24,795 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
theforgottenone1013(MI zone 5b/6a)

A photo of the leaves and plant will help immensely. Are the leaves actually curling or just drooping?

Rodney

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
changingitup(8 PDX)

We've just been having our first garden salads as well! Red freckled romaine, kale, arugula, snow peas and still getting the occasional few asparagus to chop up and add. Good stuff!. We've been living off strawberries as well. They have a great flavor but are a bit sour if not picked when just about to be too late. How about yours? Is there anything I could have added to my soil to help this?

I've also just planted some leaf lettuce in a shady area of the lawn in hopes of keeping it going longer. When the lettuce was dissapointing last year we switched to red Russian kale and it was delicious!

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
theforgottenone1013(MI zone 5b/6a)

I thought it was just me that couldn't see the photo so I didn't say anything. From the description of the salad it sounds delicious. :)

Rodney

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7

Any chance of a good picture of the damage? I think I see one leaf that seems to show symptoms from the Four Lined Plant Bug, a pest that seems to love herbs like mint, basil, and oregano.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

I'm not sure I'm seeing the same picture as everyone else. The plant I can see is very droopy and extremely sick looking - maybe from a fungus or cultural problem - but I can't see any bugs or bug faeces.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
planatus(6)

You have the three-lined potato beetle, not good news but probably manageable with spinosad if hand picking doesn't work. The extension pubs say they can be managed like Colorado potato beetles, and spinosad is the best organic control for CPB .

Have you or a neighbor grown tomatillo recently? I think that's their favorite nightshade.

Here is a link that might be useful: three lined potato beetle

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
galinas(5B)

I don't think anybody growing tomatillo around here. Most people have 5X5 slots where they grow very basic staff, mostly what I gave them form my leftovers, and I don't grow tomatillo. It is not a first year I have this beetle- only I thought they are cucumber beetles - I had those before I set up a screen house for my cucumbers. I don't think I will need any spray. Picking them at night from my 40 plants when all hard work already done and it is cool and pleasant gives me comforting feelings). Last year I didn't even collect their eggs, but there was no real damage. Thank you for identification!

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
ju1234((8 Dallas TX))

I have covered the non planted / walk areas with old carpet and / or cardboard. Clean area to walk and no grass/weeds. Divert your bath/shower water to garden and use as stored water, save money and time.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
pnbrown

I use cardboard a lot.

For efficiency, I don't think anything beats the old straight rows and the hoe, dirt mulch. Of course, it also tires ground out quickly, so fallowing is critical. The fallow is when weeds often take over, so the smart farmer plants the cover crops in rows as well and hoes, just like for the food crop.

Too bad I'm not that smart, or that energetic.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
elisa_z5

Oh dear. You could get an awful lot of seed potatoes for that price, and grow a nice crop. Next year, just plant potatoes, and you'll have much more chance of success!

There was a thread on here recently about the things that garden centers sell that make no sense -- like radish and carrot seedlings. Your garden center belongs on that thread as well!

Gardening is all a learning experience. This will be a story to tell :)

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

I'm suspecting that, if the potatoes were in 5 gallon pots, they were never intended for planting into a garden. That would certainly be a very unusual technique, as digdirt says. Possibly they were intended to be grown in the the container permanently just to provide a crop of new potatoes? If you Google potatoes in 5 gallon buckets there are lots of hits describing the technique. Maybe you should have just left them in the container, fed and watered them and waited until the foliage started to die down.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
pd0xgard_

Yeah, I just checked now, after the sun has gone down and they're all closed up.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
naturegirl_2007 5B SW Michigan(5B SW Michigan)

Yes, the leaves open and close and move around a lot. There are some interesting YouTube videos of their moves I looked at a few days ago. I'm trying peanuts for the first time this year, too. I don't expect them to do great since our summers are usually too short and too mild for them, but it will be fun to see some of how they grow.

Here is a link that might be useful: Peanut time lapse

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
macky77(2a)

We were in the city all day yesterday and came home to leaning plants all over the garden, all in the same direction. Winds were high, that's all. :) As long as nothing is broken, the tomatoes will correct themselves. The brassicas might need a little help, though. I'm going out today to nudge them back upright and mound the soil around them again. (I bury them quite a bit when I transplant, but if the top inch is a bit dry, young plants will still tilt a bit in high winds because the soil shifts instead of holds).

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
eugene_2010

Istarted them from seed,so i couldn,t bury them deep.I,m new to broccoli,so i wasn,t sure if it was some sort of root insect, they look better now.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
keith100_gw(NY 5A)

Yes, I believe it did . I'll be spraying again tomorrow . Did it work for you as well?

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
jimmy56_gw (zone 6 PA)

Yes, That's why I recommend it, But I only ever needed to spray 1 time.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
jean001a(Portland OR 7b)

Congrats. You're ahead of me.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
theforgottenone1013(MI zone 5b/6a)

That's a healthy pumpkin plant. The flowers will sort themselves out eventually. It's normal for either males (usually) or females to show up without the other gender initially.

The vines will climb things if they are close and no, it's not a problem. No reason at all to chop it down. If a pumpkin does form on the vines that are climbing the fence you will need to make a sling to support the pumpkin to keep it from tearing the vines down. But if you don't want it climbing the fence, you can either snip the tendrils holding it to the fence so that it will lay back on the ground or just train the vine back down. If it were mine I'd leave it alone and let it do what it wants (unless it started growing into the neighbor's yard).

Rodney

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
pd0xgard_

O, ok. It's actually about 4-5 plants I think. They were sprouting in clumps in the compost pile (in the background of the photo above), and it was hard to thin them out initally. So I picked out 4-5 clumps and set them about 10-12 inches apart. So there's probably about 4-5 actual plants there. So excited, a few years ago I got a 22 lb pumpkin when the compost had pumpkin babies the first time ;) Hopefully I'll get a few this time around as well. I've never really fertilized, or learned the proper watering technique/amounts, besides watering the ground, and trying to keep the foliage dry. I have a feeling I water too often (once or every other day when it's over 80F).

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
AiliDeSpain(6a - Utah)

Sometimes the bottom leaves will yellow due to age. How old are the plants?

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
jean001a(Portland OR 7b)

Numerous potential reasons.
Need pictures please.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
tcstoehr(8b Canby, OR)

Looks like a Crane Fly. I don't think of them as any sort of problem, although they do have subterranean larvae that in large numbers can be problematic in lawns. In any case, I doubt they cause any problem in your veg garden. I don't think they even eat anything as adults.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
lkzz(7b)

I vote crane fly.
Should not be a danger - adults mate and die - don't even eat.

Adult
The main goal of the adult crane fly in the spring is mating. During the adult stage, the crane fly does not eat. For the short 10- to 15-day period, the adults mate on plants or in the air near the water. Afterwards, the female deposits her eggs. When mating and egg distribution is complete, female dies. The male only lives up to 15 days as well.

It is true that the early stages of the creature's development can be a lawn problem: http://lakewhatcom.wsu.edu/gardenkit/unwantedpests/cranefly.htm

Here is a link that might be useful: THE LIFESPAN OF A CRANE FLY

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
writersblock(9b/10a)

ditto to what CaraRose said. Here in FL wild ground cherry looks like this:

,

not like thirstydirt's photo.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
missingtheobvious(Blue Ridge 7a)

Our local wild ground cherries look exactly like Thirsty Dirt's photo.

Check online for photos of tomatillo and ground cherry flowers, which IIRC are very different.

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
digdirt2(6b-7a No.Cent. AR HZ8 Sun-35)

Do they have organic potting mix?

Yes, many brands of it available. And the existence of fungus growths like toadstools and such is considered beneficial, normal, desirable.

Trying to garden organically in containers has its own set of problems to overcome since it is totally different from gardening organically in the ground where a soil food web exists to provide nutrients. But the 'mushrooms' isn't one of them.

Dave

    Bookmark    
Thank you for reporting this comment. Undo
sneed(7)

What type of problems?

    Bookmark