23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

I live in se wisconsin which I believe is zone 5b. This week has really been the first week above freezing temps and we still may get snow early next week. I know they are able to stand colder temps but even this young? Also I'm still trying to plan out how I will harden them off seeing as I work full time.

Yes, I've held off putting my youngest brassicas out because of the forecast for this weekend. They're about at the stage of yours, and I would have done it this week, but now I'm wondering if I'll have to cover the ones that are already out there.

Isn't the no-till method designed to be used with strip farming and Round-Up? I haven't seen much written in journals or by real science organizations touting no-till organic. Maybe the Kerr Foundation has a little information.
I do mulch heavily but I like to incorporate last season's mulch to compost. I don't mulch much in winter because its hard with closely planted lettuce and greens. But, I add 6-12" of aged manure before every planting, along with carbon from straw,,pine straw, tree trimmings.
When the organic matter disappears into rich soil I don't consider that burning up.

Moving back to the original question, I prefer to till in both Fall and Spring. If I am able to do so, I usually have a great year... but if the soil gets wet early in the Fall, then I rely on a Spring tilling.

Most of my garden is heavily mulched (20-25 bales of marsh hay & grass clippings), to which I add leaves in the Fall. If I turn all of this under in the Fall, it will have mostly broken down in the Spring; tilling again helps further disperse this material throughout the root zone.

There is no way that I could plant 10,000 square feet of garden without tilling. Even if I planted from a balloon, so that no foot ever touched the ground, the heavy soil in my area would still get compacted by heavy summer rainfall. Furthermore, I might only have a planting window of several days between storms... if the soil was not already loose, I would never get the whole garden planted.

Note that I don't disagree with no-till gardening, nor square foot intensive gardening, nor raised beds, nor any other widely used garden technique. They all have both good and bad points, and a gardener should use the one(s) that best suit their lifestyle, their soil type, their climate, and the scale at which they garden.

But two points have been brought up that I would like to respond to. The first is that tilling "burns up" organic matter. I would lump that statement into the same category with "fat burning" commercials... it is meant not as a statement of fact, but to elicit an emotional response. I can firmly assure you, there is no smoke rising from the soil after I till. ;-)

What tilling does is to accelerate the decomposition of organic material deposited at the surface, by turning it under where conditions are more optimal for decay. Isn't that fundamentally what you do when you turn compost? That decomposition is what releases nutrients from the organic matter to be used by the plants being grown, and enriches the soil... so I wouldn't equate a constructive process of soil building through decay, with the negative term "burning".

The other point I would make about tilling is that it does more than just break up the soil. It also destroys insects & disease organisms that shelter themselves in garden debris. One of the best ways to prevent this year's minor insect or disease from becoming a major problem the following year, is to destroy all crop residue at the end of the season. Cleaning the garden & either destroying or composting garden debris accomplishes this. So does tilling... but only tilling can be accomplished on a large scale. Furthermore, only tilling will destroy insects which pupate in the soil - such as squash vine borer.

While I acknowledge that no-till methods work well under some circumstances, for me the insect harboring issue is a deal breaker.

This post was edited by zeedman on Sat, Apr 12, 14 at 1:57

I think I got the zone wrong, we're kind of 4.5 here and usually go with May 15th.

I have true leaves on 2/3 of the stuff (both peppers and tomatoes). The other 1/3 are just tomatoes and think they'll be 3 weeks this weekend so should be getting their second leaves any minute.

I move them into some NothrupKing 20 count flats (probably 3" X 3") and filled with some Happy Frog potting soil full of humic acid, guano, worm castings and more. This would seem pretty rich, would you start supplementing with anything else in the water? I did pick up some "Tomato Maker" product that I could dilute down to 1/10 or 1/20.

Since all of these flats could fit in a 5X5 or 6X6' area, I'm thinking I should probably get a fluorescent fixture. Would a 4 ft, 2 bulb T5 fixture do the job, and is it worth the extra money for the high ouput variety?

Sounds like I should run the heck out of the light, maybe 24/7. I like experiments so I'd be interested in putting some of them out in a homemade cold frame to compare results. Possibly I'd shade them from direct sun for a bit but I have no experience with hardening off combined with coldframing.

Got a 4 tier "greenhouse" a few years ago from TSC- paid about 19.99 on sale for it. Works great and has held up well. I think its size keeps things from cooking in the sun and I can carry it in/out of the garage and use a bungee cord to secure it to a clothes line pole to keep the wind from knocking it over.

Did you put weed n feed on your lawn?

Well there was an outdoor bug spray using the hose to disperace it. I usually do there entire outside of the house then spray the remaining over the yard but I took special care not go near garden or trees. Last fall my citrius trees had server N deficiency so I could only find a grass formula to increase n above the citrius avocado fert mix. I did the entire yard but that was fall, they seemed to be taking off.

I originally planted my seeds in peat pellets and then just stuck the pellets in the peat pots with jiffy.

This is new info and yes, it only compounds the water problems. Did you remove the netting from the pellets before putting them in the pots? Definitely need to do that.

Dave

My experience with peat pellets was that the roots of many plants weren't able to penetrate into the pellet. Even properly soaked they were too dense.

I was appalled at how horrible the roots were for most of those seedlings.

I agree the twigs work great for peas. The Nearings always used brush prunings for peas. Once year Scott Nearing presented the Vermont legislature with a large bouquet of pea flowers.

I too use pea twigs. I have lots of pruning stuff and it's so easy.

Whose trees are those? Would they allow you to lop the top off, just enough to get you more sun?

Sun from morning to 2 pm isn't TOO bad. You could plant a lot of veggies there except the hardcore sun lovers.

If you know the height of the tree, x
and the distance from a point in the veggie garden to the tree, y
Divide x/y and you'll get a fraction, z.

Go to google and type in "arctan z in degrees" and you'll get a number. This is the sun angle at which that point will start to get shade.

Then go to the link provided below and plug in your latitude, longitude, date, year and time of day. Look at the angle for different times in the afternoon. At the time the sun angle approaches and decreases below the number arrived at above is the time of day you will start to get shade.

The fact that you still get shade after 2-3 pm suggests that a near-full day of sun may be available only in the months of June and July and a maybe a bit of May and August. The current solar angle is approximately the same as it would be in early September.

Here is a link that might be useful: Solar angle

This post was edited by Slimy_Okra on Wed, Apr 9, 14 at 23:30

I had some similar issues when planning out where to put my raised beds. There's a fairly high tree line surrounding the entire yard making it hard to judge hours of direct sun. I downloaded a free android app called sun surveyor lite that acts as a 3D compass for the sun. You can choose any date of the year and estimate hours of light a location will receive. Might be something worth looking into.

Tony

Yep, nights are far, far too cold for okra. Okra sulks if the soil is not warm because it is easily attacked by soil pathogens. Personally, I would yank the plant out, grow something else for now and reseed okra at the appropriate time, which is when nights warm into the high 60s at least.
Don't transplant okra - it really dislikes it. It's only recommended for growers with short summers.

Agree. If your night time temps are that low then there is no way your soil temps are warm enough for okra. Soil temps rather than air temps are vital to planting things at the right time.

Since your production from the one plant will be minimal anyway - if it survives - I'd pull it and plant something more appropriate to your current weather

Dave

Thanks everyone! It is a shame because I had ~20 heathy chard plants I grew from seed. They are all infested now.
I am growing everything in containers (mostly fabric pots).
Anyone have suggestions for how to put row covers over round pots?
What other plants are vulnerable to these pests? My lettuce and mustard have been left alone; however, I have some spinach and bok choy that just sprouted... They are too tiny for the pests to infest yet. I am also growing radishes and lots of other things from seeds that I recently planted.

I haven't had a garden for 8 years, and this is my first west coast garden (and my largest with the most variety). I am sure will encounter a lot of new pests and problems! So thanks so much for your help, I am sure I will need more :)
I am just so happy to be gardening again.

Thanks,
Robin

They attack all sorts of veggies, but usually the only damage is cosmetic.. the little "mines" that you'll see on leaves. Only thing I really ever noticeably see them attack in my garden is mainly cukes.

Like i said, just get another rather large pot, plant some alyssum, marigolds, maybe some cilantro, dill, parsley. Zinnias, even. And you'll be able to keep quite a few pests in check.

Kevin

Here is a link that might be useful: beneficial attractors

Just to follow up on this, it's working really well already.

Thanks again.

That's good.

My sugar snap peas are coming up. I had them under clear plastic.