23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Beautiful! So much creativity.
What is planted next to the lettuce (?) - is that borage? I love not having to bend over for everything too. I just put mounds and mounds of compost around my many tomato and pepper plants this morning...a little stiff I am.

LKZZ - thank you - I assume you are referring to the bottom pic in the original post?
Thats actually not lettuce, it is napa cabbage, and purple cabbage in front of the peas. The blue flowers are lobelia, and there are petunias and zinnia squeezed in here and there. There are a few borage around the garden that seeded themselves from last years plants, but I didnt plant any this year because they got eaten up by bugs last year and looked pretty ratty.
The first week or two of gardening season I am always stiff and hurting. But its good hurt usually :)


The plant is far from dying but it is stressed and as Ed said most likely from over-watering. The leaf roll is a classic sign of over-watering. So if it has been "raining a ton" that could be it. It always pays to have a rain gauge in the garden so you can keep track of exactly how much rain fall there has been.
Pepper plants don't like wet soil. They prefer to dry out between waterings - be that rain or gardener supplied water.
Dave

Sorry but I'm not sure what advice you are looking for. The worms in the corn? Can you post a picture of them or at least provide a detailed description? Corn ear worms are green but if there are no ears or tassels then you wouldn't normally see them when the corn is as young as you describe it.
Both Bt (Dipel) and Spinosad are both quite effective on corn ear worms and Spinosad works on whiteflies too..
I have tried everything that is supposed to get rid of them, and none of it works,they just laugh at me and fly around.
So what all have you tried and for which pest? The whiteflies? They are the only thing that flies around. The aphids? The worms?
Is gardening in Florida new for you? Different planting times, different pest issues, etc.
Dave


Dave, thanks for the info on the trellis. I planted the beets yesterday, should I just plant more beans over the beets and pull the beet seedlings out when they emerge? This way that whole bed will be bush beans, with a row of carrots and a row of dill on the perimeters of the bed.

Yellowing of older leaves is usually caused by either over-watering or lack of nutrients. So cutting back on watering, especially if you have had lots of rain, and feeding them usually fixes it. The yellow leaves will just die and fall off but the new growth should be healthy.
What and how often have you fed them?
Dave


You can provide shade and some insulation from direct sun during germination time. Seeds do not need light/sun to germinate but proper soil temperature. So , if the things you want to grow are heat loving types, then they can benefit from warm weather. I know, for example, that eggplant and peppers are like that.

Here's my favorite chart of optimum soil temps for germination of various common vegetables - alas, not your oriental varieties.
As other posters are saying, the key is soil temperature. To take soil temp, get a digital meat thermometer. I find it really helps at this time of year to use cold water out of a hose - let all the warmed water out of it before turning it on your seeded rows.
Here is a link that might be useful: optimum soil temperatures for germination

Out there (Tucson, specifically) the best protection I've seen are those that totally enclose the garden with a breathable/mesh shelter around their planting area...which is neither attractive, nor convenient to install/maintain (especially with the wind).
Small fences work in some more urban or less animal-active areas.
There's a quite active AZ Gardening forum on GardenWeb...some people there might be able to help you out.
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/azgard/
Here is a link that might be useful: GW AZ Gardening forum


I can't really see anything I can positively id as an insect in the photo. Those dark things on the stalk above the last leaf at the base of the tassel? Could be some kind of moth, but not enough of a close- up to tell what they are with my relatively poor vision.


I also have nightshade allergy. I had a bad episode as a child and was never allowed to have a raw tomato (but growing up in an Italian home, had lots of tomato sauce or gravy, as we call it). Unfortunately a few years ago, it started to get worse and I can't have eggplant or peppers either. Nightshades have toxins in them that cause problems in some people. I even have a tough time with the tomato plants (my husband loves tomatoes, so I grow them for him) touching the leaves and then touching my face gives me a rash.
I don't know of any low toxin variety. The neurotoxins that are in nightshades are saponins, alkaloids and lectins. Tabacco is also a nightshade and it is some of these toxins that cause inflammation and even cancer. If you are sensitive to it, I suggest you avoid them.




Hey! Thanks everyone. Jay, that's very kind of you to offer to send me some, but I put a couple of cuttings in a glass of water yesterday and I can already see root nubs starting to poke out, so I think I'm probably good. I appreciate your "gardener's generosity", though.
Looking forward to some sweet potatoes in September or so...



The okra issue looks physiological to me. I'd say it's sunburn in the first pic. Not sure about the second pic but could be an opportunistic fungus because the soil looks really soggy.
A few things I'd like to point out:
- the okra plants are too crowded. Okra can get huge if the weather cooperates. One per pot is sufficient.
- Don't use insecticides, particularly Sevin, unless you have a very good reason to use it, such as an uncontrollable infestation. Sevin should never be used as a preventative. It kills off beneficials, which sets you up for a future infestation.
-the tomato problem looks unrelated to the okra issue. I'd say that is blight but maybe a tomato expert could chime in.
This post was edited by Slimy_Okra on Sat, Jun 22, 13 at 19:16
Thank you! I had planned on thinning out tomorrow, but didn't know if my strongest plant had issues or not. Thank you for the feedback!