23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Catherinet, if you want to post, take Dave's suggestion. But I have faith in you, that if you concentrate, you can win over Miracle Gro, whenever you are in the mood for a challenge.

Firefox + Adblock Plus = I haven't seen an ad here for 8 or more years.

Hi-ChicagoDeli...I have seen your postings over the last week or so and I felt compelled to tell you how much I admire how hard you are working to get your garden going. I hope you get some sunny weather over there soon. Your set up is amazing. :) Jude

Thanks very much I really appreciate it.
I'm also the chef at my restaurant so from 6am till 3pm I'm cooking , but thoughts of grilled cheese are not going through my head, only thoughts of how to make the garden better. I'm obsessed !

But I really wanted to get them off to the best start possible so I'm trying my hardest to do so. I definitely bit of work than I can chew but I'm going to try to make the best of it and work hard to get everything growing.

Ill keep posting pictures throughout the season
Goodluck with your garden hope you have bountiful harvests.

chitting, in the UK, does not involve cutting, merely leaving the potatoes in a cool light place for the incipient sprouting eyes to develop into mini stems. I have never bothered to cut my seed potatoes, or even rub out eye shoots - one way or another, potatoes will grow, chitted or not, cut or not, given decent soil and a modicum of water.

This year I purchased egg-sized seed potatoes. It was cold for so long, I just left them in their brown bags until I was ready to plant. They had some sprouts on them and I just dug a hole in the raised bed and put the whole thing in and covered with soil. They are coming up just fine. In the past, I have cut and dried and not problem that way either.
Keski

Wow that's so cool.
I only use a couple raised beds so I don't think Garden Mats would be efficient for me to buy and use.

uscjusto - you can buy that fabric by the metre (foot for you) off a roll and cut your own holes. You don't need circular holes. A cross will do.

And here I thought I was getting some free veggies from my compost bin!
Oh well, I'll yank it all out tomorrow.

Yank it and then add it back to the compost bin. No waste.

Those look like bush types to me. Like insteng, I've never trimmed squash plants except when they've caught a disease and I've had to remove a stalk or something. Try putting some type of physical barrier between them and the other plants.

For future reference, I usually give each summer squash plant (zucchini, crookneck) about 3 square feet since they get so huge.

Thanks for the feedback. I will try to maybe put a chicken wire fence around the peppers to keep the leaves out of its area. I had a lot of lessons learned this year, next year will have to be a bit more space for those crooknecks.

Thanks again.

That's exactly what I did!

Thanks for the advice! I will do that next time. I have a second loose leaf lettuce plant doing very well, in fact I hope I didn't put it into shock this morning oops!

This was very helpful!! I was doing it properly over winter when they were in greenhouse pots, picking the outer leaves. Never a problem. For some reason had a brain lapse and took a knife to part of a plant in the garden. Pretty much instakilled it. Now I know better.

Thank you!

Well I suppose we could all be wrong. We can't see the bug like you can. All we have to go on is the picture you posted and no other details. But it sure looks like lots of other firefly pics on the web - hundreds of them.

Even if it isn't a firefly it obviously isn't hurting anything so why worry about it.

Dave

Even if it isn't a firefly it obviously isn't hurting anything so why worry about it.

Dave

I second the motion. In all fairness, it is only American to say: Innocent until proven guilty.

I hereby also declare the pill bugs clear of all charges. LOL.
The reason the were working on that yellow squash leave was that they though it was dead and tried to returned it back to the nature.
Now take a salt shaker and go after slugs..haha

Hi Ajsmama,
There is a LOT of good land in PA, but we are in Schuylkill Co just south of the coal region and it is all shale and rocks on our little hill. I think whatever topsoil we had washed down to the surrounding land long ago. I needed no gravel for the driveway, lol, and the 'soil' dries out very early in the Spring (actually - it is too gravelly to ever really get muddy!) but it needed a lot of amendments to get a garden going. We had a full truckload of composted mushroom soil delivered each Spring for several years and it helped, along with 5 years of collecting bucket after bucket of rocks. I used all the rocks to make an nice long ramp to get up to our garden shed. It was much easier to get a garden going on our old place which had heavy clay and few rocks, but it was so muddy for so long into the Spring it used to drive me crazy.

started corn 3/1,planted 3/7, and growing good. I start in cells and transplant.

Probably physical damage from wind, hail, blowing debris, running dog, etc., nothing to worry about.

OK thanks. It's my first year gardening so I'm way overly cautious.

Your extension agent may be able to tell you when the cabbage root fly is active in your area. Covering with floating row cover, in soil which was free from plants in the cabbage family the year before, may be the best protection in spring.

I have better luck with turnips in the fall here (though I haven't seen maggots). Hakurei and Oasis are similar, and I think Oasis has a little more vigor and crack resistance in cold or rainy weather.

White Lady comes close to these in flavor and texture, and may be earlier (thus avoiding the cabbage maggot in some instances). Pinetree notes that Tokyo Cross often escapes the maggot because grows so fast that you can pick it before the worms are a problem. I think White Lady could be tried this way, too. Tokyo Cross is as mild as the varieties above, but not as sweet or flavorful.

Near here, commercial turnips are sown in September while it is still quite warm (or hot) and harvested as the weather cools down (if all goes according to plan). As noted above, August would likely be a good time for you to plant.

Henry Field is selling a variety that looks similar to the "summer turnips" above called "Frosty Sweet". It is supposed to resist bursting and bolting, but I haven't tried it.

I also like a variety called "Just Right" for fall. This variety is rather late in forming a substantial root (though tops grow quickly). When the root finally forms, it remains tender and tasty to a large size. "Just Right" is more cold-tolerant and weather-tolerant than Hakurei or Oasis, and is only recommended for fall. I plant them just after the others, and harvest them into quite cold weather. I get them from Twilley's, a commercial catalog with no on-line catalog. I think you could call and order seeds even if you didn't want to bother with a print catalog. They also sell "White Lady", as does Park.

All of the varieties above (with the possible exception of Frosty Sweet) have tops which are far sweeter and less "turnipy" than standard turnip greens, and without the hairs. Makes me wonder if they are a cross between turnips and something else. The tough midrib should be removed from larger leaves.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cabbage Maggot

This post was edited by carolync1 on Tue, May 28, 13 at 15:24

Thank you! Love this website... everyone is so helpful!

Wow slimy that sucks!
My toms and peppers are just starting to flower, we'll see how they do!

But Slimy - having only 1 season (winter) makes it easy, you know you have to have to have a heated greenhouse all year round for tomatoes and peppers ;-)

how much of it did you accidentally broke ? I foot ? how long was the vine? 10 foot? ... not to worry. Actually one of the ways to prune squashes, pumpkins and seldom cucumbers, is to nip/break off/pinch off the main or branches.

That is great news! Thanks a bunch. I thought I had heard of pruning it by cutting of the vining head, but I couldn't remember for sure.

seysonn, I broke maybe six inches of it off. I was trying to move it where it would train up the trellis, and when I grabbed it, it just broke off.