23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
My motto for late fall and winter: every bed must be covered.
My choices for covering:
1. growing greens under hoops and fleece, (uncover to eat during thaws)
2. hay bales over carrots and parsnips, (kick the bale over, even in snow, and dig in Jan, Feb, March)
3. heavy mulch over leeks and rutabagas,(dig during winter thaws)
4. tangles of weeds that overtook things like the squash patches, (why plant a cover crop when it's already there? I just go around with a serrated knife and cut off the seed heads.)
5. a winter-kill cover crop like oats, (if ground is bare some place)
6. lasagne layers of manure or compost, and hay.(especially for the beds that need to be ready in early April for onions, leeks, peas, greens, broccoli, cabbage, etc.)
I keep a couple of beds for winter stuff, cause I still have tomatoes, tomatillas, and a few other things going for another month or so.
I've planted lettuce, chard, celery, radishes, chard and broccholi in those 2 beds, then as the other things are ready to come out I add compost and/or leaves and cover with cardboard to help prevent weeds (stabbed repeatedly for water to get through)
This is when I pay more attention to my compost, turning and adding leaves etc It seems like too much work in the summer when it's hot! Then I usually have a pretty good batch by spring. Nancy
I use my fingers as a guide - ei: 1 finger between each carrot or 3 fingers for beets.
When I plant I'll measure a certain distance on a bamboo skewer and mark it and use that for a guide.
It might be uncomfortable, but I find it way easier to thin after a good rain. the soil is soft and things pull out easily.
They look like harlequin bugs, probably related. Those are hard to get rid of if you get a big infestation, because they way they feed (through their built in sippy straw) makes it unlikely they ingest any meaningful amounts of insecticides that rely on being eaten. Treat them the way you do squash bugs, I guess. That means some form of hand picking and maybe get some row covers if you get rid of most of them, and the nymphs will be more suceptible to any contact poisons than the adults.
I get harlequin bugs on my horseradish in midsummer sometimes. I get rid of them by cutting off the most infested leaves and drowning the bugs in soapy water, then do follow up on all the other leaves until I don't find any more. But that might not work for all crops.
Awww man they sound bad. I've been handpicking as much as I can but cannot get to the community garden more than twice a week. They are under the one row cover I have but there are less of them there.
I am spraying at night not to burn the plants but I think they are in the soil at night and not out feeding. I see them feeding during the day.
Looks like there was a hatch and most are nymphs now so going to try to spray them again tonight. I've lost most of my uncovered brassicas to them :( all my radishes/beets/turnips as soon as they come up :(
To make things harder, they run when they see or sense me and can fly! Ugh!
I heard they don't like fish emulsion so sprayed with that too. Still there. Bought another row cover to plant under hoping it will help.
"NC, I was looking at Botany for Gardeners on Amazon. It is available for the Kindle. Do you think the diagrams and photos will still be useful on a Kindle or is that a book that would be better suited to print?"
I truly have no idea. While I do have some books on my IPad, I'm one of those people that still find it difficult to use because I'm very used to flipping back/forth with paper for instant gratification.
I don't know how the diagrams/pictures would show up, but they are a somewhat important part of the book.
If you are near a public library, it's a commonly stocked book for a lot of libraries. Also, a lot of public libraries have online searches for what they carry and you may be able to check and see if they have it without visiting in person.
This post was edited by nc-crn on Wed, Sep 18, 13 at 17:49
Most of the pollinating of cucurbit blossoms is done by native squash bees, most of whom have finished their life cycle by this time of year. They are ground-nesting solitary bees that look like little bumblebees. You may have killed a few, but not many. Hand pollinate to make sure you get a few fruits to set.
In my experience, tomatoes make little progress once nights fall into the 50's, probably because it's early afternoon before the fruits warm up from the night before. You can wrap mature green fruits in newspaper and keep them in a cool place, then bring them out to ripen one at a time. I'll do that with the perfect ones, and make green tomato relish with the rest. 46 last night, great for collards and kale, bad for tomatoes.
Wow, Nc-crn and Seysonn! Maybe I should try some of the cooler tolerant varieties you all mention. I had no idea there were so many tomato varieties until this year. Good to know that there are some for cooler climates. I wonder how my plants will fare. Kind of an experiment. I am in the PNW, too Seysonn. In my area we get pretty hot summers (usually) and pretty cold winters in Eastern Wa. Not quite as cold as Montana. The last four years, I've noticed a pattern of very warm Septembers and sometimes warmer Octobers. In turn, our Junes have been chilly and rainy. So odd! Makes it hard to plan because we can get frosts in September so it is always a roll of the dice. Wish they had more of these types in the cucurbit family, particularly squash. Tried the butternut bush squash and wasn't too impressed.
Armyworm is kind of a general term, but that's what those are. Bt or spinosad will easily control them, but they can be sneaky. In fall I find them in the bottom of cabbage heads, hiding and eating and making a mess.
Here is a link that might be useful: armyworm life cycle
I have no paper, but the role of water/nutrient exchange through leaves are better understood. Stomate and cuticle movement of water/nutrients take up an extremely small (practically negligible) amount of water whereas small ionic transfer of nutrients can take place.
It was thought in the past by some that excessive rainfall or overhead watering of plants was causing excessive leaf expansion, but ultimately a big issue in plant loss was found to be the top weight keeping the roots from setting up the very important and extremely small micro/mini rooting systems that are crucial for development causing an abnormal amount of plants to not survive the seedling stage (this doesn't count abnormalities such as damping off, etc). Water film weight on leaves and the amount of top growth vs root system can be quite dramatic on top plant weight once transplanted out of a stable seedling container and into the field when wind starts kicking around unless the seedling is firmly settled into it's new home. Weight + wind in a seedling in the ground that isn't firmly settled can break small root networks before they're fully formed. The big part of root systems, even the tiny branches, aren't as important in the big picture as the extremely tiny micro/mini roots and root hairs which come in contact with more surface are in the soil. A tiny as heck small visible branch of root can have 100s-1000s of hair-or-less-sized micro-branches coming off of it...stuff that stays in the soil broken off when you pull a plant up because they're so fragile.
When vulnerable plants are grown in a relatively wind-pressure-free greenhouse, and especially under misting systems, you don't see these issues.
I called it an "outdated notion" because...even though I've never read an actual study about the top-watering-leaf-growth issues, I have seen it mentioned in older gardening books.
If I were gardening where the weather was warm, growing season was long( like South and California), then I would buy smaller healthy plants. But if I was gardening somewhere that has long cool start (like Seattle, WA, wher I am), I will buy the BIGGEST seedling that I can find and afford. It makes so much difference.
Egg Shell(sea shell): will take for ever to break down:
Wood Ash: Perfect for root system.
Coffee Ground: Good soil conditioner.
NOTE: Garlic and onions are BASICALLY leafy vegetables. They need Nitrogen more than any thing else. Potash is good too, but there is no need for Phosphorus . "P" is for flowering, blooming and fruits.
HOW DEEP:
Although it is good to condition the soil for a good depth, BUT garlic does not need more than 8- 10" of good soil. But In case you want also plant other veggies in there (Carrots, beets, turnips, ...) You will need more depth.
This post was edited by seysonn on Fri, Sep 20, 13 at 4:12
I tried planting garlic for the first time last fall. I also was using a raised bed.
Apparently for zone 4 that is a bad idea.
I just wasnt thinking it through. My beds are deep beds - aprox 24", and I planted the cloves in the outer perimeters. Every single one of them turned to mush. There simply wasnt enough insulation to protect them from our cold WI winters.