23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

I've noticed my cucumber leaves really wilt and get floppy/soft in the heat and direct sun. They seem to perk back up when temps cool at night.
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They will get adapted in a few days. make sure they are watered more often than normal.

Maybe I'll construct some sheet tents today. Seems to be cooling for a couple of days til the next onslaught! Plus I'll get a bale of straw for mulch. Thanks! Nancy

Yes they are, but as I posted before, rain and afternoon watering will cause melons to split. If Black Diamond don't grow to above 25 lbs, they won't ripen, and you've got a wasted melon. I've stopped growing it, because of that. There are better varieties to grow.

Don't know where you are, but a lot of the US has had flooding rains for most of the growing season. That will make them split.

I've grown Yellow Doll several times, and it's never done that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did, with weather like this year.

This is a common question over on the Growing Tomatoes forum here but the answer is always the same. It is impossible to ID plants from a picture. Sorry.

If one is an indeterminate and one a determinate then you can measure the internode length to determine which is which.

Dave

The cherry tomatoes will usually have more flowers per truss than the "regular" tomatoes. The truss is a single group of flowers. That is the closest you can get to knowing. Just wait until they start growing, their sizes will be apparent in a few months.

It really depends on what you want from the saved seeds. If you're hoping to get the exact same varieties from the saved seed, you'll likely be disappointed (as radishes cross pollinate easily). However, if you don't mind getting a mix of fairly random hybrid radishes next season, then go ahead and save the seed. It could be a fun experiment/surprise. You won't know what you'll get until you pull it up, but no matter what, it'll be a radish! :)

Thanks Sromkie. I suppose you're right about that! Radish in- radish out! I'm going to pull all but one so I can put in some carrots or something. And actually, I think that the radishes (going to seed) are acting as a trap for the cabbage worms and protecting my cabbages too!

Excellent answer Dave.

Not my topic, but as I read through I realize I do everything you suggest in your answer except for mulch. I know, I have read it a hundred times in here, everyone says mulch, but until you said why I should mulch, it didn't really hit home.

What do you mulch with? I definitely have a splash back problem. And more so now that we have been getting hit with very hard rain this year. I think I may need to stop being stupid and mulch.

I agree with Dave, accept that some leaves will be nibbled by bugs and slugs but, for the most part, they won't make much if any difference in your harvest. I do plant tight and heavy though, to the point that once the greens, such as kale, chard, bok choy and lettuces begin to grow, you can not see the soil any longer. They produce their own grown cover, no need to mulch, no weeds and good water retention. They may not grow as large, though I don't see any difference, and you end up with more food per sq foot. I then regularly "pick" from each plants just enough for a meal OR take a whole plant out here and there, making more space for the others. My bok choy seems a favourite of the bugs this year (slugs?) many holes but I eat those leaves all the same, and still plenty left without holes as well, further up the plant. My bok choy has bolted now, will plant more soon, but have just found out the flowers and especially the flower buds taste even better then the leaves themselves, like broccoli, bonus!
I also do as lacyvail says, planting herbs and flowers that beneficial bugs are attracted to. Predators such as wasps, are a great help in the garden, attacking the veg eating pests. I keep dill and fennel out of the actual veg bed though, as they aren't always the best companions of veg.

Don't worry about the kinks. The plants will grow toward the sun, kink and all. You may end up needing some sturdier support for them though.

Upside down planting is going against the nature of growing just about any thing. The name says it all :
Up side, down( and down side up)..It is like wearing your pants from the other end. You will have hard time to keep it on, AND you won't be able to walk..hehe

Even in zone 4 Cucumbers can do ok in part shade. Mine only get about 5-6 hours of direct sun, They dont produce as well as they might, but its what I have for them, and I get enough to eat.

I didn't really have a lot of choice for places that are not in full sun 10-12 hours a day and ended up putting the container in an area that is shaded in the morning and early afternoon with direct sun in the late afternoon.

It's not ideal but after seeing what our recent 4 day heat wave did to my existing cucumbers, and seeing my experience poor wilted plants through almost all of last September, I think I need to try something different this year.

Durham, NC: 10.08 inches (according to NOAA), and it keeps going and going and going. It is raining right now, in fact.

-Anne

Beaver Dam WI 6.28 and I thought we were getting a lot of rain, I guess we were luckier than others. Last year we learned how to deal with drought, this year, extra moisture.

Well the fruits of a plant reflect the genes of that plant only, not of any other plant that happens to be pollinating with/around it. It's the seeds INSIDE of these fruits that *possibly* contain a cross-bred set of genes.

You'd have to specifically choose those seeds and grow them to be able to see the cross bred fruit. And that's IF the seeds you choose had a cross bred set of genes after pollinating. Mendel discovered this and a simple allele crossing chart (I forget the actual name of them) visual describes what I'm saying.

Here is a link that might be useful:

That's what I was originally thinking (until I started overthinking it).

Thanks!

I want to thank everyone again for the great input and advice. It is nice to see that people are still finding this post. Hubby and I have read through everyone's experiences, read around the web, and looked into different materials. We have also tried to figure out what is most important to us when it comes to the ability to take down and re-put up every year to enable easy tilling, also another issue for us is ease of mowing around. We have a yard that takes 2 hours to mow anyway and HATE to have to pull out a weed whacker so we were trying to come up with something to deal with that also.

I think we have a plan!!!

We are currently in the building processes right now. As a matter of fact I am taking a break to feed kids as I type this. I am taking detailed pics the whole way and we hope to have it complete (mostly anyway) by the end of the week, maybe two weeks as I am traveling. I will post as soon as we are done and hopefully ad to this for anyone else looking for advice in building a better fence for the future.

Thanks again for everyone's help. It was great! I am so excited about my new fence!

Hey everyone. I promised pics of the plan I came up with and we have finally finished. I started another thread and will link below, but wanted to say thank you to everyone for all your help and advice. I know it is now July and I am just officially finished with this so it wont be the garden of my dreams this year, but my fall garden will be spectacular and I am well on my way next year.

So thank you all again, you are greatly appreciated.

Here is a link that might be useful: New Fence

maybe next season try just sticking them on top of the soil with good application of gypsum, that's all we do never had much success growing them in containers.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens instant potato patch

Thank You all for your advice. I have a couple of options this year. Next year I try and set up an area to grow outside the container.

Success!!!! Two sprayings, 3 days apart and the white flies are history. Of the 5 plants impacted only one did not make it. The others are recovering and sending up blossoms.

I doubt that you're done from my experiences. keep up with the spraying once a week for another 2-3 weeks and then see where you're at. Anybody that says they got rid of whiteflies with just TWO sprayings and that's it didn't have whiteflies in the first place IMO. They are one of the toughest to deal with.

Congrats so far.

kevin

Considering other possibilities - New, do you have yellow&black striped beetles in your cukes? The fact that one plant is wilting and the others aren't, which were presumably sprayed with the same solution, is suggestive of bacterial wilt.

Here, it would be early for that, but your plant sure looks like it. If you cut off a leaf, hold your finger to the cut place then pull it slowly away, the sap from a plant afflicted with bw will pull away like a thin strand of gum.

Well, it demolished one entire plant and only affected 1/3 of the bigger more established plants.

And no beetles of any kind. I check very often for pests.

Our fence is only 4' high, but I think what keeps the deer out of ours is the fact that the whole thing (about 20x30') is filled with trellises and wire cages.
The wires on top are a good idea Kali. And like you said, just make sure you put something on them (some sort of tape, etc.) so the deer can see them.........or you might end up with a deer stuck in your fence! :(

I've been lucky the deer have left my garden alone. They get in and go to the back where I don't have anything planted and bed down. They seem to feel safe back there and they haven't bothered any of my plants. They seem to prefer the coastal grass I have growing around the garden.