24,795 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening


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!


jnjfarm
I have not heard of Green Giant broccoli. Google search only brings up images of pre-packaged broccoli with the big green guy on the package. If you meant to say Green Goliath then I think the 76 DTM might be too long for the OP to start from seed now in Indiana to get a harvest before winter sets in. I agree with Wayne that an early variety like Pacman or Early Dividend would be a better choice for the OP at this point.

I have picked beets in November and stored in gallon ziplock bags in my refrigerator until early March. I find the flavor is good thru January then they seem to loose their flavor the longer I store them after that. My solution was to grow less of them as I had way too many beets and carrots in the fridge.
The space used up got to be an issue too. We only own one refrigerator. Wish we had another to store all the apples, beets, carrots ect. Always easy to find friends willing to take the excess.

I've been growing them for around 8 years or so now. Mostly as a novelty more so than a food. Never had them try to take over my yard and have never had them shade other plants because they were planted in the right place where they wouldn't shade anything to begin with.
Rodney


Sorry I didn't mean you had to grow them to transplant size inside, under lights, etc. Just that they usually germinate better and faster with the cooler soil temps you can maintain inside and they can then be moved outside to the shade and gradually hardened off to the heat and full sun of late summer. I get faster germination, no bolting, and better root growth that way. But whatever works.
Dave


Although birds will sometimes clip off the stem of a young seedling, this typically occurs during the day. If it's at night, this is probably the cutworm, as others have already written.
Alan Chadwick had a technique for dealing with these larva which I have not seen mentioned here so far, so I'll briefly describe it.
In the morning, when you discover the severed plant lying on the ground, look carefully within a circle of about 6' from the stem. Most often you will discover a small hole in the surface of the soil (about 1/16' in diameter). Take a table knife (not sharp) and dig down abut an inch or two to the side of that little hole. Flip the soil up onto the surface and look for the cutworm. They are quite easy to catch that way.
As one or two of them can do a lot of damage, usually there aren't very many of them to worry about. Just be careful not to disturb the soil around the stricken plant, so that you can find the little hole.
Chadwick called these larva by the name used in England where he was trained: Leatherjackets. More information about his masterful gardening techniques can be found at the link below.
Here is a link that might be useful: Alan Chadwick garden techniques






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.