23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
I had the same problem with a Black Beauty zucchini planted in a raised bed. The plant was prolific in growing and putting out male flowers. It only produced one 8" squash. The few females that did appear after that did not pollinate because the flowers never bloomed and the tiny squashes succumbed to an early death. The entire plant finally fell victim to stink bugs and a SVB in mid-August. I had much better luck with a straight neck yellow squash plant before it too, got discovered by those darn bugs.
This summer had female flowers on my yellow squash but less than 1 a week. SVB became a problem and I had to cut open about 1 foot each vine. One of the vines survived the surgery. Now at the end of September temperatures have dropped to 50 degrees at night and 70 during the day. The plant is only getting about 2 hrs of sun a day, the leaves have powdery mildew and the vine has been cut up dealing with the SVB. Not good conditions for a squash plant. Almost all the flowers are now female and it is flowering heavily. I counted 12 yellow squash although they are growing slowing due to the lack of sun.Perhaps the stressful condition has encouraged female flowers.
Qbush, the peas I put in were "Sugar Lace" (snap) and "Green Arrow" (shelling).
"Sugar Lace" was old seed, so I over-sowed; but the germination was still poor. In the past, I actually had better germination if planted in warm soil, so I suspect it was the age of the seed. To make a bad situation worse, one whole row died off in the summer heat. Only a partial row remains, but it was a long row, so there will still be plenty to snack on.
"Green Arrow" was also old seed, but had pretty good germination, and much less summer die-off. The longest row was planted adjacent to a long row of bush beans, and the two seem very happy together... a little too happy, with the peas clinging to the beans. I've had to separate them (carefully) while picking the beans. The peas seem to have benefited from the moisture & cooler soil under the bean canopy, that part of the row is lush & full of pods.
All the beans ("Tenderette") and peas were planted the same day. The bush beans matured first, before the end of August. To my surprise, both peas are maturing at about the same time; I expected "Green Arrow" to be a week or two later. I'll be snacking on snap peas while picking shelling peas, which should be pleasant.
Still no frost in the long-term forecast; looks like I'll be picking bush beans & zucchini for awhile yet, and getting more cukes than I expected. 10+ more days of moderate temperatures should give at least some of the "Bush Table King" acorn squash time to mature, there are about 70-80 that have reached full size. Never tried planting acorn squash so late, it will be impressive if they make it.
This wasn't the garden that I planned; none of the seed crops planned for the rural plot were planted, and will need to be put off until next year. Still, it looks like it will be a good harvest & a full freezer.
"Those same cranes come to my place in central florida in the winter. I'll ask them if they felt ok about eating Zeedman's crops...."
Well maybe if you had fed them better, they wouldn't be so hungry! ;-)
Mainly into apples now, freezing cored, peeled and sliced ones for apple bread and pies and sweet/potato casseroles; pot of apple sauce going now, probably more sauce and apple butter tomorrow. Summer crops gone. Fall crops just starting, mainly lettuces for eating now, but collards and broccoli are looking good.
There are many online sources. I've bought fingerling potatoes from Potato Garden and Jung Seeds. They are fairly expensive because of the shipping, but you can be confident they are disease free. I've also planted organic fingerlings I got from the grocery store. In spite of the advice not to do that, I had my best harvest with the grocery store potatoes. I got close to 20 pounds of potatoes for each pound of Russian banana potatoes I planted.
There's a farmers market out by I-95 on the north side of Melborne I believe. I got my French fingerlings from Fresh Market...did great. If your hands are full of arthritis, fingerlings are difficult to hold on to while scrubbing and preparing to cook. French fingerlings are a little bit thicker around and easier to grasp. Check with your extentsion agent for best time to plant. In the meantime you can start working the plot where you're going to put them. Potatoes like an acid soil so you need to consider that.
Historically, strains of P. coccineus with white seeds were selected by the Dutch. While the species can outcross with some pole beans, it is also possible that some level of genetic diversity remains in your strain. White seeds are associated with white flower color, too.
Thanks everyone for your comments, I have just been out in the garden to take down the bean row and collect the dried beans that are left on , The bean pods are all about 1 foot long and i have started to remove the beans from the pods, and to my amazement i now find i have pure black seeds in some pods as well as the white ones in other pods.
Maybe you should do a little research into soil before you start planting vegetables in containers. The potting mix is the most important ingredient in getting healthy vegetables. Whether you're talking about soil or compost, spent means most of the nutrients are used up and the structure has broken down.
From the Urban Dictionary:
Spent as an adjective:
1. Used up; consumed
2. Having come to an end; passed
3. Depleted of energy, force, or strength; exhausted
And no, compost that is not finished composting is not a good media to use in a pot. You might get away with it mixed into garden soil, but you also might end up burning roots (especially if it includes manure) and attracting vermin.
Hmmmmm! The friend I made reference to got his plants from an entomoligst friend that has greenhouse grown these plants for the past three years. That said, Rodney may be on to something! I'm clueless about the science of plant reproduction, so I didn't want to attempt to propagate these seeds if they weren't likely to grow true.....
As farmerdill mentioned, there are a great number of facsimiles out there, but my friend has his heart set on growing this one, so I'll start some for him in the spring....
I have had it with the seed companies that show in the big box stores.
Beets, totally different than on the packet. Broccoli that just shot straight up. Have you ever seen 4 feet of stalks and tiny heads. Pole beans, red flowers when they should be white, Cucumbers when I wanted melons, the list seems endless.
I now will only buy from the bigger guys, like Johnnys, even if it costs extra for international shipping.
Jalapenos are notoriously all over the place with their heat. It's kinda a characteristic of their profile.
It's not uncommon to have low/no heat jalapenos along with normal and hot-as-hell on the same plant harvested at the same time...as well as early season low-heat production.
Why this happens...no one can nail it down.
There's a lot we don't know about peppers. We don't even know how they signal themselves to ripen, for instance. It's known it's not ethylene influenced (or enough of an influence to be noted as an influence), but not much is known about what chemical/physiological signals are present when true pepper ripening is taking place. If this can be found out, and it can be influenced by external chemical inputs (such as ripening tomatoes with ethylene post-harvest), then ripe colored bell peppers could be a whole lot less expensive one day.
This post was edited by nc-crn on Tue, Sep 24, 13 at 18:36
Based on your picture, and as Flora pointed out , they are to crowded. At this pint I would keep 3 good ones and pull the rest. And then pour about 1" thick soil on the exposed roots and straighten them up a bit so they are not touching the ground.
Also get rid of the roted,dried ..leaves. They are magnet for disease. .
BTW: some criters are helping themselves there. Do you have slugs or snails ?
I grow 12 kinds and every year the cloves look different.
I've grown German Red for about 6 years and it always looks different each year I harvest it. In fact, this is the first year that I've seen red streaks on it.
Rodney