23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
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.
Very crisp, and good flavor. They love the heat too, chiefly due to the fact that they are melons botanically, not true cucumbers. This makes them a good choice for warmer regions... but not so good here in the upper Midwest, especially this year.
Make sure they get enough water especially when it's hot. In fact, feel free to take some of our excessive rain! Also, if they are only 3 feet long I wouldn't be too worried yet. Mine usually don't start really producing til their vines are longer anyway.
With that many different varieties growing then seed saving from them would not be recommended.
You can avoid some cross-contamination by bagging blooms and hand pollinating and then saving the seeds from only that particular fruit. There is a FAQ here on how to do it.
Foe example:
Crookneck is a pepto and so is Acorn
Or. Hubbard is a maxima
Butternut is a moschata
So look up each of your specific varieties and find out what family they are in.
Dave
What Dave said.
Also, zucchini is C. pepo, too. So it can cross with the crookneck and acorn squash.
I don't know about birdhouse gourds. Do the seed packets say what it is? The only reference I found online mentioned Lagenaria siceraria. If so that won't cross with any of the others on the list.
So I think saving seeds from zuchini, crookneck and acorn is out, unless you want to go to the trouble of isolating the flowers (or at least those flowers you plan to save seeds from) (like Dave said).
Assuming I have the birdhouse gourd species correct, you should be able to save seeds from the Hubbard and Butternut and birdhouse gourd with no special precautions to prevent cross-pollination.
--McKenzie
Here is a link that might be useful: grow birdhouse gourds
Today I found a brown lace wing larvae on my bell pepper plant. Now I know that is beneficial. May be it was the pupa I found? I crushed some orangey eggs on my leaf surface. Now I think they may have been lady bug eggs :(
Is there a good site to know beneficial insects, their eggs, pupae and larvae by looking at them?
But virtually anything that produces edible leaves, stalks, or roots, will produce more with SFG.
Interesting but very broad claim Glib. More than what? A container of the same size as used in the SFG? An in-ground bed? Row planting? Raised beds? Wide-row gardening?
I do some SFG because I have some spaces where beds fit and it works. But there is no way I can grow as much lettuce or spinch or potatoes or carrots or turnips or chard in those beds as i can in my in-ground beds using both row and wide-row planting. Much less produce more.
SFG was never intended to replace other methods of gardening. It is just an alternative method for those who may not have the space, time, need, or ability to to garden in other ways. But it isn't, nor does it claim to be, the one perfect gardening method.
Dave
Uscjusto:
Story: A couple months ago, a gopher ate nearly the whole taproot, but left a small root ball at the base of the plant. I picked up the plant(cage and all), and transplanted it 2 feet over from the gopher hole. After some babying for a couple weeks, it stopped wilting and kept growing. I just picked the first fruit a couple days ago.
Kevin
I think if you water your plants really well they might stick around a little longer, but now that it's starting to heat up it might be too late. You really might think about just planting seeds next year as soon as you can get out into your garden. I'm by no means an expert, but I think peas aren't really happy being transplanted.
Our peas are still green and putting out blossoms. I wasn't expecting them to still be around this long... I planted beets in between them and the poor things are about suffocating. Oh, well, I am putting peas by the bagful into the freezer so I am not going to complain!
Good luck with yours - hope you can get them to stick around a bit longer.
Edie
Thanks for your help.
Do these things have a name? I like to know what I am about to kill.
What else do they affect? I have my watermelons, cantaloupe, pumpkins, and summer squash in the same raised bed. Do I just broadcast spray the whole bed, or do I spot treat the watermelon?
They are leaf rollers. But there are many caterpillars that do this. Around here I've seen them on many fruits and pecans but so far not on any vegetables. Ours is probably a different species of caterpillar.
It won't hurt to spray anything with BT. It's very safe and will control other caterpillars like tomato hornworm.
Oh, we've got plans. DH is going to make footings all around the entire fence perimeter out of 2X4's set into trenches so the varmints can't get under any more. What's so frustrating is we live on 5 acres, right next to a huge brushfield. Not like there isn't all kinds of stuff for them to eat... we don't even kill off the clover in the yard just for them. So why they have to go to all that effort to get into the garden is an absolute mystery to us. Anyway, given that melons aren't fond of being transplanted and I'm sure anything I could find now would be horridly root-bound, I am going to stop on my way home tomorrow and get a new packet of seed (the one I had was so old I was actually surprised that 2 of 12 even germinated!) We will get them into the ground tomorrow night; it's supposed to be in the upper 70's for a couple of days then start getting warmer and warmer so hopefully they will germinate quickly. And since I'm starting over and we have plenty of room I'm going to try planting at least 6 hills. There is about a 12' X 12' square out there that nothing is planted in so that will be a good use for it.
Thanks for the advice; I do really appreciate it.
Edie
Two reasons they go into the garden: cover and they are browsers. If a rabbit can find really good things to eat and have cover at the same time, they will preferentially eat near cover. And as browsers they tend to eat a little and move, eat a little and move again... So they never really eat down one spot but when they pass through the garden it feels like they do. They don't understand that in all the world of a million billion plants you have an attachment to those two. :) They also probably don't recognize a barrier when they meet one, since they like to squirm through brushy mazes.
So far we've kept the rabbits out of the garden by three means: more cover where the clover is, the dog, and the outdoor cat. Our old house in suburbia the rabbits had to be physically detered since our garden was one of the few places they could find nutritous browse. A hex wire fence let the babbies pass through, so we added a plastic netting around the base and that worked. Best of luck!
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!
I just went out and purchased some Bayer Natria slug repellent (Iron Phosphate).
I will reply back with how it worked.