23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Well, I am in your same shoes. I'm 30-something and getting more health conscience. I want my gardening to be more strenuous. I hate using the term exercising. I think it brings back too many memories from the Army! LOL Nonetheless, we need to be physical to stay healthy. I have a small garden and what I do is kind of incorporate "exercise" into being in the garden. For example, when I am picking weeds or turning my soil I do squats. Sometimes, I even do a push-up or two right there in my garden. I don't really think about it when I'm in my garden. When I come in I do feel better though! Just a suggestion to get ya active! :o)
Yeah your plant looks diseased some sort of fungal issue looks like maybe blight if so it's in your soil with that being said in your case you could try spraying chlorothanil if its fungal it should kick it in the butt, if blight good luck you could cut out the bad but unlikely it will recover.
Around here in summer, mid 90s, I water seedlings every 2-3 days. After that about every 6 days for melons but that depends on your soil. Mine do much better planted in a furrow or shallow depression. Planted on top of a bed I can't keep them wet enough for good emergence or early growth.
With your warm and sunny fall weather you probably could wait until early August to plant pumpkin. I guess it depends on whether they must be ripe by Halloween or if you wanted to carry them into November.
I was just looking into three sisters gardens and that is the approach I think I am going to take, the corn could provide some shade, I don't know if pole beans will take the heat but it has worked for centuries so I will give it a go.
Depends on water pressure, the "seepage rate" (don't know the real term, should be on the label, I think it's expressed in gallons per foot per hour or some unit like that), soil and weather conditions. I generally just turn them on and let them run until I have a nicely saturated zone at least a foot out from the plants -- mine is a clay-loam for the most part, water may go more down than out in a sandy soil.
If you use the search to pull up all the previous discussions on using soaker hose you'll find that a common recommendation to determine time needed is to simply bury an empty can - coke can, vegetable can, something about 6" tall.
Bury it along the line of the hose in about the middle of the hose run so the open lip top sits at soil level and the hose runs over it. Time how long it takes to fill the can and that tells you how long you need to run it to get the water down to root level.
It isn't a perfect method because it can't account for your soil type so it won't tell you how often you need to run it. That part you determine with your hand stuck deep in the ground. But it will tell you how long to run the hose.
With soaker hose keep in mind that 50' maximum run is recommended for effectiveness and that the plants at the end of the run get less than the plants at the beginning of the run.
Dave
Thanks for the info Itilton.
It is starting to get really hot and around here broccoli is a early spring crop. I was busy with the end of the semester and got them out late. If they do head how they will immediately bolt (what they did last year when it got extremely hot very early) would they make it and produce in the fall if I cut off any late heads that they put on (and they bolt). Probably not but just hoping!
Thanks!
They're going to head(at least some) before they bolt. The trick is to cut the heads right before the florets look like they're starting to separate. Right when they start to head, keep a daily eye on them and do this with any side shoots because they have a tendency to separate even quicker.
Regarding the cauli-- I've often had to wait for a heat spell to kick them into heading. I'd just let them keep going though even if they DON'T head in the summer. It'd be a nice little experiment. They just may kick back in and since they are a biennial, who knows?
Mulch heavily and keep soil moist and, at least, your broccoli will get you some form of harvest.
Good luck.
Kevin
I agree with Cindy...leaf hopper behavior. I had two "in the act" do that to me on a cuke plant. I knocked them into a bucket of soapy water.
Here is a link that might be useful: Leafhopper Garden Pest
I feel for you. It looks like they've suffered some pretty bad root rot and (possibly) collar rot. I'd pull one or two up to see exactly where they rotted. If it's only the roots, they may come back. If its the stem, I would cut them above the rot line and attempt to re-root the plant buried up to the first or second leaf node in some warm & moist potting soil out of direct sunlight. Gallon pots would work for that purpose. That would be quite time consuming but it's worth a try.
When you say their feet were in water for a week, do you mean the soil was wet, or that there was actually standing water?
This post was edited by Slimy_Okra on Sun, Jun 23, 13 at 19:26
Thanks for the input. I'll take a closer look at them today. There was actual ponded water in my garden for a few days but it was off to the left side of the picture, where the tomato plants are. The rest of the garden was waterlogged for close to 2 weeks. When it finally dried out, the soil became like a rock.
I've tilled it a couple of times. It's actually pretty dry now. When I planted these eggplants, they were the best I ever had. The plants were about 1' tall with thick stems, lush leaves and the roots were breaking through the peat pots. I'll check the roots in a little while. I wonder if it would help if I moved each plant about 1' from where they stand now so they won't be sitting right in the rot plus mix some more compost in each hole. I'll try anything.
I've had baby bunnies get through "chicken wire"... I put that in quotes because real chicken wire has openings that are pretty small and the wire is fairly stiff but you can by hex wire netting at garden centers that has fairly large holes and is made of more flexible wire. It was the latter kind I had the bunnies get through. Bunnies really do love bean plants.
A simple partial solution is to simply cover your young bean plants with a floating row cover. If the critters are really hungry, they will get through it easily. But I have found that in most cases, it 's too much work for them and they go to work on the clover in the lawn or other things. Not foolproof but easy and pretty effective. Rabbits don't like the taste of seaweed/fish fertilizers like Neptune's Harvest and others.