23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Planted spinach 11/7 and I already have a flower bed. :

You can still harvest and eat them. But it is amazing that this (bolting) happened in zone 8b. You must have had a very warm fall season.

I would plant them closely and as they get bigger I would thin them for use.
Finally I will have them about 6" apart. I do this with swiss chard.
Younger chards, beets can be used just like spinach.

I received beets with lots of greens on top last week in my CSA box.
I cooked them with a little bit of bacon and onion. They are very tasty. (These are organically grown here locally.)
I roasted the beets and they are good, too.

Sprouts turned yellow and died, sounded like chemical burn to me.

I have also had seedling failures with cheap "potting" soils. They are typically very crude mixes of nasty stuff high-N OM, sludges and manures. A large mature plant can handle it and even make use of it, but a seedling cannot, unless it is massively diluted.

Depends, I would think. If the pest is something that normally overwinters, then maybe a little extra predation and other death might happen compared to a mild winter. But if the pest is something that has really blossomed in numbers because of recent mild winters, then a long cold winter should knock them back considerably. I'm thinking of the nematodes in particular. Where I am is a borderline area for them since they don't withstand freezing well. Hopefully this winter will knock them back to the almost unnoticable population of a few years ago, after our last freezing winter. And of course that depends on whether the weather stays cold. Can't rule out another 80ð January/February yet.

I agree with sunnibel7. If you live in a warmer climate and the pests are used to having mild winters, I would think the severe cold would have an affect on the next year's pest population. However, like here in Michigan where it usually gets cold the pests are used to it. So a quick cold snap like this isn't going to due much in terms of pest control. The adult pests have laid their eggs already, the adults are dead, and the immature stages of the bugs are already overwintering.

Rodney

Thanks, Planatus! I have four lots growing in pots, and they are using the grow lights. Last year I did this and they survived until about February, but I think my living room was too cold when I was out all day. I am thinking of putting them on the cat's heating pad (cat deceased!). As back-up I want to try to keep the vines in water going. They look absolutely wonderful right now, but presumably plants cuttings cannot live by water alone for very long, so I was wondering if I should be putting some kind of fertilizer in the water.

My son says I am obsessed!!

Ashita

they will live and grow for quiet a time in water, they are also a shade tolerant plant, growing their lives on the jungle floors with no sun.

they don't need to ramble keep the vines around in circles over itself will be fine.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens growing sweet 'taters and pineapples

So how were your plants this evening, bucketgirl? After really warm fall, it was 24 degrees at my house this morning, everything frozen solid. Thought i would hsve only mush left after work.But, looks like most of it is ok. We had our first salad of four seasons lettuce and tyee spinach. Only the pea tendrils seem set back. To be safe, i draped plastic dropcloth over my container garden and put a warming lamp in. I hope last night was enough to finally kill the cabbage worms eating my kale.

This is the unseasonably cold in the West Coast, in early December. Here in Saeattle, WA area we are hitting 14F tonight. The thing is that it has been in the freezing range(under 32F) for the last 48 hours and it will continue for at least another 48 hours. Probably brassica and alliums will sail through. But I suspect a lot of perennial shrubs and flowers might be wiped out. This is far beyond USDA hardiness zones 7b, 8, 9. Feels more like zone 6.

I imagine that what you buy in the store is leaves. In which case the leaf stalk (petiole) won't grow roots.

You shouldn't have to turn it over if you want Kale. This Kale plant i have is going into its third year next year. It went to seed once already, but it's still growing a bunch of new Kale on different stems! I just abuse this Kale by picking whenever I want, or cutting back, whatever. It is a strong plant. I am growing Lacinato Kale.

Good idea. Thanks. If I can get a hold of a few of these potatoes I'll see how they do in the mountains. I've got some Mama Amarillos tucked in the ground and mulched over heavily with the hopes that they'll hold 'til spring.

You might want to email Tom Wagner at TomWagnerSeeds.com. I don't see Amey currently offered, but he really liked it in the past and may know where to get some seed potatoes.

Dave, you started out strong with Cherry Bomb, but faded fast after that lol. Looks like an Annuum, which eliminates the rest of them.

Without more info, I would guess Cherry Bomb (heat) or Large Red Cherry (no heat).

Questions to help narrow it down would be:

What's it taste like?
Is it hot?
Are the walls thick?
Are seeds centralized or are they distributed down ribs?

More pics, including interior, would help.

jm2c

Rick

I agree. You have to provide more info on TASTE and HEAT level. A long shot of the plant and flowers can be helpful too.

There are peppers, with similar looking, both in sweet and hot class. Foe example there is a cherry that is hot and one that is not. You can keep guessing.

This post was edited by seysonn on Thu, Dec 5, 13 at 7:33

McKenzie- went to the niners game today and BAKED! Probably at least 75* and no breeze! We got on the bus at 4:30 and it was still t-shirt weather! Nancy

BIG time cold snap for us this week, into the high 20s (I know, I know, but this is CA!)
BUT after the thaw, went out to the garden to read the paper, and as long as a breeze didn't come up, it was wonderful!
I came home from the dentist and couldn't find my hubby, then heard him whistling in the garden...hanging out reading! Soaking it up! Nancy

I suspected on more than one occasion, it is RKN that is going to town on my beans. The plant starts to wilt, I water. The plant wilts more...I water more. Plant dies. Nothing left but a stem in the ground. I hate RKN.
My normal regimen of watering was every 6 or 7 days if anyone is wondering. I wasn`t overdoing it.

Actually, I've been thinking of trying beneficial nematodes for my onion maggot problem. I know there are different strains for different pests, and I haven't yet come across one that says it works against pest nematodes. Do you know which strain that is, Dave (or anyone)? Actually, I'm also wondering why different companies give wildly different application rates for them.

You have a lot to learn.

If you net your squash, you are not going to get any squash.. Unless the mesh is so big that the bees can go through them.'
Same goes for cucumbers.

It is ok to net peppers and tomatoes, eggplants , but not cucurbits while flowering.

The netting in the photo looks to have mesh large enough for bees to pass through. And most pests, as well. I'm not sure what it's meant to be protecting from. That's the size netting I use to keep rabbits out, but I don't recall ever having trouble with rabbits and squash plants.

Im trying to make a website that allows anybody to create fully custom seed packs. I'm looking for popular seeds I should stock.i didn't say this the first time, I'm looking for seeds that are most likely to be asked for.

That is the same approach used by all seed vending sites - 100s of them - trying to anticipate what the customer will want. They have never been able to anticipate the "wants" because it varies widely from region to region, even customer to customer. So the solution seems to be to focus on only a few specific vegetables like many vendors do - focus on only hot peppers or only open pollinated tomatoes.

With 1000's of varieties of 100's of vegetables you can't be all things to all people. It just isn't possible. And since seeds are viable for many years and many gardeners only buy fresh seeds once every several years your stock could quickly become overwhelming.

Dave

If you plan to mix varieties in the same packet how do you plan to distinguish them one from another? Separate glassine envelopes would be quite expensive and color coding them isn't an easy process either unless doing hundreds at a time.

Dave