23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Sorry, i misunderstood. Certainly, spawn will be quicker than spores, but 55 gal isn't small, it'll still take a few weeks.. Depending.. Research Paul Stamets, you will find all the information you need to know from his books,etc. Still, i would probably use smaller containers, not only for quicker colonization, but you are not leaving all your food on one plate. What happens if that 55 gal gets contaminated, it's garbage. What happens if a few of your 50 gal containers get contaminated, you still have the other 40! Plus, it's easier sterilizing small amounts of soil.
My local feed and seed store has certified seed potatoes for $1 a pound, but if you buy a fifty pound bag they are $.60 a pound.
They carry about 8 varieties that are suggested for our area. Standards like red Pontiac and Yukon Gold.
They grow better than the ones that I have ordered from seed catalogs before.
I have also planted grocery store spuds and they have always done well. I have some Yukon gold from the store that I plan to plant as soon as the ground gets dry enough. I bought them two weeks ago and when I got them out of the cupboard Sunday they had inch long sprouts all over them.
producing seed potato costs serious money. Retailers can sell them as a loss leader to attract buyers, or as a favour to customers.
I grow from supermarket spuds every year, but if I want different varieties, only online dealers offer them. Remember that you can always buy online once, and then save tubers for the next year. That will make the cost per lb. go way down.
Two inches , 3 inches of rain, is not a big deal. Your soil needs to be conditioned to have enough drainage. Plus, you should not allow any run off water to come towards your garden spot but rather run away from it. Trenching is one way to do it.
The other option is to have raised beds, with good well drained soil, where your garden spot is low lying and the soil is clay.
WILL your potatoes survive ? If the rain stops and excess water is drained, probably will.
Nc-crn and Desirai both have it. A tradescantia, often called dayflower or spiderwort. One of the few plants that has a true blue flower. It can be a pest, but my grandmother kept a bed of it in an out of the way spot where she wanted some color but didn't want to weed (she had extensive flower beds). It was very pretty bordered with orange touch-me-nots and it didn't require weeding since it squeezed out any other weeds.
I know it's not commercially viable.. makes much more sense to fumigate. I was wondering if it had been done at the level of the home gardener, though.
As for solving the RKN problem, that's a lot easier said than done for the home gardener, who can't fumigate. The various control options make sense for things like tomatoes, peppers, etc... but for okra, the tolerance level is just incredibly low. I can still get a usable crop, but nothing even close to what I can get in areas that aren't RKN infested. I also like to grow okra in my front yard as an edible ornamental, which precludes some of cultural controls for RKN.
Since I only grow 4 or 5 plants a year, grafting wouldn't be impractical.
I'll post back here if it ends up working.
What kind of pH tester are you using ? How reliable is it?
Anyway, I would reduce pH to 6 to 6.8. That is ideal.
As far as fertilizing, seeds DO NOT NEED fertilizer to germinate or even til they have a couple of true leaves. Then you can start fertilizing by 1/3 strength liquid fertilizer solution.
My sweet potatoes produced a few flowers for the very first time here in central OH - it was so hot last year I expect they thought they were in NC or somewhere! LOL Of course, they are the same family (Convolvulaceae) as morning glories, and that is just what the flowers looked like.
Glad I saw this post (en route to searching for something else!)... reminds me I am late starting my slips!
Erica, I lived & gardened in San Diego & the Bay area for 16 years... so noting your location, there are quite a few additional things I could suggest. It all depends, I suppose, on how much time, space, and water you have available.
- C. pubescens peppers (such as Manzano and Rocoto) are long-season peppers which are best grown as perennials. They will form small bushes. You might have to cover them & maybe place a heat source under the cover if a frost or freeze is expected.
- I think someone might have suggested Pepino (Solanum muricatum), but if not you might want to look into it. Another perennial, frost sensitive plant.
- Winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus) a long-season bean grown not only for its 4-sided pods, but for its edible leaves & tubers.
- Hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab) and Sword bean (Canavalia gladiata) are rampant climbing beans. Both can be either edible or toxic, depending upon what part is eaten when... but they are both spectacular plants which are fragrant in bloom.
- Chayote squash (Sechium edule) are rampantly climbing perennial squash. These are the pear-shaped squash sold mostly in Asian markets. These vines need a lot of space & a large, strong trellis; but given that, can produce as much as 100 squashes per vine in their second year. This was easily the most interesting & rewarding plant I grew in California.
- Malabar gourd (a.k.a. Chilcayote, Figleaf Gourd) is another perennial squash that requires a huge growing area. I never had a chance to grow it in SoCal, but when I grew it here, the vines ran 20 feet even in my short summers. Like many tropical vegetables, it requires short days to bloom, so I was only able to harvest the immature squash; but you should be able to get them to mature. The immature squash are also good, look up recipes by their Chinese name of Shark Fin Melon (there is a good thread about them on the GW Asian Vegetable forum).
- Yacon (Polymnia sonchifolia) is a sunflower relative that forms edible tubers. These are nothing like their relatives the Jerusalem artichokes; the tubers are roughly the size & shape of small sweet potatoes, and very sweet. Like many Andean root crops, they require short days to stimulate tuber production, but that is obviously not a problem in the warmer zones of California.
If you have trouble locating any of these, contact me... but most should have California sources.
Zeedman, thanks for the additional information. All of these things that you are suggesting sound marvelous (although I might not have room for a 20 foot vine). I am trying a manzano pepper this year. I didn't even know that black-seeded peppers existed until a couple months ago. Your mention of the rocoto is the first I've heard of that one though. I have heard of winged beans, but I was not aware that the leaves and tubers of the plant were also edible. That makes it all the more desirable. The Yacon is another thing that I've recently become aware of. That is actually something that went on my seed/plant exchange want list, shortly after I heard of it. Apparently that is another one with edible roots, as well as leaves. It is supposedly quite healthy.
I did send you an email after your first posting. I'd love to be able to do a seed trade with you, if I happen to have anything you might be interested in.
Again, thank you for all the great information. It is much appreciated.
LOL our friends left Rochester NY and the next day they got 19" of snow! Saw the news guy and the snow was parallel to the road!
They came here to So CA, Sacramento and places in between to 75-85*! They are quite happy! LOL Nancy
Ugggggh! mandolls!! My older sister lived in WI (Madison/Beaver Dam) for 15 years & never adapted to WI winters! Kansas winters can be brutal, but we can't compete with WI!
I've got my brassicas under low tunnels & we're supposed to be down to 20F tonight...... Agribon protects to 26-27F, so I may be replanting!
The good thing is that all of those veggies except the potatoes are quite tolerant of mildly alkaline soil.
Properly hardened off, your arugula, radishes and spinach will shrug off 20 F no problem. Damage won't start showing up until it gets below about 15 degrees. Don't be alarmed if the cotyledon leaves get burned by a freeze - this is normal.
Pea plants are good down to about 20 degrees.
Lettuce doesn't like it if it gets below the high 20s F, so I would focus on protecting that.
Edit: just reread your post and realized you sowed them today, so it doesn't really matter.
This post was edited by Slimy_Okra on Sun, Mar 16, 14 at 21:29
I wish I knew. I've come to expect my spring crops to be a lot more hit-or-miss than my summer or fall ones. I agree that the weather seems to suddenly and rapidly heat up, causing lots of spring crops to bolt or otherwise become useless. Some springs I get nice broccoli and peas, etc., others I get close to nothing. I'm not expecting much this year, unless the cool trend holds into June. But we will see, this will be another experience under my belt when the season has gone by. I've only been growing in this exact location a few years. Sorry I don't know anything about onions for scallions either. I only grow mine for storage.