23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
just relax and let them do thier thing. If you prepared a good seedbed and started them early enough you have done about all that is needed other than weeding and maybe watering. They are a cool season vegetable and will struggle in hot weather. They have a relatively short harvest window so unless you have a giant variety, harvest when no larger than baseball size.
I'm going to get the soil tested before doing anything...but I'm thinking its more of a nitrogen problem now because I also have a hydrangea in this bed, and it should be doing great with the acid but it's not. The blooms are also pink which leads me to believe there is a problem.
What do you recommend for increasing the nitrogen in the bed? I looked up some stuff, and found many different fertilizers so not sure what to use!
That sure looks like a lot of shredded wood which would deplete soil nitrogen temporarily while it's decomposing.
Miracle Gro or any high N soluble plant food will help with that.
The pH sure is weird though.
Any topsoil blend is probably better if you buy it in fall and let it rest and age through the winter. These kinds of kinks have time to work themselves out.
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Your soil looks reasonably OK but yes you will need to fertilize with a balanced fertilizer. The other thing is that some of your plants are too crowded, especially the squashes and the peppers/swiss chard (swiss chard will easily shade the pepper plants next to it).
My potato plants always grow a couple of feet tall, and I try and hill them as much as possible. Cut down on the nitrogen at this point. Some fertilizer is good, but low on the nitrogen. You want to concentrate on the tubers, not the foliage.
Actually some ants do bring the aphids to the plants, others are opportunistic farmers. It's misleading to talk about ants, or aphids, as if they are all the same. There are thousands of different, unique types of ants in the world and they don't even all eat the same things. There are populations of aphids that are winged and fly to new plants, others are carried by ants. The OP probably has both types occurring. There are some cases where I ignore aphids happening, like trees and sunflowers, since large plants often don't seem to care. Also some populations of aphid are not large enough for me to bother with.
Anyway, for the OP's particular case, I would say if the ants ignored the bait, then it isn't the right type of food for them. Baits can be protien based or sugar based. Sugar based baits are probably appropriate for the ants in question, but even that may not be enough to get them to sample it. Since they are feeding on honeydew, it is likely that these ants will go for a bait that is in a liquid or at least gel, form. I think you can find baits and traps online that will work. I made a homemade bait of sugar water and borax that worked pretty well last year, but you have to be careful with the borax. It's pretty much harmless to us and most wildlife, but the plants really don't like excess boron.
Don't know if any of that will prove useful to you in the long run, since a lot of what you are seeing sounds environmentally based. But sometimes a little intervention can give a plant enough energy to survive until the weather or soil get to be more copeacetic.
If the plants had been in the original pots too long before they were transplanted, they can be stunted. With Brassicas always buy nice looking thriving plants. They will either come out of it or they won't. The 14 inch plant is normal for it's age. The will grow all summer long, and not be affected by the heat. As it cools down in the fall, they will form the little fruit at the leaf nodes. I plant mine in early spring, but know that they won't be ready to harvest until October/November. Some varieties are listed as 150 days to maturity.
You can use coffee grounds. They don't have to be fresh. If you need a lot just stop by a starbucks shop and ask them for old coffee grounds. That will take care of the slug problem. It want kill them but they want cross over it to get to the plants.
I am working on a formula:
= two parts coffee grounds(used)
= two pars sand(I have some paver san. Play sand will do too)
= two parts saw dust
= less than half part table salt(spice it up..haha)
(thinking about some fine ground chili. but I have to do a clinical test on the subject..heeehaa)
= half a part fresh coffee grounds(for more power)
= one part Epson salt
= one part any slugo type thing.
Yesterday two slugs crossed over and were killed. They managed to run away but coul not go far and died of their wounds. With 100% Get - BUGA, the manage to run away, leavin a trace . But with this formula they die or are half dead nearby.
My experiment is ongoing and not conclusive yet. The good thing about it is that I can use it more generously, because other than GET BUGA the rest don't cost much.
Sluggo with spinosad has extra stuff to kill a lot of harmless soil critters. Stick to plain Sluggo which kills only the slugs and really works. I sprinkle it under leaves and around the perimeter of my garden. I've never had a problem with pillbugs. They digest the mulch I put down and never harm my plants. They are not insects, they are crustaceans. Slugs are the bad guys!
Here's my garden.
Muskmelons in the near bed, tomatoes behind them.
To the right are sweet peppers and Dragon Tongue bush beans.
To the left are pommegranate "trees".
In the back (you can barely make it out) are the peach tree and boysenberry vines on the ladder thing.
I didn't have a lot of space when I was planning everything, and I made a few mistakes on placing the poms to the south of the veg beds, but it somehow seems to work out anyway:).
"this is kind of off subject but was wondering why you put a purple martin house next to the garden? I have 3 of them but keep them away so they don't attract them. Just curious."
Purple Martins eat flying insects so you want them around and they will not harm your garden.
I love lemon cukes! Very refreshing in hot weather, but the skin tends to be bitter, so I peel it. You might get away with leaving the skin on if you pick them first thing in the morning when it's coolest. These are really my favorite cucumber for eating out of hand. I peel, slice and pass them around. I never do that with other cucumbers.
Those containers in the pic don't look like real half whiskey barrels. They look like the plastic copies of a half barrel and if so then they are much smaller than real half barrel container.
If I am correct then that means less plants in each. Plus you hadn't mentioned that you had the nasturtiums etc. in them as well. So that reduces the number of plants that you asked about originally that can be grown in them even more.
The standard 1/2 whiskey barrel is 27 gallons. The plastic copies come in 2 sizes and are only 15 or 18 gallons.
Dave
digdirt, yes your right, I'm sorry about not mentioning all the details needed for everyone to offer an opinion. Hard to do so without knowing the full story. I tried to find the wooden ones this year everywhere. I didn't want plastic, as I felt it would heat up too much but, of course, just because I wanted them, they were no where to be seen!!!
I'm not even sure what gallon size these are (Walmart) but I'm betting the smallest.
I have this morning snipped all but one vine per barrel of everything, so I'll be finding out the hard way if they will grow and produce.
When they are young and small it is easy to do but probably too late now to do it with out killing one or both. Still I have had a 2fer grow and do fine as long as they get enough water and nutrients. Maybe the individual heads are quite as big as they would be otherwise but still worth growing and still better than trying to separate them.
Dave