23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
The kitchen knife did the trick. I cut through halfway and then snapped it off gently. I didn't want to go all the way through with the knife and injure the plant.
My wife was thrilled that she got two more today after the first one yesterday. Man they grow fast. Zuchinni, that is :)
I've always wondered about injecting Bt into squash stems. Am I understanding it correctly now, that basically the idea is it is coating the inside of the hollow stem, not getting it into the tissues? Would cutting a small slit and introducing the Bt with an eye dropper also work?
Any way to put the BT on the inside of the vine (where the little @$!@#*#*#$*$%%*%*%*$!!$#&*#$&*'s eat) will work. I think a needle probably will cause less damage than a slit.
As long as it isn't a marinade injector. I mauled my plants trying to use that last year. Too big and awkward of a needle.
I get them by the thousands in winter!
You can't hear yourself speak right after a big rain! Literally! We don't even hear them! LOL People visiting will ask what that NOISE is??????? We don't notice!
I find them all over the garden all year long (and occasionally in the house!) In pots, soil bags on plants behind everything!
We don't use our hot tub anymore cause they are attracted to the boron and jump in and drown! We're working on a solution for that!
Nancy
Well, I'm not sure if I'd appreciate sharing a hot tub with them either, Nancy. I sure thought this little guy was cute, though, nestled between the stones. You would think we'd see more of them here with our climate, but like I said this is the first one I've seen in over 10 years.
I mentioned this in the other thread, but nearly all stables in the Chicagoland area bed on wood shavings rather than straw. They also don't really compost, they just pile up used bedding and manure till they have too much and then have someone haul some away.
Decaying wood, I believe, consumes N. So you're manure component, may have been low on N to begin with, and been depleting any other N once it's been mixed in.
I got the compost from the horse stables on 130th and Lagrange ave. also plants are growing but are still small for this time of year and wore pal with tints of yellowing early season till I added tomatoe tone. And I think it used all of the n up in that. Here's my garden now
I don't think they like it too well, but like someone once said... they don't know until they try it. And enough were trying it on mine that I fenced mine in.
I used some deer-away spray on bush beans and things like that, and it really works. But I didn't want that rotten egg smell on my asparagus. (I now have everything fenced)
I have some relation who have a patch and the deer don't bother it at all.
But again, I was finding a few chomped on (and then they'd just drop it on the ground!!!) so I decided to protect my investment.
Just didn't have enough to go around......
They have chomped my asparagus, many times, in an area with high deer pressure. The only things that do not get eaten are things with thorns, roses, all manners of thistle, brambles, nettles seem to do well,
some small thorny trees (buckthorn I think). I am waiting for the border vegetation to grow, then fence and replant where asparagus has been killed (some of it is alive if stunted). I have also a bed next to my house with 20 asparagus, that goes untouched, but I think it is due to hostas and other tastier plants nearby, and the deer pressure at my house is low.
Are the puncture wounds on the leaf stems and fruit maybe from squash bugs? And the sawdust looking stuff that doesn't brush off at the base is some sort of mildew or dry rot? I have copper and Organicide (that says it can be used for powdery mildew or black spot on roses, I was planning on using it for the SB nymphs and what I think are leafhoppers anyway)?
I used a mix of vigero potting mix and vigero organic garden soil to fill the main beds, and straight potting mix in the cinderblock holes.
@ Cara Rose,
You have been using expensive stuff and definitely getting rewards for it. Everything looks great.
I had that happen to me last year when I planted late in the season.
I doubt though that what you are experiencing was under the same conditions as what I was working with then. Not enough sunlight during the day was probably my problem. My corn this year just shot up almost 2 feet in a week!
:)
Many of my corns showed tassels when the corns were that short. Shouldn't worry though. The corn should still grow more. Mine grew to about 5 to 6' tall.
But here in California, they were planted around March, and they were all harvested before the 4th of July.
Creek-side,
The advantage of a pumpkin is that you can bury the vine. I suggest next time you grow pumpkin, bury your vines with dirt as much as you can. They will root at many different places along the vine, and those buried sections will not be as susceptible SVBs.
This has probably been covered elsewhere, but I'm wondering about whether Bt stem injections are useful as an SVB damage preventative. Perhaps a stupid question, so bear with me. My understanding of the usual strategy is that you wait until you see the frass, and then squirt Bt into the hole to kill the bugger. But why not just fill the vines with Bt solution? Yes, that's maybe a lot of fluid, but the Bt is cheap. Very diluted. I can make tens of gallons for a few bucks.
Instead of inspecting all the vines carefully every day or two, this way, I figure I'd just pump 'em up say, every week. I've never done Bt injection, as I like row covers, but row covers are hard to do for non-vining cucurbits, like zukes. How many gallons (ounces?) of Bt does it take to fill up a zuke plant? How long does the fluid stay in the stems? Do they leak?