23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Sure they will last till fall planting.
The only thing that I think of is that they will dry up faster. Keep them in like sawdust, shredded news paper.
Also, you wouln't want to plant the tiny ones in the middle. So use them in cooking/personal use and kepp the big cloves for planting.

Next time you miss harvest time, leave the plants in the ground for another winter. The one plant will produce a lot of new bulbs, one from each clove that has split. I did that last year and I will always do that now! What a harvest! I left the six biggest plants in the ground and got 6 big bulbs from each plant the second summer.

My old muscles are now taking half the load in twice the time :)
But it's a good kinda hurt.

Older muscles here too. I pulled my back muscle in the garden this spring and ended up at PT. I didn't realize how de conditioned I was. I have underlying medical issues that keep me inactive for periods of time and that unravels the muscles I manage to build up in the garden.

I'm back in the garden and comfortable again and now I've added more structured exercise and stretching to my routine. I've done that before but I do get off track. I think it is essential at my age to work as hard as I can to build muscle and keep it. Flexibility doesn't hurt either.

One thing the PT person said that sticks with me. I was explaining that I thought my brain/muscle connections were all rusty at first but that I felt them starting to feel a better connection. She said for the first 6 weeks you begin using muscles you haven't used in awhile, your brain is 'recruiting' your muscles and you don't really start seeing any building muscle results that first 6 weeks, then you can see steady progress after that.

Definitely never going to have the muscles I had in my 20s or 30s again though. :-)

Wow, this late in the season? Were they huge? My zukes aren't looking too good - not PM, I don't know maybe the SB just damaged them too much (they've been chewing on the fruit and stems and petioles). Only 1 has new flowers. I do have 2 coming up from my 3rd planting (2nd was old seed and none germinated). Don't know if I have enough time before frost to get anything out of them though. Yellow Prolific Straightneck still going strong - and I planted 3 more looks like we won't need!

They were pretty big, but not any bigger than some that I killed a month ago.

Edie,

I'd think Alabama would be gardening heaven. Long growing season and plenty of rain I imagine.

Suggest that your son make acquaintance with local gardeners and ask them for advice. I've cultivated a few friendships and learned a great deal just by stopping by someone's garden while out in the car. Common hobbies, as you know, are a great conversation starter. And it doesn't hurt when you offer to help with the weeding while chatting.

There might be a "gardening in Alabama, or southeast" board here, check it out! Nancy

Number one, not everything in the garden should have the same fertilizing schedule.

Number two: Not everything in the garden should be fed with the same fertilizer.

For example, onions, cabbages, .. leafy greens need mostly Nitrogen, some potassium very little or no Phosphorous .

Another point: Since you have a short and cooler growing season, fertilizing tomatoes at this stage is not going to do any good, as far as ripening the fruits are concerned and instead it will cause more foliage growth, more news flowers, etc.

You may want to consider an organic approach to fertilization. It has several advantages, which I will summarize: 1.) It is milder than chemical applications and so is far less likely to burn your plants or cause other damage. 2.) You can incorporate sufficient fertilizers into the soil before you plant, and not need to fertilize again until you harvest and replant again. This is because the majority of organic materials are relatively slow release. 3.) The addition of organic materials into your soil builds up humus, which super important for over all plant health.It keeps the soil loose and aeriated, retains moisture, promotes worm growth, provides trace minerals, and provides many other benefits.

A good source of information about organic gardening techniques can be found at http://www.alan-chadwick.org

Click on the tab labled techniques to learn about the culture of various plants, build highly effecient raised beds, make compost, and much more.

Hope this helps.

Here is a link that might be useful: Alan Chadwick

Those sure look like gnaw marks from rodent teeth, not peck marks from a beak. The delicata look a little more like a bit of slug or insect damage.

Here's it's the squirrels who do that.

@ zone 5B, Mil, WI , Mid August, no fruit set ...?

Probably your first frost is in October ?
A simple math is not in your favor. It take tomatoes just about 60 days from flower to ripe fruit. I would imagine it would take watermelons much longer than that. 100 days maybe ?

Rather than math not being in my favor, I'd say time isn't...I have a very complicated relationship w/ time.. :-/

As for the watermelons, it'd simply take forever and a half. My problem has always been startin those things indoors rather than direct sowing, which I prefer & love to do.

Anyway, I cut down all but three watermelon vines, 2 Crimson Sweet & 1 Sugar Baby. I knocked down the rows that once stood around em (bases of the vines), cultivated the soil in that entire area/patch, added a bag of Miracle-Gro Garden Soil, chopped & mixed that in, laid the watermelon & pumpkin vines freely on that spot, then watered like crazy.
This morning, I'll go pop open the 2nd bag on top of the base of the pumpkin mound.

Think I could/should mix a little Jobe's Vegetable & Tomato Organic Fert. into there? It's 2-5-3 (I kno I need Phosphorus like a mofo at this point too), but it's granular too.

I agree that those squash are short of optimum maturity.

I sometimes have a problem with some [not all] of my nearly mature butternuts. A worm or something can enter the squash where it rests on the ground. I put a narrow piece of board underneath them....crossways.

I think they are pretty close, and would just cure them in a warm place for a couple of weeks. In the garden, I look for a change of hue in the rind. As the faint green stripes fade, a brown color becomes more pronounced. I've only brought in a few so far, most need more time.

According to OP's last post, they started off striped white and purple. Those ones usually turn yellow when ripe, and ripe ones are not edible.

Though I have never grown that particular eggplant, but judging from the picture, I DO NOT think that its is over ripen. Eggplants, unlike zuchinnies and cucumbers have a longer window of harvesting. even if the seeds get slightly hardened, they are still edible.

let us hear from the OP, how it turns out.

First, that's not enough growing medium for cucumbers. You need a bigger pot and fill it to the top... One hot summer day will kill that plant instantly. Mildew or not, you never had a chance to get a cucumber or two.

Veggies are not herbs. They need room to grow roots and when grown in containers, they need to keep those roots from drying out in a hot Kentucky sun.... The mildew was most likely just the final blow to an unhealthy plant.

Cucumbers are not hard to grow in most climates.

To Ceth_k, cucumbers are very easy to grow in the Ohio/Kentucky area. Grafting is not even a reasonable idea here. They grow like weeds.They just need to be sprayed with copper or daconil on occasion.

What i meant is that cucumber is not the most hardy plant in curcubit family. Even in this single first page of forum there are two posts regarding diseases and problems of growing cucumber. A lot of people face sudden death of their cucumbers but not many face sudden death of their pumpkins.

Over here there are many. many named cultivars selected for various traits including stringlessness. If you can only obtain something generically called 'Scarlet Runners' you may not be getting the best flavour. A bit like growing a crop of 'cabbage' or 'tomatoes' without a varietal name.

coffeehaus - thanks for the mention of Kaeferbohnen. I'd never come across that use of runners before. I have a stack of dried beans - I always keep far too many for seed. Maybe I'll try that recipe.

Millions of runner beans end up on composts heaps here, especially at the end of the season, because they are considered unusuable once past the green bean stage.

Here is a link that might be useful: Runner bean thread

I too have planted some under the trees just as flowering beans.
They do not produce enough(like pole/bush beans) I will harvest the few there is as shelly. I started mine in April(I think), they are still going with 3 to 4 hours of sun.
Another bean that I plant for just flowering purpose, is Hyacinth Pole Beans (aka lab lab) They are hot weather lovers and no are flowering. They are pretty, (flowers , beans, foliage) smell real nice and bloom till frost.

Is there a particular reason you feel that SFG is necessary? Do the locals have trouble gardening in the native soil? Maybe you are making life harder than it needs to be. Whereabouts in Sri Lanka are you located?

Relating to what Flora said :

In my previous location, in GA, I created a garden area of about 600 sf, where it had been all covered with wild berries, thorns, small pine trees, all kinds of perennial weeds.
The native soil was red clay that would harden like a rock. It took me gradually two seasons. It was a good physical activity for me, better than joining a gym. . In the process, I did not buy even a single bag of soil, manure or anything. I hauled topsoil , leaf mold, pine straw, from the wooded areas. I found a farm and got free horse manure. I buried fall leaves, brought a lot of earthworms from other places, throw them in the garden, added lime....
I created a beautiful blend with that red clay soil and all the organic matter. I grew just about any garden plants I wanted there successfully. Again, without buying a bag of any supplement.
I have heard a lot of negative thing about clay soil. But once you amend it, it is the best thing.

But the I understand that not everybody has time and instead they have finances to do it quickly with less efforts. That is fine too.