23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Even if it would work in that container it still wouldn't prevent the moth from laying her eggs on the plant or the larvae from hatching.
Plus it would have to be a @#%@# big topsy turvey container for a squash plant. :)
Dave
Hey CarmelCalifornia, you are in an area with micro-climates. Are you right in Carmel proper, in the fog zone? If so some of the real heat-loving crops could be a challenge during the foggy summer, so if that is the case, you might not be able to easily grow eggplant and full-size tomatoes and such.
If you are inland a bit, and out of the fog zone, you can grow anything.
Right now, leafy and maybe root vegetables are probably your best bet. I think any of CarloMartin's list of root, leaf, and brassica choices could be planted now, since the daytime temps are projected to be in the 60s and 70s for a week or so.
I suspect you could plant garlic now, too, although it is considered very late, I bet it would come out OK anyway.
You can transplant tomatoes in mid-april. Or plant them from seed at about the same time. If you are in the fog zone, try to find a warm spot for the tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes will be more likely to do well than full-sized. If you are in carmel valley or something, then you can grow any tomatoes you want, as well as eggplant, watermelon, etc.
The two biggest threats to your garden are probably pocket gophers and deer. Make sure you take steps to protect against them.
--McKenzie
Hi lonmower, Congrats on your Fava bean.
Glad to see you back and reporting on your fall cover crops.
As you know, I have been of the opinion that as of MID OCTOBER, it was too late to start any cover crop from seeds.But I could be proven wrong. I mixed some fall leaves in my beds and covered them with plastic, to keep the rain our and hopefully to keep it warmer for the micro organisms to stay active. I won't remove the cover untilll April 014.
Anyway, we have had one of the coldest Decembers on record around PNW. However, October and November were normal. Our weather is good for cold crop, BUT I think you have to start them early so they can get them established by early October. Otherwise they will just hang in there. I am looking forward for spring cool crop. And for that I have built a cold frame where I can germinate seeds early. This is going to be a new experiment for me here. It is quite a challenge to germinate seeds in cold soil. But once the cool crops germinate(indoor , cold frame ..), they will grow in cool spring weather.
lonmower - do you like eating favas? A November sown crop should give you beans in late spring. They are our earliest vegetable other than overwintered brassicas and other greens. It always seems a pity to me to miss out on a delicious vegetable by digging in the bean plants before you get a harvest. On the left favas (broad beans) in May from 3rd Spring sowing.
This is my first post in this forum. We purchased 1.5 acres of land and we finally have room to grow veggies and all kinds of edible things.
I read this thread because my doc says my cholesterol is too high. He has me on meds, but I was interested in knowing how to eat foods that could assist in lowering it.
I always plant cloves of garlic that have started sprouting. They grow fine in Southern California. The problem is drying them once they form bulbs. I've had workers steal them when I twisted them in the Bougainvillaeas to dry! That won't happen at the new place! The only folks working are hubby and me.
I'm having fun reading this forum and am learning from all the comments. I just ordered $21.00 worth of seeds, and hope to start planting soon.
Suzi
so, this is a list off the internet, where cranberries and crabapples can not be distinguished, and no reference to papers. even if there were references, they would be tests on people eating a Standard American Diet (SAD), who may or may not have anything to do with the subset of people having large gardens.
Here is a compendium of cholesterol blog posts by a Univ. Washington nutrition researcher
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.it/search/label/cholesterol
(note in particular the first. you can find similar studies by the WHO on the web)
And one about an island where people smoke and have high cholesterol, resulting in the total absence of heart attacks
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.it/2008/08/cardiovascular-risk-factors-on-kitava_14.html
how can you not complain about these inane posts?
I'm not too sure about nicotine advice also. One of the cultural practices I read very often about is smokers should wash hands before touching plants to reduce the risk of possible Tobacco Mosaic Virus.
here's my agenda for whiteflies --
Develop a year-round IPM program by planting flowering plants that attract beneficials. mainly lacewings.
Spray plants much in the same way to control aphids -- a couple water treatments a few days apart followed by insecticidal soap and/or neem oil treatments about a week apart for about 3 weeks.
In the meantime, I order lacewing larvae to be released a couple weeks after the last soap or neem treatment so that when they hatch, I am no longer in need of the spraying.
Note: if you have an ant problem, it must be dealt with prior to lacewing larvae release. The ants will eat the larvae.
Kevin
I guess you were reading my first post? I didn't mean that they had eaten the roots, but rather had tunneled through them in a zig-zag pattern that disturbed so many roots that large squash plants wilted and died in the high heat at that time. Then the voles move into those tunnels and keep them open and use them to wreak further mayhem. Thank goodness it is winter now. :)
For anyone who ever has a caterpillar rant, I really suggest Bt! It will save you from having unsightly bald spots from tearing out hair!
Last year I had a potted tomato plant that was huge and healthy. One day I saw it absolutely covered with fat caterpillars. It made me feel sick.
I dragged the whole thing to the dumpster. It made me feel shuddery.
I'll definitely research BT. Thanks !
Taking a supplement or isolate is not going to truly solve your problem. What you eat, drink, breath, and put on your skin is where your problem(disease) truly resides. Simply put, you live unhealthy, you are going to be unhealthy. You have to change your entire lifestyle in order to truly see change.
Here is a link that might be useful: True Healing
Considering that that healthy lifestyle change tends to involve eating more vegetables, I'm not sure what the point is of attaching that message to these threads is. As I see it, since you can't wave a magic wand and *poof* suddenly a person is living a whole new healthy lifestyle, discussing vegetables that can help a person's individual health concerns is a valid and interesting route towards a healthier lifestyle. And if a person wants to do more gardening as a result, then even more health may ensue. But those comments sound like "don't bother"...?
Re: medications. Medications do not "cure" any of the conditions currently discussed here. Like the herbs and vegetables under discussion they help mitigate the symptoms while doing nothing about the underlying cause. Unlike vegetables and many herbs (I'm speaking of them in their whole, fresh form, not as concentrated supplements), modern medications tend to have certain unpleasant side-effects that can cause a marked decrease in quality (and sometimes quantity) of life. Pancreatitis or pancreatic cancer from your blood sugar-lowering medication, anyone? Or maybe just struggling through every day, unable to get anything done because of overwhelming tiredness despite getting 10, 11, 12 hours of sleep only to find that the cause of your inablity to function is actually a result of the blood-pressure-lowering medication your Dr just prescribed? (That little gem is listed innocuously as "fatigue".)
There is plenty of good, current, scientifically validated litereature out there for anyone who wishes to read more about the subject. The book I mentioned by Mr. Duke in the other thread really is a good starting point. He used to work for the USDA. Dr. Andrew Weil also writes accessibly on the subject.
Keep on mind that for an electric fence to work, you need both a hot wire and a ground. Typically the ground is supplied by the animal (or person) standing on the ground when they touch the hot wire. Plnelson has solved the ground issue by burying the bottom of the fence, though I didn't know that concrete was a good conductor.
I have 5 strands of wire at various heights and have not had a woodchuck (groundhog) intrusion this year. I watched one day as a groundhog enjoyed the clover outside of the garden. He kept moving closer and closer to the lettuce that was growing on the other side of the wires, but he stopped about 3 feet away. I'm thinking that he tested the fence another time and decided to leave my garden alone.
Now, rabbits on the other hand...@#!$%&!!!!
I too am at war with woodchucks, and they are winning. I tried burning them out and nearly burned down my shed. They destroyed my veggie garden, eating all plants to the quick. Their underground network is so great that sometimes walking thru my backyard I fall thru the ground. I have dumped dirt in holes, only to have it disappear. Any thoughts on filling holes with used cat litter (minus the turds)?
Aha! Yes! Yes! Yes! Thank you, because given the various constraints I have, a fall-maturing crop would be my easiest solution. Then when I put them up the cellar will be much cooler and they will be younger. Ok, so what I did wrong this year was not greening up the tubers I replanted. I think I'll try canning some to see what I think of them, too. Cheers!
seysonn...I'm interested in your Rosette potato. Is this the Lady Rosetta that you're mentioning?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
HAHA> I misspelled it . You know what I was talking abut. Merry Christmas !
This post was edited by seysonn on Tue, Dec 24, 13 at 18:36
c6 - I never thought of that type of trellis. I'm going to have to check that out. I actually use concrete reinforcement mesh for my tomatoes and pole beans and cukes. I string it out on fenceposts, and then clip the plants to the trellis. It works great, but I'm always game on new trellis ideas.Plus a trellis would add some structure to that area.
nhbabs - the perennial idea is a good one. I have a couple of blueberry bushes elsewhere I've completely abandoned (keep getting decimated by deer, so they are 5yrs old and 1ft tall!), and I have champaign currents that may be happy being there too. I actually grow horseradish in one of my perennial flower beds - they really anchor the space. And no matter what I do, i'm putting rhubarb back there.
Thanks!
All of the suggestions are good, but I have one more to consider. There is never enough compost to balance what you remove from your garden as harvest. If you have excess land, an excellent use for it is to grow lay crops that can be harvested green and then composted for later application in your production garden. This is a key component of Alan Chadwickôs Biodynamic French Intensive System. For more on that, see the following website:
Click on "Techniques" and then select your subject matter of interest. There is also an excellent discussion on compost making there.
Good lay crops are: Fava beans, vetch, bell beans, buckwheat, and many others. The more compost you can make yourself, the less manure and other fertilizers you have to bring in from outside, and your own is much, much better than anything you can buy.
Good luck.
Here is a link that might be useful: Alan Chadwick
Thank you both for responding. Ceth_k, I admit to having read quite a lot about container gardening, and never come across "perched water." Mostly I was interested in the 5-gallon self-watering buckets, though, and it appears those are tall enough so as possibly not having the problem. This is something I'll have to test for. I have incorporated naturegirl's suggestions. Thanks again,
Dona
This may sound silly, but my container lettuce "wilts" when it needs watered. My lettuce likes lots of water, but will rot easily at the same time. So I added a bunch of perilite to the potting mix and then I just water away if the lettuce starts to droop. No rotting (or damping off of the baby sprouts). Plus my lettuce likes it kinda cool. When the sun comes out and warms up the greenhouse too much, the leaves wilt, but spring back up during the night. My lettuce is in 4.5" pots and it doesn't seem too shallow at all.
You can also try swiss chard, bok choi, and beets (for the greens) and celery (plant a bundle in a pot right from the store to make leaves and new stalks as you harvest). I've been able to make several salads so far this winter with this combo.
Interesting to see all the mentions of Fortex. It's one of the few new varieties on my 2014 seed order. This year I'm doing more of the tried-and-true.
When I posted above, I forgot the alliums. Ailsa Craig grew great for me. It's a long season, mild white onion. It was the first time I grew onions from seed, and I got great production. I also had great luck with the Evergreen bunching scallion. I had a great harvest, and found out late in the season that they divide and give 3-4 after the original stalk was cut just above the roots. They are apparently very cold-hardy, and will take winters down to below zero, so I'll be planting seed in the fall next year for an early harvest.