23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
If the plants had been in the original pots too long before they were transplanted, they can be stunted. With Brassicas always buy nice looking thriving plants. They will either come out of it or they won't. The 14 inch plant is normal for it's age. The will grow all summer long, and not be affected by the heat. As it cools down in the fall, they will form the little fruit at the leaf nodes. I plant mine in early spring, but know that they won't be ready to harvest until October/November. Some varieties are listed as 150 days to maturity.
You can use coffee grounds. They don't have to be fresh. If you need a lot just stop by a starbucks shop and ask them for old coffee grounds. That will take care of the slug problem. It want kill them but they want cross over it to get to the plants.
I am working on a formula:
= two parts coffee grounds(used)
= two pars sand(I have some paver san. Play sand will do too)
= two parts saw dust
= less than half part table salt(spice it up..haha)
(thinking about some fine ground chili. but I have to do a clinical test on the subject..heeehaa)
= half a part fresh coffee grounds(for more power)
= one part Epson salt
= one part any slugo type thing.
Yesterday two slugs crossed over and were killed. They managed to run away but coul not go far and died of their wounds. With 100% Get - BUGA, the manage to run away, leavin a trace . But with this formula they die or are half dead nearby.
My experiment is ongoing and not conclusive yet. The good thing about it is that I can use it more generously, because other than GET BUGA the rest don't cost much.
Sluggo with spinosad has extra stuff to kill a lot of harmless soil critters. Stick to plain Sluggo which kills only the slugs and really works. I sprinkle it under leaves and around the perimeter of my garden. I've never had a problem with pillbugs. They digest the mulch I put down and never harm my plants. They are not insects, they are crustaceans. Slugs are the bad guys!
Here's my garden.
Muskmelons in the near bed, tomatoes behind them.
To the right are sweet peppers and Dragon Tongue bush beans.
To the left are pommegranate "trees".
In the back (you can barely make it out) are the peach tree and boysenberry vines on the ladder thing.
I didn't have a lot of space when I was planning everything, and I made a few mistakes on placing the poms to the south of the veg beds, but it somehow seems to work out anyway:).
"this is kind of off subject but was wondering why you put a purple martin house next to the garden? I have 3 of them but keep them away so they don't attract them. Just curious."
Purple Martins eat flying insects so you want them around and they will not harm your garden.
I love lemon cukes! Very refreshing in hot weather, but the skin tends to be bitter, so I peel it. You might get away with leaving the skin on if you pick them first thing in the morning when it's coolest. These are really my favorite cucumber for eating out of hand. I peel, slice and pass them around. I never do that with other cucumbers.
Those containers in the pic don't look like real half whiskey barrels. They look like the plastic copies of a half barrel and if so then they are much smaller than real half barrel container.
If I am correct then that means less plants in each. Plus you hadn't mentioned that you had the nasturtiums etc. in them as well. So that reduces the number of plants that you asked about originally that can be grown in them even more.
The standard 1/2 whiskey barrel is 27 gallons. The plastic copies come in 2 sizes and are only 15 or 18 gallons.
Dave
digdirt, yes your right, I'm sorry about not mentioning all the details needed for everyone to offer an opinion. Hard to do so without knowing the full story. I tried to find the wooden ones this year everywhere. I didn't want plastic, as I felt it would heat up too much but, of course, just because I wanted them, they were no where to be seen!!!
I'm not even sure what gallon size these are (Walmart) but I'm betting the smallest.
I have this morning snipped all but one vine per barrel of everything, so I'll be finding out the hard way if they will grow and produce.
Very crisp, and good flavor. They love the heat too, chiefly due to the fact that they are melons botanically, not true cucumbers. This makes them a good choice for warmer regions... but not so good here in the upper Midwest, especially this year.
Make sure they get enough water especially when it's hot. In fact, feel free to take some of our excessive rain! Also, if they are only 3 feet long I wouldn't be too worried yet. Mine usually don't start really producing til their vines are longer anyway.
With that many different varieties growing then seed saving from them would not be recommended.
You can avoid some cross-contamination by bagging blooms and hand pollinating and then saving the seeds from only that particular fruit. There is a FAQ here on how to do it.
Foe example:
Crookneck is a pepto and so is Acorn
Or. Hubbard is a maxima
Butternut is a moschata
So look up each of your specific varieties and find out what family they are in.
Dave
What Dave said.
Also, zucchini is C. pepo, too. So it can cross with the crookneck and acorn squash.
I don't know about birdhouse gourds. Do the seed packets say what it is? The only reference I found online mentioned Lagenaria siceraria. If so that won't cross with any of the others on the list.
So I think saving seeds from zuchini, crookneck and acorn is out, unless you want to go to the trouble of isolating the flowers (or at least those flowers you plan to save seeds from) (like Dave said).
Assuming I have the birdhouse gourd species correct, you should be able to save seeds from the Hubbard and Butternut and birdhouse gourd with no special precautions to prevent cross-pollination.
--McKenzie
Here is a link that might be useful: grow birdhouse gourds
Today I found a brown lace wing larvae on my bell pepper plant. Now I know that is beneficial. May be it was the pupa I found? I crushed some orangey eggs on my leaf surface. Now I think they may have been lady bug eggs :(
Is there a good site to know beneficial insects, their eggs, pupae and larvae by looking at them?
But virtually anything that produces edible leaves, stalks, or roots, will produce more with SFG.
Interesting but very broad claim Glib. More than what? A container of the same size as used in the SFG? An in-ground bed? Row planting? Raised beds? Wide-row gardening?
I do some SFG because I have some spaces where beds fit and it works. But there is no way I can grow as much lettuce or spinch or potatoes or carrots or turnips or chard in those beds as i can in my in-ground beds using both row and wide-row planting. Much less produce more.
SFG was never intended to replace other methods of gardening. It is just an alternative method for those who may not have the space, time, need, or ability to to garden in other ways. But it isn't, nor does it claim to be, the one perfect gardening method.
Dave
Uscjusto:
Story: A couple months ago, a gopher ate nearly the whole taproot, but left a small root ball at the base of the plant. I picked up the plant(cage and all), and transplanted it 2 feet over from the gopher hole. After some babying for a couple weeks, it stopped wilting and kept growing. I just picked the first fruit a couple days ago.
Kevin
Oh - and I can no longer say I haven't seen an SVB yet. I picked off at least 20 eggs tonight from the 3 plants each of crookneck, pumpkins, and tromboncino. Nothing on the cucumbers so far.
Actually some ants do bring the aphids to the plants, others are opportunistic farmers. It's misleading to talk about ants, or aphids, as if they are all the same. There are thousands of different, unique types of ants in the world and they don't even all eat the same things. There are populations of aphids that are winged and fly to new plants, others are carried by ants. The OP probably has both types occurring. There are some cases where I ignore aphids happening, like trees and sunflowers, since large plants often don't seem to care. Also some populations of aphid are not large enough for me to bother with.
Anyway, for the OP's particular case, I would say if the ants ignored the bait, then it isn't the right type of food for them. Baits can be protien based or sugar based. Sugar based baits are probably appropriate for the ants in question, but even that may not be enough to get them to sample it. Since they are feeding on honeydew, it is likely that these ants will go for a bait that is in a liquid or at least gel, form. I think you can find baits and traps online that will work. I made a homemade bait of sugar water and borax that worked pretty well last year, but you have to be careful with the borax. It's pretty much harmless to us and most wildlife, but the plants really don't like excess boron.
Don't know if any of that will prove useful to you in the long run, since a lot of what you are seeing sounds environmentally based. But sometimes a little intervention can give a plant enough energy to survive until the weather or soil get to be more copeacetic.