24,795 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Here you go - lots of past discussions on when to pick eggplant.
http://www.gardenweb.com/gardenweb/query/eggplant-pick-ready/topic=cornucop
Basic answer - whenever they are of a size you wish to use and the skin is shiny. Smaller is better than overly large as flavor decreases with size.
Dave



Interesting to see all of the different storage techniques! Cukes lose a lot of moisture through their skin. I've always rinsed them off thoroughly after bringing them inside, shaken off the water, then put them in zip lock bags before storing in the fridge. Cukes last several days for me and couldn't be any more crisp.

Agree that the odds are it is some cross-pollinated mutant rather than any known variety. They are quite common since so many squash varieties cross so easily. What does the inside look like? The friend should be able to tell you if this was a volunteer or from some seed they saved from previous seasons. If so then that increases the odds it is a mongrel (love that label).
Dave

If I get rid of them do the plants recover? I already had two harvests from the pole beans, so if I have to rip them out it doesn't hurt. What does concern me is that the same day the goldetti squash dropped, my zucchini dropped down by about 18" or so. It covered a 6 square foot area of ground and was almost 4 feet high. That morning it was maybe two feet or so and more laying down than standing straight up. I clipped a bunch of dead leaves about a week ago and I now have a tremendous amount of new leaves and buds coming up. It just seemed weird that two plants a fair distance from each other with other squash plants in between, suffered such a dramatic change over night.
I have meticulously looked for SVB and found none on the two plants in question, although the zucchini is not so easy to completely search. I had one crookneck that definitely had a couple or more in it and I just tore the entire plant out and bagged it for the garbage pickup.

Dave, could it be from a change in watering pattern? We got crushed with heat and humidity here for a week. It was mid 90s and humidity about the same. One night it barely got down to 80. To complicate things more, I am extremely close to the bay on my south and have a salt water canal on either side of me. Is it possible that the extreme humidity had this effect? I have a couple of tomato plants in the same bed as the squash in question and I did not water the one morning because it was so hot and humid all night. Is it possible that it is severely dehydrated and will bounce back? I will say this morning when I went outside it was mid 60s and the leaves and stems were mostly upright, although not like they were. This afternoon I put a slow shower watering into the ground around the sick plant and added a gallon of fish emulsion and cal-mag diluted as recommended. In my mind I am trying to catch up for the lack of water that one day, although not truly soaking it.
Appreciate all the input from everyone, greatly.

@Dave: Thank you for the link to that! I've tried to dig around but many times, experience is better than blind searching, so I appreciate it. I am not set on 3-1-2 itself, just the ratio.
@rhizo_1: the 3-1-2 ratio is what most plants want to use, as far as I can read up on, via container gardening and it seems, lawn care.
@stevie: the only reason I was going specifically for liquid is because I use a siphon hose-end sprayer, and I thought maybe the water soluble might not be efficient. But I suppose water soluble is water soluble, eh?
@daninthedirt: thanks for your addition. I think I overlooked that MG somewhere; for some reason I was convinced I couldn't find a MG 3-1-2!
Thanks again for advice and pointers. I am not opposed to a water-soluble fertilizer, but just have been unable to find one in 3-1-2. Hopefully now I have a lead on one!

I guess I am confused. Are you looking for finished product of 3-1-2? Like was pointed out Miracle Grow is 24-8-16 which is 3-1-2 ratio you are looking for. MG plant food has directions on the package on how to use in hose end sprayer. Its water soluble and stay mixed real good. I mix it up in milk jugs to use when transplanting and it stays mixed and does not settle out so would work great in hose end sprayer. If you need 3-1-2 final mix, just dilute MG down by adding 8 times as much water as recommended. .I am not a big fan of foliage feeding. I feed the soil and let the root system of the plant do its job.

I vote for powdery mildew. do a quick walk around the garden every morning and you can catch these things before they get that bad.

Im fairly certain these are beauregard sweet potatoes. I planted them and a white flesh variety, but the white flesh was a bit too starchy for my family's taste.
I typically plant 12-13 at my house (I have a small city lot, and don't have much room). I planted twice that at my mother's house last year, but I used ground cloth as I knew she wouldn't weed. Unbeknownst to me, that's a bad ideas with tubers. The voles made themselves quite at home and destroyed at least 60% of the crop. I still have twenty pounds or so in my basement from last year. I haven't eaten any in about two months, but they look like they are still keeping just fine.
Depending upon the harvest this year I will look into canning some.


Thanks--since the fruit is already setting and growing rapidly, it shouldn't be a problem. There's a good week before the temperatures here even resembles 'chilly', and quite a few weeks after that before the first frost.
I've found that if tomatoes are planted over a more manageable period of several weeks, the 'tomato tsunami' is spread over a much longer season, and yield isn't affected.
Happy gardening!
Rick in CT


Most of the female flowers never open up. A few do, but most don't. . Not sure why. It might just be the variety. On the on the A&M Agrilife Extension Vegetable Variety Selector (information source most county extensions offices use in Texas), it suggest several varieties of Zucchini for my region, none of which I can find seeds for except for the Eight Ball Tigriss. I find if funny that the varieties they suggest are so rare and hard to find. Most of them are hybrids anyway and I wanted to stick with heirloom for seed collection. I will try and find some of these seeds before spring and give the a try if I have problem with my heirlooms this fall. I started some new seeds for a fall garden this week. These new seeds are heirloom seeds. Hopefully they will do better then the ones in the ground right now. I plan to plant them outside of the GH this time. It's risky, because of the adverse conditions of my region, but if the wind will stay below 80mph, they might survive.

Ground hogs & people don't mix, whether you garden or not; they are very destructive. I have a pole building with a gravel floor, and unknown to me, a ground hog tunneled under it. I discovered the tunnel when it collapsed under me, and I fell through to above my knees... it was just fortunate that the wood splitter I was pulling at the time didn't fall in with me, and I was not injured.
I would probably feel the same toward a neighbor who was sheltering ground hogs, as I would to someone I caught releasing one on my property - because there's not much difference. Their problem becomes my problem. When I lived in California, I once lived & gardened adjacent to a neglected property, that was riddled with gophers... as fast as I could kill them, more would move in from next door. To say it was frustrating would be an understatement. I would never knowingly impose such a burden on my neighbors, nor should any responsible property owner.
But back to the original question... I concur with those who have mentioned rhubarb and alliums. Probably not much else is safe, and as they destroy one crop - which they can do quickly - they will move on to the next. Pretty much anything people will eat, they will too. I've had good luck with chicken wire fencing low, with electric fence wires just above it to prevent climbing over. This keeps out deer, rabbits & racoons as well. As others have mentioned, the electric fence does not need to be on all the time, but I energize it when I put out transplants, or when I see herbivores moving in.
When I see that a new ground hog has moved in (which tends to happen about this time of year, as the adolescents leave the nest) I break out the havahart, and usually catch it in a day or two. Dried apricots make great bait, but this year all I had to do was place the open trap - unbaited - next to the garden fence, and the ground hog walked right into it while looking for a way in.

Oh, I forgot -- they also love chard and beet greens. Funnily, my fat-butt groundhog, who escapes under an old child's playhouse that I use as a potting shed, has not touched my tomatoes, peppers or eggplants yet (fingers and toes crossed!). My squashes have all been retarded this year in terms of production, so who knows what will happen with them. However, I have hurled insults at this animal regarding its fat posterior, so it might be a female who is sensitive about that and therefore has limited herself to salad greens.






My Kennebecs are making new growth on some of the plants! I really am very close to cutting them down. A few of the plants look just about done, others growing anew.
Speaking of glycemic indexes...watermelon has a very high GI [71], but a very low glycemic LOAD [either 4 or 8, I forget], which makes it very healthy food. Pancakes on the other hand has a high GI...67, but a very high glycemic load [39], making it a very unhealthful 'food'.