23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

I hate those little critters.
Unfortunately there is no good way to get rid of root maggots once they're there. You have to keep the fly from laying in the first place and this can be easily done by covering the growing radish with light-weight row cover.

But fear not, most of the radish will still be fine if you cut away the bad parts.

-Mark

I read somewhere that planting garlic before the radishes or other crop deters them, has anyone had success with this?

Thanks for helping!

At the very least I would recommend that you rotate the crops in your containers each year. In other words, don't plant cucurbits in the same pots next year. Grow tomatoes or beans in those.

That being said, I have made the decision that I am not going to grow any cucurbits except cucumbers next summer. I am just fed up with SVBs and pickleworms. I am going to try a parthenogenic cucumber under row cover, and then plant more eggplants. We like them just as well as squash, and other than flea beetles, they are far easier to grow here. It makes me sad, but I cannot afford to waste valuable growing space.

I have had issues with squash bugs and cucumber beetles, I read that planting radishes as a companion plant to cucumbers -and letting them go to seed will drive them away. It worked very well.
As for the squash bugs Neem Oil seems to work the best, however like most organic fixes it must be reapplied on a regular basis. I've noticed the squash bugs seem to have 2-3 generations each summer around hear, spray them when their young, when they look like weird spiders.

As far as I understand it you only cut the terminal bud to promote even maturity of all the sprouts on the stalk. This is usually done for full stalk harvesting. For a longer harvest period like most gardeners want, you can just harvest the sprouts gradually from the bottom up and you'll get more producing all winter from the top bud.

I sell quite a lot of loose sprouts at thanksgiving time so I cut the tops of 3/4 of the plants to get lots of them sized up right around the holidays. The plants left with tops keep producing salable sprouts the rest of the winter.

As far as the issue of the sprouts without leaves not getting as large as the others, thats easy. The leaf feeds the sprout and if you remove the leaf the sprout suffers. I only remove leaves at harvest time when they start to yellow from the bottom up as the sprouts mature.

Hope this helps,
Mark

It looks like you have a perfect Brussels Sprouts climate, they're perfect!! Those are the $5.99/pound ones in the market!! In my z5 garden, by now the growing season is done, even for Sprouts, so there is no harvesting all winter, looks like they really need a long growing period. Next year, I'll remove the main bud, but leave the leaves, see how that works. Thanks for the input and pictures Mark.

Steve

Other than small vendor with a limited exotic offering, It will be rare to actually get a seed grown in your area. Most vendors will buy from wholesalers who may obtain seed from any part of the world. Some like Sandhill and to a lesser extent Baker Creek will obtain seed from small individual growers. There are folks here on GW that grow seeds for these outfits. The bulk of the OP seeds tho come from Seeds by Design.

Here is a link that might be useful: Seeds by Design

Prairie Garden Seeds is local to me... as in, I had to drive a whole 9 km to pick up my seed order sort of local. :) Very limited offering, as you say, and no fancy catalogue, though.

Well, the HK did make, and the voles ate 90% percent of it. Beans did well, I have enough for winter. The parasitic wasp seems to have done its job.

Severe drought from late august until about ten days ago was very harsh on the fall kale crop. I don't know if it will recover, going from that right into hard frost the last couple nights.

Now that 2013 growing season is almost gone, I must say that overall it has been a poor season. My main crop (tomatoes) were well below par. Then I got the late blight or grey mold(whatever) in September and wiped out every thing But I did fine with eggplants, cucumbers and beans.

I wish you all a good 2014.

I have left garlic in the ground for 2 winters. They produce many bulbs, one bulb from each clove in the old bulb formed from that one original clove. So I say just leave them till next summer and harvest then. Why bother now.

If you leave them in the ground , unharvested for years, the will keep dividing and growing like chives. Sure, you can use the green just like garlic chives.

We had a patch of "wild" asparagus that was decades old in front of our house. The county did some road expansion and dug it all up.

I noticed the asparagus crowns trying to grow there the dirt was all piles up during the road work, so I dug them out and replanted them somewhere else. I had fat marker size spears the next year! Good thing too, because they hauled all that dirt away.

I've dug up established asparagus during the late fall when it's dormant. All top growth was dead for the season. No root pruning or any special care except of course to make certain the new bed was deep in rich compost and a 6 inch layer of leaves was on the soil for the first winter to protect the roots. They grew perfectly fine without a hitch.

I did pick off all the caterpillars I could find, I just needed to know if they showed up again. Plus I don't have any Bt on hand at the moment. My broccoli and cauliflower are really small and I've heard that the loopers could eat the whole plant pretty quickly, so I wanted to know in case they got out of control. But they seem to be gone now, so I don't think I'll need to use anything on the plants.
Thanks!

I did pick off all the caterpillars I could find, I just needed to know if they showed up again. Plus I don't have any Bt on hand at the moment. My broccoli and cauliflower are really small and I've heard that the loopers could eat the whole plant pretty quickly, so I wanted to know in case they got out of control. But they seem to be gone now, so I don't think I'll need to use anything on the plants.
Thanks!

Mine too. Don't plant too deep because it can lead to rotting problems.

You'd never plant onions 5-6" deep! Plant onions 1" deep max.

Dave

Once you see a head forming, it won't be TOO long. Those plants will produce at some time. Nice looking plants, btw. Like farmerdill said, the brassicas handle frost with no problem.

Kevin

Agree with the above posters... in short, large plants with no heads showing is a good sign. IME the larger the plant the larger the main head & side shoots.

Our typical winter low temps are in the 25 to 30 deg F range, and usually at these lows for less than one day. Under these conditions I've never noticed any stress on the brassicas. It usually takes lows in the 20 to 24 deg F range to start noticing stressed plants.... So hopefully you have a bit of time remaining before your zone 6A lows will begin to take it's toll.

This post was edited by grandad on Wed, Nov 13, 13 at 13:57

Do great northern beans grow in Florida?

I successfully grow the very similar navy bean in Gainesville, Florida. It works out best as a fall crop planted in late August so that the beans will mature and dry during the cooler, drier weather of late November. Both navy beans and great northerns require about 90 days to mature.

You should use days to maturity and remember that number over the years. Most of my main crop watermelons will be ripe 42 days after the melon sets on. Some varieties ripen sooner (Tiger Baby 31 days after setting on and Sweet Favorite 35 days after setting on-in my garden). Sweet corn will be ripe 18 to 21 days after pollination, for example. Ripe watermelons will have a yellowish, orange bottom, if the bottom is not green. The shell will be harder, etc. But the days to maturity is probably the best indicator if you remember to mark them when they start to enlarge and harvest them 42 days later or whatever you find is the number of days to maturity for that variety in your area.

I harvested a volunteer watermelon on Nov. 7th. That easily is a record here for lateness by nearly a month. I kept it to 1 fruit due to circumstances. I just finished eating it and though small, it was a nice little treat. It was gold and looked like a Gold Strike ...which variety I did not raise this year.

I was faithful to ltilton;s warning to let the bottom get yellow and this worked out just right.

This post was edited by wayne_5 on Tue, Nov 12, 13 at 16:01

Sunnibel: All brassicas will store in the freezer after a blanch and shock but I don't do this to the leafy ones anymore... kale, collards, cabbages. They just end up being a big mushy piece of ice. So, I use those fresh. Best way to get around that is to start a few of each early on, and then start a few more about a month later. Broccoli and cauli, on the other hand, freezes rather well.

Btw, cauli is great in escabeche with carrots and hot peppers.

Kevin

Well, if you still have some after playing broccoli fairy, you might want to make some broccoli soup and freeze flat in a freezer bag (I use a foodsaver). This is a freezer space saver I do with all my soups, stews, chili. Then I just pull out a slab-o-soup.Each slab-o is less than an inch, so they stack nicely in the freezer. Nancy