23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
By the time the eggplants bloom it's going to be hot and you will have the greenhouse open a lot for ventilation. Any bumblebees that stay the night will start working the blossoms first thing in the morning. You could include a few flowering plants around the door to attract them.
I have found that if I hold eggplants in containers kept on a table on my deck until they outgrow quart pots, then cover them with tulle for a couple of weeks after setting them out, they are plenty strong enough to deal with flea beetles. I have lots of mint, and throw mint cuttings on the ground around the plants. It deters some but not all eggplant flea beetles.
Cold frames and soil temps (although an excellent plan) aside since the OP doesn't have one and isn't talking about direct seeding right now. Rather the question is starting tomato and pepper plants indoors.
So we are still left with the issue mentioned several times above of it being far too early in his zone to start either.
Not only will the plants rapidly outgrow any containers used and require several potting-up transplants but they will be heavily stressed, leggy with weak stems and weak circulatory systems, but they will be far too large to tolerate the transplanting to the garden process well, There is ample evidence available to support these claims and many discussions here throughout the forums on the problems and failures that result.
Hopefully the OP will respond to this issue and reconsider the plan.
Dave
Yup, far too early for tomatoes, especially the varieties the OP lists. There is just no point to starting them early. They get leggy and flop over and try to set flowers in their little pots, only to languish when they finally do make it into the ground. Wait until late March and ride the momentum of warming days and abundant sunshine. The only tomato I would start this early would be a patio variety destined for life in a greenhouse or container where it could be moved indoors at night.
Peppers are different story. In recent years I've been starting them earlier and earlier here in central MA. Last year I started them the 2nd week of January and they did quite well. It means a lot of weeks of babysitting them, but they did produce earlier and in excellent quantity. This year I didn't get around to starting them until Feb 2nd.
As for what to start them in, why not try a soil blocker? I started using one a few years ago and quite like it. I don't use it for everything, but it works well for tomatoes, peppers, brassicas, and lots of other plants too. No fussing with odd-sized yogurt containers, no sending plastic to the dump, no waste at all.
Hence we have built a huge box, 16' x 4' x 3.5' high.
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That box will waste a lot of soil (IMO). For (most) plants you don't need more than 1.5 ft depth. If I had to do it, I would make the box about 18" deep, with a bottom and support it on (like) cinder block every couple of feet. This way the box will be protected from the flooding under neath. JMO
If standing water is really that common a problem for you, then I can understand why you'd like to put down crushed concrete at the base for drainage. Presumably you could use gravel or pea stone as well - whatever is cheapest. I'm not sure that 1 foot of soil is enough to grow veggies satisfactorily. Maybe it would work for some shallow rooted crops, but I'd definitely want a thicker layer of soil than that.
If you are going to layer soil on top of recycled concrete (or gravel or whatever), you'll need to put a layer of good quality landscape fabric between. Otherwise the finer soil particles will wash down into the gravel and take up all the void space, which would defeat the purpose.
I'd say 8-12 inches of gravel at the bottom, then landscape fabric, then 2 feet or so of soil, leaving room for a layer of organic mulch such as straw or whatever at the top.
I can't envision insects being a major problem, but I've never lived in NM, so maybe critters are different down there than what I'm used to. If you wind up with an ant problem, maybe just treat with an organic insecticide?
I've tried it two years in a row now...FAIL! I used large 24" drainage pipe (3 1/2'tall) and cut 3" holes every so often. Then I tucked the berry plants in the holes as I filled up the pipe with potting mix. The first year I ran some drip irrigation through the middle of the pipe. It didn't soak through the soil tho, just made a bee-line for the bottom and all dripped away. Last year I fashioned a sprinkler head to the top of the pipe...didn't work either. The water soaks the foliage but not the soil. The key-hole idea might work if you can solve the watering problem. But my strawberries like lots of water...and yet, they like good drainage too, so I wasn't able to meet their needs. I'm using my pipe for a tall standing display of moss roses (portulaca) this year. A few volunteers sprouted with my berries and grew great...so I know they will like the set up.
Since you're thinking of the raised block method, maybe regular watering will work for you. Watch out for how vigorous strawberries can grow those runners tho....I have a feeling they will be like granddaddy spider legs everywhere.
Yeah, I have one of those strawberry planters which is pretty similar to your drainage pipe idea. It didn't work so well for strawberries for me either. For the past few years it has been planted with petunias, which seem to like it just fine.
I'm with 'ya about the runners. They can be a real pain to manage sometimes. But I'm hoping the elevated keyhole bed will help here too, since the runners will be easier to spot. Maybe. ;-)
My experience is just the opposite. I always start mine in the greenhouse in tall 6 packs. When I direct sow, it's sketchy if they come up or not, and I'm often left with bald spots in my row.
The trick, I've found, is to pack the soil down as the sprout grows up and add a little to the top. I do this about three times before transplanting out in the garden. That way when you pop out the plug, it's nice and firm and doesn't crumble, so the root doesn't get transplant-shock.
Each seed often sends up 2 or 3 sprouts for me. I don't thin them like they say to. I just let them battle it out and the strongest one always becomes the beet.
So far I've only been able to direct sow in the Summer some time. A few years back, I sowed in April, and they got a couple inches tall, but they stopped growing and were eaten by Slugs... It's simply not cold enough here to have them grown entirely in the ground from seed.
My deer don't bother the winter squash that have the thorny stickers on the leaves and stalks. And they only take an occasional nibble out of my potatoes. There's different scents that repel deer, such as rotten eggs. However, that will repel you as well...but there's other things you can use. Google deer repellent and you'll get some good ideas. At the end of the day before I head into the house for a shower, I leave my sweaty t-shirt in the garden for overnight. That leaves a strong human scent.
If you plant outside the fence, just try to protect it somehow. I have had deer eat onions and asparagus and all kinds of things they often supposedly do not eat. For winter squash, I find that they will stomp the smaller ones and eat them (the larger ones they will leave alone if hard enough). So, when I plant these things outside a fence, I cover them with bird netting. The deer do not enjoy it. The darn things even ate iris plants this year so about all that has been 100% safe for me is lavender.
I'll mostly say ditto to what Kevin posted. Maybe it's just too cold but it seems weird they'd be breaking new growth at the same time as losing their leaves. Around here pepper plants will sometimes act as deciduous perennials.
The solid majority of "dish soaps" marketed today are not actually soap at all. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Unless you've been using a good real soap like Dr. Bronner's, mentioned by woohooman which is certified organic but not cheap, the treatment you've been using on your plants isn't organic.
Besides that the frequency is just way way WAY too high! I'm less inclined to believe the leaves are being suffocated as Dave mentioned unless the oil concentration is especially high. I've known of growers to use neem oil several times per week without ill effect as long as it doesn't get too hot. Where I am in San Diego we've had a couple of days this winter that would have been too hot to use oil sprays but it seems an unlikely cause. My best guess as to why your plants are so unhappy is because leaves are supposed to have a natural waxy epidermal layer and spraying a plant with soap as often as you are, especially if it's actually detergent, can have a detrimental impact to this protective layer.
On the other hand. There's a good chance that despite the fact you're spraying your plants way too often, what you're seeing is the die back of the shoots after getting too cold. You mentioned new growth at the bottom and in my experience with peppers you've usually lost the plant back to the point of new growth which is why here it's a toss up as to whether they're worth overwintering or not.
If you come back with more information for us about your nighttime lows and what type of bugs if any you've been seeing we might be able to get more specific.
Plants are green correct? That means that the plants do not absorb the yellow through green spectrum of light,
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Color is our perception of wave length of the light that is reflected from an object. When we see something green, it means that just that specific wave length is reflected from that object and the rest is absorbed. In other words, color doe not exist as a matter.
Wow...I wish this thread existed last year.
Last summer was my "plastic mulch experiment year." I read about all those studies and wanted to find out if they would help my harvest in my garden. Here's what I discovered:
In a nutshell - they were far more trouble than they were worth. Red, green, blue and clear would work fine to heat the soil up if you had no weed-seeds whatsoever underneath. In my garden the weeds were in 7th-heaven under there and grew until they made tents out of the stuff. Black, brown, and the double black/white stuff worked much better for weed suppression. For my northern garden the dark colors actually "shaded" the soil instead of warming it up faster. But once the summer heat hit, it basically cooked everything that is still low enough to be touching (melons especially). My bare (no mulch) tomatoes did not grow any different than the ones that had red under them. (Although Wall-o-waters significantly improved vigor). I used aluminum foil in place of silver and that worked pretty well actually, and I didn't have ANY flea beetle damage on any of the plants it was under. Black/white was my favorite and I will use it for beans again this year. It suppressed weeds (black side down) but reflected light (white side up) and my beans grew really fast, healthy and did not get dirty.
One thing that is an absolute must - You must have an installed drip system underneath the plastic. I thought I could get away with not having it, by leaving bare soil strips between the rows. Not enough. The water just pools on top and then evaporates off.
Also, the colored mulches are very flimsy. Kind of like the real wimpy painter's plastic. The slightest breeze and you will need at least two people to peg it down, and then it still rips free from the pegs.
My plans for this year based on last year's experiments - Wall-o-waters for sure! Black/White under beans and melons. Aluminum foil under eggplants.
I use the wood chips (1/4-inch sized or so) in the veggie garden routinely. I think the trick is not to overload the soil with them, since they'll take some time to decompose completely. You don't want to have your plants growing in a thoroughly "pebbled" medium. But after a year or two, they're mostly gone, and while they're there, they greatly improve soil aeration and resist compacting. In fact, since they take some time composting there, you don't get a nitrogen deprivation shock like you would with something like sawdust.
Wood chips come in "decorative" size, which is definitely not for digging in to gardens. I like the smaller stuff. So I think a lot of the argument about wood chips in the garden depends on how big and how much.
JCTsai, I just filled out the form, I think if you go to their home page they might have contact info.
I've been hauling mulch all day, I'll do 3 loads then rest. I'm trying to polish it off by tomorrow afternoon since there will be rain the day after tomorrow and I don't want to move damp mulch.
Oca is an uncommon crop, since it grows well in a relatively narrow climate range... such as the maritime West Coast of the U.S.. If tubers froze, chances are that they will not survive.
One of the biggest growers I know is at the site below, he grows about 60 varieties, along with other Andean root crops. His site gives a great deal of information on sources & culture.
Here is a link that might be useful: Wetting the beds
Taste is subjective Wayne. I personally do not like the taste and texture of super sweets. So I rarely grow one. The Mirai to me has better texture and flavor and they produced better. Of course the variety I tried was really a synergistic rather than a true supersweet. Not my favorite, I prefer se, but acceptable as an extra sweet.
I too prefer the se+ corns. I have tried the newer synergistics and am still hunting a fully good one. Montauk was ok. I have heard about Obsession, but realize that those who say, "Boy, this is the best corn ever," may not really know many good corns.
I use a small amount of a mid-weight row cover on my fall-planted veggies to overwinter them. I've found that my spinach can be left uncovered even down to 15F and still survive well. It overwinters as a small plant and then grows very fast for multiple harvests in late Mar and April. I've used rowcovers for broccoli in raised beds too.
Seysonn, there actually seem to be some differing experiences posted here by different people.
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@ lucille,
That is right. There are different views. I am also expressing my opinion, based my experience, knowledge and understanding. So there is no offense here. In the end of the day one does what she/he wants to do. The discussion is not creating any mandate for anybody.
38 responses already! Well, lucille, if nothing else you have given us zone 5 ers (and colder) something interesting to read while the snow flies outside. :)
and you've inspired me to do some side by side comparisons of doubles and singles.