23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
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
Chard has been fairly trouble-free for me insect wise; some years spotted cucumber beetles chew on it, but they seldom cause more than minor damage. Other years the grasshopper damage becomes noticeable.
But the worst damage I ever had with chard was due to... goldfinches??? A flock of them learned to peck on the leaves, and within several weeks, had eaten a stand 12" tall down to the ground. The next year I used floating row cover over the chard, which effectively stopped the bird damage, as well as the beetles. I highly recommend the use of row cover for the best-quality leaves.
To be honest I'm not to sure low levels of N is going to affect uptake of nutrients in the soil as the plant itself will be trying to uptake what it needs I do know that some of your micro nutrients do aid in the metabolism of the plant and its up take of macro nutrients I believe zinc is one of the important ones the only way to really tell is time if there is a deficiency the plant will show it then u have to identify and amend the soil don't worry as you can apply micro nutrients as a foliar spray for a instant boost as well as amending the soil if you can find them in liquid form
It probably depends on the OM%. My empirical experience is that with 21% OM, clay soil, the fertilizer is not leached by two inches. I also expect that leaching will be an exponential function of precipitation, that is, if x inches leach 50%, 2x inches will leach 75%.
Thanks for coming back to update. My main garden beds were in full sun 10 years ago when we bought our house, but since that time, the neighbor's trees have grown much bigger and the new owners no longer do any trimming. Result - my main garden is becoming part-sun.
I've compensated by building a new raised bed closer to the house, but although it's in full sun all summer, the house shades it from Oct-March, which means no spring or fall gardening to extend the season. Needless to say, I'm doing a lot of thinking ahead to figure out what I can plant where (and there may be yet another raised bed built to catch fall/winter/spring sun). So although I'm located further north than you are, I'm very interested to see your results. :)
I grow exclusively in containers because of black walnuts and other trees surrounding my small yard. The containers are smart pots scattered around my back yard to get the most sun. A friend said they looked like a bunch of top hats. The tomatoes have the primo spot where they get about 6 hours of sun broken up into three periods. When I grew hybrids, I got decent yields. Since I fell in love with big heirloom types a few years ago, I've had to settle for lower yields. But I'm gradually learning what will do best in my situation. I have had good luck with mortgage lifters, goose creeks and kosovos. I say, work with what you've got. Even an early girl from the garden is head and shoulders above a grocery store tomato.
I want to add that I've been growing scarlet runner beans in a small plot on the north side of my house where they only get early morning sun. They climb up to the roof where they get a lot more sun fairly quickly and attract hummingbirds. They are a lot of fun to grow. I do need a ladder to harvest them, though.
Spraying sugar water on any plant seems a REALLY bad idea. If you spray apple juice on the ground, it'll be covered in ants before long. Why would you want your tomatoes that way? They look pretty healthy, and they should take care of pollination all by themselves. Tomatoes don't need insects to pollinate.
If I read your post correctly, it's a last-year problem that you're trying to cure this year. But you've taken more trouble this year with your planting medium, and you say these are just the first flowers coming out. Patience!
Now, if it's getting very hot, tomatoes will shut down fruiting. Blooms will appear and just fall off. But I would think that Philadelphia shouldn't be that hot.
Thanks for all your comments,
I just took more photos this evening and saw some loose blosoms and took some photos. The first photo was just haning from a leaf and looked frayed so I opned it up and was currious and saw a little mator that didn't make it.
The seconed one was from the same plant and looked real healthy. It dropped when I tried to shake the plant a little bit.
you can see why I have concern (and jsut looking to see if there is a helpful solution to help deter this while it is still early) but I am aware of the maturity issue and the stress they did go through to get to this stage with the weather and such and patience is probably the best thing to have this early.
Thanks again all for your help.
- Mr Beno
This is how bad my watercress is doing. :-(
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