sources. On Freecycle, people are always offering moving boxes.

How much compost are we talking? I've heard of something called spot composting where you just bury a small amount of kitchen scraps right in the ground. But I think that only works with small amounts of scraps and a lot of ground to put them in.

Speaking of raised beds... We're using raised mounds (raised soil with no frames around them) this year for gardening. Tomatoes, egg plant, squash and various types of peppers are planned. Just how wide and tall should our mounds be?

Pressing the soil down defeat the purpose of digging it up in the first place. This is actually a very good chance to incorporate some compost and well rotten manure into the soil at suitable depth that you wish to encourage your plants root to grow(ie. 10 to 18 inches depend on plants type). Mere deep-watering can only do so much to encourage deep root growth with nothing down there for them to get nutrient. Only when coupled with plant food(compost/manure) at the suitable depth can deep-watering encourage deep roots efficiently. Plants are a kind of organism that react purely to stimulants:light, temperature, soil nutrient, water, mean altitude and/or latitude etc. Take care of their growing conditions and their growing conditions will take care of them.

I see. Thanks for the response, that makes a lot of sense.

I'll be getting some Shake-n-Feed with it being so widely used. If I was to fertilize it with Shake-n-Feed now, would I have to worry about over fertilizing since I already have the other plant food granules mixed in with the soil?

I know my plants are wanting some food, but I'd hate to over fertilize and not realize it until weeks later when they die or start exhibiting signs of toxicity :-/

Shake n Feed is a Slow Release granular, no magic about it. But for containers that is better,because lasts longer than ordinary granular PLUS it has Calcium and Magnesium. Fertilizers like 10-10-10, 16-16-16 are quick release and have NO calcium and Magnesium.

I mix Shake n Feed with my 5-1-1 potting mix for peppers and tomatoes. For the bed plants I use other stuff, like MG BLUE soluble, 16-16-16, Ammonium sulfate (23-0-0), Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) and dolomitic lime. ( the last two item are used very sparingly)

Thanks All.

Dave: obviously seed starters are using it for components and not so much for the myco.. because we already determined that small containers are useless for microorganisms, right?

Also, so only 1 year with the stuff? Reasons?

Thanks again. lol

Kevin

Also, so only 1 year with the stuff? Reasons?

It's no different that any other peat based potting mix in that regard be it MG, Sta-Green, Fafard, Fox Farm, Metro, Sunshine, etc etc.

They all decompose, compact, porosity is lost, etc. over the season. That fact is the whole basis for Al's 5-1-1 as an alternative. Some will get 2 seasons out of them by recharging the mix - 1/2 used mixed with 1/2 fresh. They also make great in-ground garden amendments after use.

obviously seed starters are using it for components and not so much for the myco..

Basically yes although there is some myco root colonization on the seedlings that benefits then while still seedlings and then carries over to the garden when transplanted. But its primary or long term benefit IMO is it allows for the use of organics in containers.

Dave

In the case of garlic or even the large onions, those are the seed/bulb that new plants come from.

But a more equivalent idea would be using the roots of green onion/scallions and replanting them after cutting off the green parts for use. The green onion would regrow in this case (not sure how much white part needs to remain but I generally cut a little bit above the green leaf growth).

The problem with some bean sprouts was because contaminated seeds were grown in a warm, moist, dark environment and they were eaten raw. Growing from the remains of other produce, especially if you put it out in your garden, is different. If the produce you try to regenerate was contaminated, you would have gotten sick the first time you ate it. If you didn't get sick then, you won't get sick from it later. The produce that made people sick usually got contaminated with e. coli in the field before it got to the grocery store.

Even if not allowed to freeze to death, true annuals go through their entire life cycle in one year. Their "mature size" is whatever they grow to in that one year. The point here is that Solanaceae are not true annuals, in that they don't self-destruct at the end of a year, though many let a freeze do that. In northern climes, you don't have much of a choice. It's amusing that many lists of perennial vegetables don't include them. Why? Because the northern assumption is that what can't make it though the winter is a horticultural annual. That's wrong. A frost intolerant perennial is a, let's say, practical annual, if you can't protect it.

It would be interesting to see an honest list of horticulturally perennial vegetables.

It would be interesting to see if you have an overwintered tomato how it does this year (esp. if you can plant it in the ground). My DD and her BFF are doing a science fair project on the lifecycle of a tomato plant, I told them that tomatoes are perennials in warm climates, but here they don't do well even if you can keep them alive, or at least I don't think they'd do as well as peppers.

Maybe something to do with the peppers lignifying, I don't think tomatoes really do that, my cousin has 2 Burpee hybrids in shrub pots (10 gal?) that I gave her last summer, they languished in 4" pots until I opened a bag of MG and potted them up. She moved them into her living room for the winter, I haven't been to her house lately but a month or so ago one had a small tomato - nothing like the size I was getting off these plants. But they were still alive. Going to have to try to plant them in her garden this year and see how they do but I think the answer will be "not well".

I do have some peppers I started from seed in Jan 2012, potted up until last year 2 biggest (Douglah 7-pot) ended up in 3-5 pots and 3 others (Bih jolokia ) in 2-gal pots, they did flower this winter but no luck hand pollinating. I also has a purple serrano the same age in a 1 gal pot, it was always tall and spindly, I cut it way back and it is looking wonderful now (I did get 1 serrano and 1 Douglah last winter).

I agree that you are over-analyzing the whole thing, which is a waste of time at best and could lead to frustrating crop failures at worst. I would suggest that you get your soil pH tested and then go from there to achieve a target pH of 6.5 to 7.0, which works for pretty much all the veggies you're growing.

I don't like applying urine to my garden because it can burn plants and it can also be high in sodium.

When you use urine, you have no idea what you're getting, as far as pH goes. None at all. You're welcome to pee on your soil, but if you do, forget about the numbers - you may as well pull them out of thin air.

Better to pee on your compost pile and let nature take its course. By the time the compost is ready for use, the soil critters will have worked things out for you.

Well Amish Paste is often described as a somewhat wispy plant in appearance so it could just be a plant appearance you aren't used to. I wouldn't expect it to look much like a Better Bush. In other words varietal appearances vary greatly regardless of if they are heirlooms or hybrids.

Don't know anything about Bison other than it is a dwarf determinate but if rapid wilting is the symptom then I'd sure be looking for other causes like over-exposure, less root development or root bound plants.

Dave

There could be a theoretical justification. Hybrids are a cross between two genetic lines, so you get the genetic contributions of both the mom and the dad. So-called 'heirloom' varieties are inbred lines - that's what keeps them a single consistent type. In genetics, the benefit of crossing two different lines is called 'heterozygote advantage.'

Another way to think of this phenomenon: many dog breeds suffer from genetic diseases that are the product of inbreeding. In order to get the dogs to look the way they do, you have to keep breeding the same types over and over, and eventually they get inbred. On the other hand, mutts are generally free of such medical conditions - being crosses between different types. they don't collect bad genetic mutations.

As much as the internet gardening world loves it's 'heirlooms,' hybrids have been used in agriculture and in animal breeding for a long time for good reasons.