24,795 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

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



First cupcake squash. This plant puts them out as fast as a zucchini does. I have another 2 I can take now with 6 more growing.

The pics I saw on various websites that sell the Total Eclipse squash is nothing like this. This is more like a green pumpkin type of shape, defined ribs and fairly round. I will be cutting them up this afternoon and eating them. Burpee's website reviews have it as being very sweet tasting and some said it was the best tasting squash they had.
If I understand it correctly, the total eclipse is in the pattypan/scallop swuash variety. Our white scallop puts out a lot of squash. A couple got very big, maybe 8" across, and we treated it like the over sized zucchini by scooping the seeds and grilling and stuffing the rest. It really was still very tasty. The summer squash plants put out more than we can keep up with and my wife is just making soup with the balance.

Yep bad infestation of aphids. Don't wait for the soap stuff. All you have to do is just wash them off with a good stream of water and your fingers. Some use the hose, some a spray bottle set on 'Stream'. It needs some pressure behind it but not enough to damage the leaves. Do it for about 3 days in a row to get them under control.
Dave

Totally agree with Dave. Plain water is the way to go.
Home remedies, with wildly varied dosage recommendations, can either be ineffective OR cause tissue damage. Commercial insecticidal soap is safer, effective, and there's actual directions for mixing. Every organic grower should have some in his or her arsenal.


That's a big one. The variety in my garden is more of a brancher, but I wait for the petals to shrivel as a sign that I can cut heads and finish drying them on a rack. Takes a while, but it's fun to give the chickens a whole head to deal with when they're in winter lockdown. Goldfinches will also let you know when to cut it, they will start gathering seeds from the edges of the head.

I am in day three of my second attempt at grafting okra from an infested container plant onto a red flowered hibiscus...not really doing it to increase yields, dont even expect it to protect from ants and other insects, but ive been going through this graft craze with local plants, and i wanted to try it out...the turgor pressure came backin the scion stem after about 36 hrs and it appears the leaf is opening and is filled with life...but that could change, for what its worth though it definitely appears possible to me

Update: ive since learned that scions and budwood must be, "physiologically mature", so when the scion "knows" its partial function (to receive nutrients, produce flowers and fruit) in the parent plant as a whole unit. When it is transplanted it tries to pick up where it left off, as the limb of a parent rootstock, that knows to produce flowers and fruit, that last part is imperative with larger plants, maybe not with tomatoes and softer stem grafts, but definitely with larger plants. My okra maintained health but was unlikely to produce, so im attempting again


<Would this still be better than buying a kit online?>
Definitely. The home test kits are essentially worthless and too often lead the gardener down the wrong road because of the false results they give. There have been several discussions here in the past comparing the results from a home test kit vs. the professional test results on the same soil. Not to mention the home test kits cost almost as much as a pro test does.
Dave


I wouldn't blame growing conditions on the previous posters' experiences. This year I grew four orange varieties as well as a rainbow blend. Same bed, same soil, same amount of water, sun exposure, planted at the same time, etc. The orange varieties taste great. The colored carrots (rainbow blend) taste pretty bad, especially the white ones which are inedible and leave a horrible aftertaste.
Rodney

Here my two plants are doing great. 1 well developed mini pumpkin, and there are 2 more on the vine. Not sure if it pollinated or not, I know I have male flowers but haven't seen them open.

Here I knew 4 plants in the container wasn't going to go well, and I wanted to get 2 out last week but couldnt. So this week I removed 2, tried to dig all the way down to get all the roots, but they had become entangled. I tried the transplant anyway with some fertilizer.
Hope these 2 perk back up!

Powdery mildew on the zucchini. Peppers sometimes have weird colors as they change. Some of my jalapenos looked purple for a while before they turned green. If you leave them on longer, they turn red. Other peppers go through similar color changes. The leaves on your plant look fine.

Most summer squash get powdery mildew when the plants get old and tired. There are a few resistant varieties, but most people pull out plants when they go gray. Agree that the pepper is fine, it's just an unusual variety in the Southwestern tradition. That's how some of them hold their fruit, above the foliage.




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.
Until they turn into sugar :). Sorry