23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

The advice from seysonn is good. Definitely not classic proceedure, but it will probably maximize your yields. I would prepare some manure tea and apply that every three or four days. Just get some good composted cow manure, add water, steep until good and brown, then water with this tea. This was a technique used by the famous organic gardener, Alan Chadwick, at the University of California in Santa Cruz. See the link below for more information.

Here is a link that might be useful: Alan Chadwick

I too agree to leave them alone. If I'm reading the conversion chart correctly, the temps are between 64 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit. A bit on the chilly side for a chilli! Also 5 hours of sunlight is considerably less than what they need. If they are fed and watered, you will still get some fruits, but nothing close to what the plants are capable of. it is also likely they will not be as hot as they could be either. Fish and seaweed emulsion will also work well as a supplement to the nutrients in the soil.

Yes, some amount of shade can help, as can a heavy layer of mulch to help shade and insulate the ground. We're still in the high 80s-low 90s here, though nights are cooling off, and my transplants are in the new high tunnel under a layer of floating row cover. That seems to take the edge off the heat enough that they don't experience wilting from heat stress every day. Don't know if your outside is hotter than inside the tunnel, though. :)

I agree with sunnibel. I plant brassicas as early as late August and I'm about 20 miles inland from San Diego... where our summer doesn't really start until about then. high 90's and 100's are not out of the norm for the 1st couple months of growth, but shade and mulch(especially) help regulate the soil temps. Once they get a 2-3 week hold in the soil, shade is removed completely.

Snow peas I start in late October/Nov.

Kevin

Several people have suggested hoeing and weeding by hand as the best options. In a 4' x 8' bed this shouldn't be difficult. I sense a resistence on your part, but I would strongly suggest you consider gardening organically as your best all-round option. It is not difficult at all, and you will have much healthier crops to harvest. A good introduction can be found at the website below. Click on "Techniques" on the navigation bar. Thanks for considering this option.

Here is a link that might be useful: Alan Chadwick

I'll second the Japanese short handled weeding tools. Try searching for kana hoe. I have a Korean one and a Japanese one. I wouldn't be without them.

The Cape Cod weeder looks to be similar. I don't have the tool yet but some have reported it is a better product.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cape Cod weeder

All to do is to it one. If it taste woody and dry then you picked them too late but if it is normal then it is NORMAL. !
To me they look fine. The tops are still green and alive.

The long skinny varieties that are sold in supermarkets are some of the least flavorful that you can grow. My favorite is the Red Cored Chantenay, but there are many others that are quite good. Let us know how they taste. The photograph that you have posted looks like very healthy and delicious carrots. Contrary to what some people believe, young carrots are not always tastier than more mature ones. The flavor and sugars develop with maturity. See the following website for much more on carrot culture. Click on "Techniques", then on "Carrots".

Here is a link that might be useful: Alan Chadwick

Saw more today on my cucumbers. What's my best options for trying to kill them? I have malathion handy but have been avoiding pesticides for the most part this season.

I had these pests for the first time this year. They seem to be a good candidate for "search and destroy" control. They feed on the top of the leaves and during the day. Much better than coming out at 2:00AM and hiding under the soil during the day. After many S&D missions in the spring, I thought they were gone so I stopped looking for them. But I found they were back in August. Now I just pull off the previous day's blossoms and that's where all the beetles are congregating. What could be easier?

Not vines, but ginger also does well in part shade.

turmeric too, and who does not like turmeric?

The tendril is not dead but the bottom is yellow.

Probably not ripe yet. When did you plant them out? From seed or transplants? IMO one of the most overlooked for watermelon ripeness is the DTM, which if nothing else, is a good starting point. I think the DTM for Crimson Sweet is about 85 days. So if they haven't been growing for 3 months it's probably too early, unless the growing conditions have been ideal.

thanks all, That red thing is half of the case for a broken fish tape reel, you know the kind for fishing walls etc,.. It was broken .Hubby wanted to throw it away, I remembered, I had bought some of those(3) red "trays" several years ago. Supposedly they go around plants esp. tomato plants. supposedly, the color, red ,supposedly to help plants?
At the time the real red "trays" were back at the old house. LOL

Woo - way out of my experience. What's fish tape? What's a fishing wall?

The red idea is supposed to help tomatoes ripen. I have no idea if it works. But rhubarb doesn't ripen. It's just stems so even if it works on tomatoes it will do nothing for rhubarb.

I planted a piece of SP like that in the garden. It is growing like a weed. Just one flower so far. How do I know when to dig them up?

when colder weather comes through the vines will start to die back. That's the ideal time to dig them up. Curing them a couple weeks will improve flavor.

With butternuts I want the green stripes to fade until you can hardly see them, and the color of the rind should change from pinkish beige to a nutty brown. The vines are usually not completely dead. Curing the squash in a warm sunny spot for a couple of weeks will "finish" butternuts that are a shade short of perfect.

Planatus has it just about the way I do it. The squash start out green, then turn light tan, with longitudinal green stripes. Those stripes get thinner and thinner, and finally they disappear, at which point the squash should be completely tan/beige. I often let them sit even as the vines die, and pluck them up when the vines are no more. Don't forget to dip the harvested squash in a dilute bleach solution to sterilize the skin. That will make them last longer. I believe that if the vines are dead and there are still thin green stripes, those stripes will eventually go away by themselves.

Planatus -- Yes, I was wondering if it was all the rain -- we had a lot in WV too.

Rodney -- The weird thing is, this was the first year I soaked the cloves before I planted them (in water with some liquid kelp). Maybe I soaked them in a solution that was not the correct ratio of water to seaweed? Thanks for the tip on the allium forum -- I'll try posting there as well.

Sunnibel -- have looked up onion maggots, and need to still learn more. I did plant the onion bed next to the garlic bed this year -- against my better judgement, but that was the only bed ready for onions when I had limited time to plant them. Aargh! Well, it looks like complete harvesting and leaving no culls controls the maggots pretty well. There's always next year.

Yes, that's what I've read too, but I don't know if it works in my particular location. We have very large amounts of wild allium around us, another place for the maggots to breed? The maggots were here when we moved in, anyhow. So I ended up hitting on the strategy of planting later, to avoid that last mating and egg-laying of the fly. I did that last fall (as well as being very thorough in my harvesting and placing culls in the trash, not compost) and I had good stand from the garlic in spring and many fewer infested heads at harvest time.

Great advice here, check out the square foot gardening section for ways to grow in smaller spaces. You don't have to raise the beds, it is for info on the cardboard system for stopping future weeds. If you want to get the beds a foot or so deep, you can use bricks, concrete blocks, or anything you can think of to make a border.

Fast growing and quick satisfaction, radishes are under a month, and you can eat the green tops as well. We also cook the radishes themselves, take kind of like cauliflower.

Cheri

Given your hot climate, you'll want to start off with heat-loving crops to plant first, followed by cool-season crops when daytime temperatures drop into the 80s. Basically, reverse the order followed by most U.S gardeners. For example, you can plant okra now (or any time during the spring and summer, really). You'll want to research what other veggies are grown around there and take the heat - a lot of plants in the okra family are eaten as food there.
In about a month, you'll be able to direct seed peppers, zucchini and tomatoes, but keep the soil shaded and cool while they germinate.

sometimes there is more than one grub!

Look for the eggs and pick them off. The eggs are brown little round things that can be anywhere on the plant, but more often on the stem. Also, look for holes in the stem. The larvae is very small at first. I have pulled some out of my zukes this year that were barely the size of a grain of rice. They eat and grow and destroy their way down the stem!

Mine peaked and are now looking much worse than yours. Cukes tend to go downhill fast.

Yes, mine look much worse and are now full of mystery bugs and their eggs and larvae. The picture is the underside of a leaf. All the leaves look like this.