23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Oh and to answer your question I have been feeding them miracle grow once a week.

That's what I suspected and that is where all the salt damage is coming from.

No garden vegetable requires weekly feeding unless it is grown in a container and then only in a well diluted form.

And no garden vegetable with the exception of leafy greens like lettuce/chard/spinach requires such high dose nitrogen feeding, much less on a weekly basis.

MG and fertilizers like it are ok when used properly. When used excessively the massive amounts of salts they contain build up on the leaves and in the soil. The symptoms on the plants are excessively dark green leaves, burned crispy leaf edges and bleached inter-veinal patches in the leaf tissue.

As the leaf tissue is destroyed then bacteria and fungi move in on the destroyed leaf tissues and that is what the yellow patches in the cuke leaf pic might be. Look on the underside of that leaf. If there are black patches of mold or white fuzzy/furry growths then disease is starting. If not then they are just salt damaged patches that haven't faded to white yet.

Since these plants are apparently in ground, reduce your MG use to no more often than monthly and preferably no more than every 6 weeks and focus on applying it to the soil and root area, not the leaves.

Hope this helps.

Dave.

Dave thank you so much. Your comments have been very helpful. If I do happen to see mildew or fungi/bacteria infection. ...how should I treat that?

Thanks again.

Amanda

Generally speaking, I let mini melons and cantaloupes set on as many fruits as they want to, but with larger watermelons, 2 is best and 3 on very vigorous plants. In northern areas I might want to keep even mini melon fruits pruned down a bit.

Thanks for the input. This year I started them earlier and honeydew & cantaloupe have formed. I will limit it to 2-3 per plant. I had a difficult time identifying the tendril drying so I hope this year is easier.

As for cucumbers, the one in the middle of this pic is super skinny in the middle. Does that mean it's lacking potassium? I noticed the leaves but thought it was nitrogen deficiency. Lots to learn...

Fruit are dumb-bell shaped - This is caused by an acute deficiency of potassium in the fruit. Before the fruit is affected leaves will show potassium deficiency symptoms as chlorosis on the edges and then necrosis.
Make sure that adequate potassium is available to the plant.

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/opp4556

Soil temp is as important as ambient temps, so if you can regulate that soil temp by mulching, peppers and toms can still keep pumping them out. My plants are doing fine with the 3-4 inches of mulch and some shading from 1-4pm. Of course, we don't get the real high temps for weeks at a time until later in the season.

Kevin

Like Kevin said, keep in mind that day time air temp is far from the only contributing factor to Blossom Drop or to the lack of it either. It hasn't been 95-100 for the full 24 hour period.

Just count your blessings and keep your fingers crossed but don't jump to any conclusions.

And the regional reported air temps or even the temp recorded on a thermometer hanging somewhere nearby isn't necessarily accurate as far as the plant is concerned unless the thermometer is hung in the middle of the plant. :-)

Dave

My take on this:

Miracle gro is just a fertilizer that is high in nitrogen, which is good for growing leafy stuff, like your lawn. In the vegie garden, I have found that it's great for lettuce and spinach, since the aim with those is to grow greenery.

My guess with your mom is that she amended the soil with potting soil that contained time release fertilizer. Vegies grow great in great soil. Also, they're well fertilized with all that pre-mixed in fertilizer.

Folks around here often use the compost from the sewage plant. It grows incredible vegies. But, of course, it raises the cost of gardening.

Fruiting veggies need nitrogen too. Healthy plants produce the highest yields. A tomato plant given only P and K in an N-poor soil will curl up and die. The trick, of course, is not to give them TOO much N.

The pots warm quicker and squash like the warmth.

"The one in the ground has compost-ammended loamy soil."

Due to the temps and quality of the soil the roots will not spread as fast and will produce a smaller plant in the beginning. But, unless the bugs don't get to it, it will probably produce longer and have higher quality fruit.

I'm guessing the bigger potted plant is in Miracle Grow Organic potting mixture? It most likely has more nutrients.

I grow a couple of tomato plants in buckets every year as sacrificial tomatoes just to get early home grown tomatoes. I get them about a month earlier.

But they stop producing when the others that are in ground take off.

If you had dug a big hole and put the same potting mix in the ground and used something like black plastic to give heat then the results would probably have been about the same for the in ground.

Wertach, you got it! The plant in the MG pot is the largest and has started producing harvestable squash. I would have thought the in-ground soil is of better quality and better nutrient content than either potting mix because of all the high quality home made compost! Then again, the weather here has not been conducive (cold, windy, very wet) so if it ever gets to be summer-like I should have more zukes than I know what to do with... I'm a big fan of chocolate zucchini bread!

Give hand-fertilisation a try, it's not hard and it definitely increased my production last year. Not sure why my plants had so much trouble setting fruit on their own, but hand-pollinated they did great.

So, I saw the picture of "Black Forest" zucchini. So, for the record, are any zucchini vining? Or is the "bush" cultivar basically part of the definition of a zucchini. I can't see using something like a topsy turvy to hang any zucchini plants from that I've heard about. Are there exceptions?

Here is a link that might be useful: me

I got one packet of 30 seeds. Sowed 15 in an earthbox. One sprouted.

What a dud!

I suppose I'll sow the other 15 seeds, but I'm not optimistic about it.

Okay reporting my formal review of this that I submitted to burpee
If anyone looks at the reviews burpee keeps responding to people that want refunds that they are either over watering or that they planted in ground temp below 65 degrees (even though in the product description it clearly states 55) .... I did neither of these things.

"Meh.... Not impressed,... Good & bad about this but not enough good for me because I have room to grow corn
The bad:
I've been growing corn for twenty years. No burpee...the soil was not too cold nor did I overwater the plants (you responded to someone's review demanding a refund that they are sensitive to over watering) if they are that sensitive it needs to be In the care info. I did two sowings. Got around 50 % germ the first time and about 60% the second time. For the price of the seeds I would expect better germination than that & the seeds looked very shriveled and tiny.
The good: they grew very quickly.64 days to harvest exactly. I had absolutely zero pest problems from either sowing and the plants never showed any sign of stress. In other words,the ones that did germinate did not need to be babied. Plants grew to be between five and six feet tall. The corn tasted very good also once harvested.
Meh: the first sowing I spaced at recommended seed spacing (close) pollination was OKAY. I got one ear per plant on about 75% of the plants., the ears tasted good but were no where near as big around as other corn varieties. I was not upset about this because I assumed they wouldn't be as large as some others being a shorter variety. There was not two to three ears per plant at all.
The second sowing I spaced further apart. More traditional distance. I got better pollination and second & third smaller ears (not unusual).
Choose for yourself but read reviews. this variety did have some good qualities but I think burpee needs to work on the germination issue. There's way too many negative reviews about the germination to believe that everyone just planted at the wrong time & no one knows what they are doing."

I gave it up, too. Too much space, too many pests.

Make sure the corn is far enough from trees, fences, buildings, etc so squirrels can't jump onto it from above, then string an electric fence around it with the bottom hot wire very close to the ground, 2" to 3". Once your fence is up and running, inspect it periodically to make sure its not grounding out somewhere. I use a "10 mile" charger, hot enough to burn vegetation that touches it.

Drewski - the bigger they get, the more they won't transplant. What people are saying you need to do now is cut all but one* of those off entirely. They're too big to pull out, you'd damage the roots of the ones you want to keep.

*I say one because you have others planted at what looks like 4" apart in a row.

It's hard to thin but it must be done. I would cut at soil level so you don't disturb the other plants roots

Thanks for info Anne and Dave, forgot to mention I grew the potatoes in multi purpose compost that I bought so maby it was mushroom compost of some sort. Also we had bit of rain last week so that would explain a lot then. New to this site and gardening in general, iam from Scotland. Will add location in future posts.

Nick

Thanks for info Anne and Dave, forgot to mention I grew the potatoes in multi purpose compost that I bought so maby it was mushroom compost of some sort. Also we had bit of rain last week so that would explain a lot then. New to this site and gardening in general, iam from Scotland. Will add location in future posts.

Nick