24,795 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening


I use the maxicrop and and can vouch for it . I start a lot of cuttings inside over winter. Every 10-14 days I drench the pots with it and the leaves stay green all winter. It is not a fertilizer but it has lots of nutrients/minerals the plant can use. It seems to make a difference. Outside you most likely need to use it more often like at least once a week.

Why would you? If you are growing them for normal storage then all those in the pic are still healthy, green, and growing. Sure you can pull a few if you need them to use now - those few in the center with blooms on them for example - but the rest are no where near harvesting. Let them keep growing until they dry and turn brown.
Dave

I've got some hot banana plants growing, picked some when they weren't quite ripe, not hot at all. Started leaving them on the plants a lot longer, now they have a little heat to them. Have given some to a friend and she told they were pretty spicy and she eats Thai peppers all the time

Disclaimer, I prefer Hot Banana over Hungarian wax, by just a tad and for a different reasons, i've been eating and growing them both my entire life.
But otherwise it's fairly well known that Hot Banana has a lot of heat variance, and many of them will barely give you a tickle even when ripe. Whereas Hungarian wax, heatwise, is more reliable and predictable.
Steve


neem oil is probably the only thing i would use. it can be used as foilage spray or soil drench. in fact, the best properties of neem oil is the fact that it doesn't kill insects directly, but stops them from reproducing. so it should work wonders to eliminate the source (larvae). i would go with the concentrate neem oil extract, it's 70% neem oil and 30% emulsifier. use it at about 2 tbsp per gal.

I've grown them this year on tomato cages. They are nice and crisp with thin skins. The cucumbers/melons are long and pale green in appearance. This is the first time I've grown them in probably 10-15 years. It definitely won't be the last time but it's not a garden regular as space is limited.
I'm also growing a true cucumber called Japanese Climbing. It's a good slicing cucumber that has enjoyed climbing up the tomato cages. I've harvested several 9-12 inch fruits from the vines. This is the second year I've grown this heirloom and it's now considered a regular in my garden. I'm about ready to process seeds from a 16-inch long cucumber that I've allowed to mature.

I make bread & butter pickles out of my armenian's they are my favorite They are tasty and great on sandwiches I also makes relish out of them I like them better than cumcumbers
if anyone wants the recipe I'll try to copy the link and share I live in AZ and with the AZ heat Armenians grow great love them


As noinwi said previously, the silvering on the leaf veins was natural. However, you've got that plant in a relatively small pot for a zucchini and it was probably rootbound when you initially posted (due to the way some of the leaves have begun wilting). Since then it has only gotten more rootbound. Add to that the fact that you "barely fertilized" only once and you've got a plant that is severely stressed and more prone to pest/disease issues. Sorry to say but your plant is a goner at this point.
Rodney

Many of those small flying creatures are types of wasps, that do things like prey on caterpillars and other things that we don't like. The reason we avoid using pesticides is to protect these things so they can do all the hard work in the garden to get rid of things that want to harm our gardens. Spraying pesticides on them is a bad idea.

Joe,
I know what you mean by the terrier destroying things. They have a laser like focus once they start tracking a critter.
Not to sound like a alarmist, check with your vet if "lepto," leptospirosis is a problem in your area. Check this link out Lepto
The dogs can get it by sniffing or ingesting rat urine. After my sister lost her dog to it we had our dogs vaccinated for it.
A few years back I saw on National Geographic's where people are taking their dogs on organized rat hunts in big cities. They make a event of it and it is all done at night when the rats are active. Kind of like a tiny dog coon hunt.
Craig

Well, it sounds like you have incentive lol. If you do decide to keep it, and it sounds like you will, then probably the best thing you can do is avoid touching the sick one before the others. It could still spread through the air or through insects, but physical contact is something over which you have control.
Also, while zucchini aborts for a number of reasons, the easiest prevention is to hand-pollinate. If it hasn't yet been discussed above, and if you aren't sure how, just take a male blossom (it will be a flower atop a single stalk with a pollen covered stamen inside) and remove the flower petals, leaving behind the little nub (stamen) covered in pollen. The female flower will have a cluster of about 5 'nubs' (stigma) inside the flower and will sit a top a tiny zucchini fruit. Just take the de-petaled male flower and, pretending you're a bee, gently rub it around the stigma. That's it. Easy as can be. If there are just a few male flowers, you can use one male to pollinate a few flowers, just be sure to keep a little pollen on the stamen.
Good luck.

I actually did hand-pollinate but it was somewhat wet on those mornings and I know that can affect how well it works. I figured they were aborting due to stress, but I suppose it could be a pollination issue. It's supposed to be drier for the next week or two so I'll keep trying on the new ones.


Probably not. If you've got it by the west wall, it will get eastern sun and shade in the afternoon, which is what you want. Unless it is something that can handle the scorch of the afternoon, the rule is to plant it on the east side of buildings and walls. Watch out for heat radiating off the wall, so plant it 2-3 feet away to allow for some air movement. The descriptor for plants that it "loves sun" is not intended for people who garden in the desert. Almost nothing loves the sun here and gardening is a partial-sun activity.



If you don't remove the infected foliage from the plant and dispose of it away from the garden the fungus just continues to spread even with fungicide treatment. So the first rule of thumb is to never leave damaged foliage such as that on the plant. Then use your fungicide sprays.
Dave


Look for aphids,too. Lots of ants farm them and keep the good bugs away. Watched a great movie about insects that had excellent footage of them fighting off good bugs.
The desert fire ants in AZ were just as bad as the fire ants in NC and OK. I now live in NC, hate those buggers!




I am in Birmingham, AL. Today I went to a local nursery I like a lot and chatted with them. They also think it's not a virus which was reassuring. They thought fungus and recommended an organic insecticide. Tonight I did some cleaning in the garden bed and applied the product. Inspecting again today I saw a lot that matched downy mildew descriptions, especially having some grayish brown patchy spots of mold. Also the brand new leaves do not seem to be affected which seems good. We are careful to water at the base of the plant but it has been very rainy and VERY humid lately. Should the insecticide soap help? Or are there other treatments that would be better?
My cucumber plant has died completely at this point. Can downy mildew do this or might the culprit there be something different?
Thanks for the comments! I have browsed the forums a lot but this is my first time posting so I'm excited to participate!
95% of the time yellowing leaves = too much water or fertilizer related. if it starts out on the leaf tips its typically too much nutrients. if it starts like pale the center and progressing outwards its typically low nutrients. best bet is to check what you've done and haven't done. ;)