23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Ash, most people don't understand about SF bay area weather. It is not that hot this time of year, depending on microclimate. There is the day length issue (lengthening days can cause spinach to bolt), but we are almost at the summer solstice, so the day length is nearly maxed out.
Hope you work out what to do with the leaf miners. You can definitely start all over with new seeds or seedlings.
--McKenzie
or only get concerned if I see an infestation?
Exactly, just as with any other bug you intervene when the numbers become excessive and when actual damage is being done.
Everyone has a few whiteflies now and then. They are part of the garden environment and a source of food for many garden beneficials. If you set out to eradicate a few passing whiteflies you kill many of the good guys in the process.
Dave
If you go to one corn plant per square foot, you should be alright, assuming your soil is optimally fertile.
As to your sun exposure, it depends on how tall your corn plants are. Most tomato plants will get around six feet tall, some will get even higher. If your corn plants are not taller than that, then each crop will effectively get only half a day of sun.
If you have another bed, it might be better to move the tomatoes to the left side of that bed and then plant something shorter on the right side of both beds. Suggestions would be squash, cucumbers, bush beans, or herbs.
Thanks Donna. I do have another raised bed, however the next bed is only raised half a foot above the ground and the natural soil below is poor. Would that be enough for either the corn or the tomatoes?
Also, just for reference, what is your thinking for planting the taller things on the left side?
Thanks!
Cecil - slugs will mow down seedlings - yes.
Your picture show seedlings of what we grow simply as 'cress' or 'garden cress' for a crop of sprouts. It isn't water cress. Normally it would be grown very fast indoors on peat or even paper. As kids we would grow it on a piece of cloth or blotting paper on a plate in the kitchen. Growing it outdoors in soil means that the crop is vulnerable and gets dirty. It is used in salads and sandwich fillings when it is only about 2 - 3 cm tall.
Here is a link that might be useful: Cool cress video
Sounds lovely!!
I would recommend that you build up the borderless beds higher, or amend your soil underneath before you put on the compost layer because I think a 2 inch growing layer above clay soil isn't enough for veggies. Maybe you could till the 2" layer of compost into your soil, then add another layer of a topsoil/compost blend on top of that to build up the height, and lightly till.
You may also want to consider laying the drip tape beneath the hay mulch layer.
I love your idea of string markers, I've been doing that in my veggie beds and it makes planning a lot easier. I just remove the string once everything is established.
Good luck and happy growing!
Would running a broadfork down the rows do a good job of mixing the compost into the soil? I see that Johnny's has a broadfork their pitching for harvesting root crops, but I wonder if it couldn't also be used for aeration and mixing compost? I do like your idea of placing the irrigation tape under the straw mulch. I mentioned that to my wife and she said she wonders if that isn't what we are doing with the raised beds we already have drip irrigation set up for --- watering the mulch.
Thanks so much. When I took the picture above on Friday, I thought there were only a few showing scapes. On the wonderful advice I got here, I went out this morning and found 33 on about 40 plants. I think they are growing fast now. I cut them all, and now I'm trying to decide how to use them. The smell is wonderful.
When I cut them up last year, my dad and sister didn't like them. This year I fried them in oil and salt, and they liked them then. A better use for them has been to roast potatoes, and depending on the temperature, in the last 5-15 minutes of roasting the potatoes, just throw them in and they taste good like that!
Perhaps the supermodel analogy will help? Just like a woman does not need to look like a supermodel to be beautiful, your garden plants do not need to be pristine in order to be good producers. Free your mind from the shackles of advertising! ;)
There really are a small number of pests that are common and damaging. And even the ones that are damaging need to show up in large numbers to be worth getting upset about. You will be exhausted in short time if you allow yourself to get upset at every hole you find in a leaf (especially since not all holes are caused by bugs) and every insect you see. Take it more like the justice system- the insects are innocent until proven guilty. Which means catching one in the act before deciding it is a problem. This will also save you a lot of money.
I do not view bugs as nasty, dirty little things, but more fondly. They are amazing little things, very much alive and following their own purposes. Some are incredibly beautiful, and all of them are amazing. That last picture you have is a moth coccoon (technically a pupa). You can actually see the transition from caterpillar to winged insect in those, it is very cool. I do get rid of insect pests on my plants, but not from an emotional, angry place. Like with weeds, I do it because it must be done to get the plants to bear food for me. I'm not saying you need to think fondly on insects like me, I'm just putting out my way of thinking because it is different. Cheers!
Newatthis22 - it's hard when we are new at something and trying to learn as we go. The best thing to do is educate yourself on the bug world - what is beneficial and what could do harm. Periodic inspection of your plants is good practice - especially for organic growers - we become the insecticide by removing what we see by hand. You won't get everything and as susanzone5 said, it's all a part of the biology of living things. Beneficials depend on the not-so-beneficials for food.
Deep breath - remove what you can - enjoy your garden.
You can probably start more seed still. I don't think the squash bugs feed on the roots, but they do like to hide on the ground, under things, and I notice my squash stems do seem to sort of whittle out a circle of dirt where they come out of the ground, presumably from the wind moving the upper part of the plant. Perhaps you just found two opportunistic hiding bugs?
I'm not too sure what you hope to do with all the soapy water and yeast, especially with the plant you pulled up. I would take a closer look at that plant now to maybe see if there might be other problems besides the two underground squash bugs. I'm not convinced that they are responsible for the strange growth you saw. I'm not saying for sure they aren't, it's just unusual enough to bear a closer look. Cheers!
Thaks Sunnibel, you may certainly be right that they were just hiding. The soapy water is real good at helping to kill many insects (and spiders on my windows). The yeast in water gets to smelling pretty attractive to insects and they go in there and drown. I have one sunk in the ground near my summer squash and I have seen far more dead squash bugs floating in that water than I have seen on my squash plants this year.
Funny thing this morning, I was checking the summer squash and zucchini for SB eggs and I found a clutch of three eggs. They were definately eggs, but only 3. Maybe they see me coming and hit the dirt.
I did check the dying plant after I sqashed those two bugs and could not see anything that could have killed the plant. I was afraid it might have been a virus or toxin that the bugs had injected in the plant. I put the vine, roots and dirt and all, in soapy water just in case they had laid eggs underground that I could not see. Sure don't want to have these guys multiplying in the garden.
Potatoes are relatively inexpensive to purchase, but growing your own is the best way to ensure they will not have been exposed to excessive chemicals to offset their growing problems. Plus you'll have a lot more varieties to choose from. Oval baking potatoes and red potatoes have dominated the market, but there are actually over 1,000 different varieties of potatoes available for growing. The texture of potatoes, even more so than the flavor, is very variable from variety to variety.Therefore i love growing my own potatoes.
I agree. Growing potatoes is a blast. This year I'm trying out 24 varieties, plus all the no-name grocery store potatoes I've kept going for 30 years. I'm working my way through the bean, tomato, and squash varieties also. Life is good. Slugs, SVB, and CPB are bad.
I mulch my garden almost exclusively with fresh grass clippings, straight from the bagger to the garden, several inches thick.
It works awesome at weed suppression and really improves the soil. I have been doing this for years.
It works so well I even went out and bought a stupidly expensive bagger for my riding mower so I could get more clippings than what the push mower was giving me.
When you first put them down, give the stems of plants an inch or so of breathing room, the clippings can heat up a bit as they decompose.
Grass clippings are fine for mulch, but as JWW mentioned, they should be composted some. Not only because of weed seeds, but FRESH grass is high in Nitrogen and a 3" thick mat of it will heat up like a compost pile. Don't want to "cook" your veggies.
Kevin
This post was edited by woohooman on Sun, Jun 16, 13 at 15:35
I've not done this before, but am growing the same variety this year for the same purposes. The research I've done on the internet indicates that younger leaves, presumably picked individually from the top of the plant, are better for salads. Older leaves, presumably picked individually from the bottom, are better for cooking purposes. To preserve the plant's energy for feeding the grain heads, it's best to leave as much of each plant as intact as possible and harvest only what you'll use for each meal, never harvesting more than about 10% of each plant at any given time.
Good luck! We'll try it together this year, I guess.
Hi, I don't know how much grain you are wanting. I let a few plants go to seed every year, for the seeds for the next year, and harvest the rest as greens. I don't take leaves from the ones I let go to seed -- not sure why. You get thousands of seeds from a very few plants!
Ashita
OR, paint them silver, wear them, and you can be the Tin Man for Holloween :).
"macky is right. Potato stolens will spread several feet from the mother plant"
I dont' believe so. Here is a typical potato root/ stolon system.
As shown, the roots start from the seed and grow down or side way. Stolons grow on the stem (in ground) an spread side way. It depend how many seeds and how closely they had been planted in that hill.
It should be noted that only the roots need and get nutrients from the soil not the stolons.