23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Oats can be raked into the soil if you want to plant it now.
In my zone 7 Red Russian Kale, Corn Salad (mache lettuce), and flat leaf parsley do a good job of covering until I can plant again in spring. All reseed, but are easily smothered with mulch. I don't know if they'll reseed in your area.
Sheet mulch with a layer of newspaper topped with your choice of veg garden mulch. I like dried grass clippings or partially composted shredded leaves. Both are lightweight & make a nice carpet. Mixed with coffee grounds they become nearly invisible from a distance if that matters.
So I got a very late start on my fall lettuce last year...so my cover crop ended up being black seeded Simpson. In early spring I tilled that bed heavily and racked out the dead lettuce and thoroeghly cleaned the bed... Three weeks later I am harvesting volunteer lettuce...very early, a welcomed surprise and oh so good.
Well, y'all, I'm not sad a-tall:
Apples are everywhere, cider is hardening in the kitchen, peppers and tomatoes are overflowing, the sun chokes are flowering, corn is getting close to bread-stage, more green beans than can be eaten....
It's a great season this year, just too many things to be done right now is the only problem.
I'm sad that the beans, cukes and tomatoes are done as well as the second crop of peas, but the greens are in their prime. There is so much labor now, taking down vines and trellises, making compost with the grass and newly falling leaves, emptying containers of deck plants as they die in the cold.
I garden till the snow and ice keep me from opening the fence gate. I also dream of an attached garden room in my house.How much fun that would be. I get away to a warmer place for a few weeks in winter and then start seeds indoors by March. I bide my time with swing dancing, hiking and otherhobbies indoors.
Also, this time of year we have fun picking apples at abandoned or public orchards and my friends' backyards. I make fruit nectars with my juicer. I love autumn, my favorite season
This post was edited by susanzone5 on Sat, Sep 21, 13 at 12:39
I think that dried paint isn't much of a hazard, or else we'd all be exposed to it all the time. I suspect that breathing in paint dust isn't good for you, but that's not what we're talking about here.
Again, methylene chloride has been "linked" to carcinogenicity, but the results of those studies are by no means conclusive. So the bottom line is that OSHA doesn't consider spray paint to be necessarily a carcinogen. No question that the stuff is an irritant. It'll do nasty stuff to you if you ingest a lot.
So yes, methylene chloride did land on your Mel's Mix, but it landed in your lungs as well. In both places, it was probably gone within an hour or so.
Hey, another Saskie growing ground cherries! (Or are you an Albertan? Close enough).
Some of my ground cherries drop to the ground when still unripe. I scoop these up into a cardboard box and keep it on the counter. Any partially ripe ones (even those with the slightest tinge of yellow) ripen within 2 weeks. They ripen much slower than tomatoes in this respect. Completely green ones may or may not ripen. Check on them about twice a week and move the fully ripe ones to a cool, dry location, such as a basement.
sorry... no Saskie but Albertan!
This is my first year with the ground cherries. My husband didn't want me growing them again because they "take up too much space" but now that he's tasted them I think he's changing his mind.
I see its supposed to warm again this weekend with no frost but cooler next week so maybe on Sunday I'll go pick them and see how many ripen inside. I might not get many but its better than losing them all to the frost.
Do you have a good jam or pie recipe for them???
Egg Shell(sea shell): will take for ever to break down:
Wood Ash: Perfect for root system.
Coffee Ground: Good soil conditioner.
NOTE: Garlic and onions are BASICALLY leafy vegetables. They need Nitrogen more than any thing else. Potash is good too, but there is no need for Phosphorus . "P" is for flowering, blooming and fruits.
HOW DEEP:
Although it is good to condition the soil for a good depth, BUT garlic does not need more than 8- 10" of good soil. But In case you want also plant other veggies in there (Carrots, beets, turnips, ...) You will need more depth.
This post was edited by seysonn on Fri, Sep 20, 13 at 4:12
I tried planting garlic for the first time last fall. I also was using a raised bed.
Apparently for zone 4 that is a bad idea.
I just wasnt thinking it through. My beds are deep beds - aprox 24", and I planted the cloves in the outer perimeters. Every single one of them turned to mush. There simply wasnt enough insulation to protect them from our cold WI winters.
My motto for late fall and winter: every bed must be covered.
My choices for covering:
1. growing greens under hoops and fleece, (uncover to eat during thaws)
2. hay bales over carrots and parsnips, (kick the bale over, even in snow, and dig in Jan, Feb, March)
3. heavy mulch over leeks and rutabagas,(dig during winter thaws)
4. tangles of weeds that overtook things like the squash patches, (why plant a cover crop when it's already there? I just go around with a serrated knife and cut off the seed heads.)
5. a winter-kill cover crop like oats, (if ground is bare some place)
6. lasagne layers of manure or compost, and hay.(especially for the beds that need to be ready in early April for onions, leeks, peas, greens, broccoli, cabbage, etc.)
I keep a couple of beds for winter stuff, cause I still have tomatoes, tomatillas, and a few other things going for another month or so.
I've planted lettuce, chard, celery, radishes, chard and broccholi in those 2 beds, then as the other things are ready to come out I add compost and/or leaves and cover with cardboard to help prevent weeds (stabbed repeatedly for water to get through)
This is when I pay more attention to my compost, turning and adding leaves etc It seems like too much work in the summer when it's hot! Then I usually have a pretty good batch by spring. Nancy
I use my fingers as a guide - ei: 1 finger between each carrot or 3 fingers for beets.
When I plant I'll measure a certain distance on a bamboo skewer and mark it and use that for a guide.
It might be uncomfortable, but I find it way easier to thin after a good rain. the soil is soft and things pull out easily.
They look like harlequin bugs, probably related. Those are hard to get rid of if you get a big infestation, because they way they feed (through their built in sippy straw) makes it unlikely they ingest any meaningful amounts of insecticides that rely on being eaten. Treat them the way you do squash bugs, I guess. That means some form of hand picking and maybe get some row covers if you get rid of most of them, and the nymphs will be more suceptible to any contact poisons than the adults.
I get harlequin bugs on my horseradish in midsummer sometimes. I get rid of them by cutting off the most infested leaves and drowning the bugs in soapy water, then do follow up on all the other leaves until I don't find any more. But that might not work for all crops.
Awww man they sound bad. I've been handpicking as much as I can but cannot get to the community garden more than twice a week. They are under the one row cover I have but there are less of them there.
I am spraying at night not to burn the plants but I think they are in the soil at night and not out feeding. I see them feeding during the day.
Looks like there was a hatch and most are nymphs now so going to try to spray them again tonight. I've lost most of my uncovered brassicas to them :( all my radishes/beets/turnips as soon as they come up :(
To make things harder, they run when they see or sense me and can fly! Ugh!
I heard they don't like fish emulsion so sprayed with that too. Still there. Bought another row cover to plant under hoping it will help.
I use my paper mulch (just a roll of Kraft paper) to suppress weeds and because I thought it'd be more breathable (not retain as much moisture) and not plastic, which I'd have to pick up at the end of the season.
I tried black paper a while back and it definitely warmed the soil.
~emmers
I live in cool summer climate Pacific NW at 500' in a clearing in the woods. Shade from tall trees, lack of air circulation from woods blocking airflow, wet spring weather, and lack of direct sunshine until sun position heightens in early summer = cool, wet spring soils that dislike mulch, tilling, or germinating seeds.
To combat this I add lots of organic matter in the fall, do not till in spring, wait until tulips drop petals to mulch the strawberries and spring planted vegetables.
Prewarm soil for heat lovers by removing mulch, adding black plastic, or red plastic for tomatoes. I do not direct seed any heat lovers, but do transplants waiting until soil is 60 degrees as well as day & night temps. Before then they need cold frame protection.
Hope it helps.