23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Was just going to start a thread about this as well. My very first bell has a hole as of this morning. We do have an earwig problem.

Aili: you can make earwig traps out of soy sauce and oil. Haven't tried it yet, but it sounds promising from the info I've read.

Kevin

Perhaps the supermodel analogy will help? Just like a woman does not need to look like a supermodel to be beautiful, your garden plants do not need to be pristine in order to be good producers. Free your mind from the shackles of advertising! ;)

There really are a small number of pests that are common and damaging. And even the ones that are damaging need to show up in large numbers to be worth getting upset about. You will be exhausted in short time if you allow yourself to get upset at every hole you find in a leaf (especially since not all holes are caused by bugs) and every insect you see. Take it more like the justice system- the insects are innocent until proven guilty. Which means catching one in the act before deciding it is a problem. This will also save you a lot of money.

I do not view bugs as nasty, dirty little things, but more fondly. They are amazing little things, very much alive and following their own purposes. Some are incredibly beautiful, and all of them are amazing. That last picture you have is a moth coccoon (technically a pupa). You can actually see the transition from caterpillar to winged insect in those, it is very cool. I do get rid of insect pests on my plants, but not from an emotional, angry place. Like with weeds, I do it because it must be done to get the plants to bear food for me. I'm not saying you need to think fondly on insects like me, I'm just putting out my way of thinking because it is different. Cheers!

Newatthis22 - it's hard when we are new at something and trying to learn as we go. The best thing to do is educate yourself on the bug world - what is beneficial and what could do harm. Periodic inspection of your plants is good practice - especially for organic growers - we become the insecticide by removing what we see by hand. You won't get everything and as susanzone5 said, it's all a part of the biology of living things. Beneficials depend on the not-so-beneficials for food.

Deep breath - remove what you can - enjoy your garden.

Potatoes are relatively inexpensive to purchase, but growing your own is the best way to ensure they will not have been exposed to excessive chemicals to offset their growing problems. Plus you'll have a lot more varieties to choose from. Oval baking potatoes and red potatoes have dominated the market, but there are actually over 1,000 different varieties of potatoes available for growing. The texture of potatoes, even more so than the flavor, is very variable from variety to variety.Therefore i love growing my own potatoes.

I agree. Growing potatoes is a blast. This year I'm trying out 24 varieties, plus all the no-name grocery store potatoes I've kept going for 30 years. I'm working my way through the bean, tomato, and squash varieties also. Life is good. Slugs, SVB, and CPB are bad.

Since you're in zone 5 I'm wondering if your seedlings are very small (mine are) so maybe it's rolly polly bugs? They get mine when they're v. small.

I've never had problems with my carrots, but birds would eat the tops of my beets when they were small. I eventually put a netted frame over the sowed seeds, which gets removed when the beet foliage reaches the top of it.

I mulch my garden almost exclusively with fresh grass clippings, straight from the bagger to the garden, several inches thick.

It works awesome at weed suppression and really improves the soil. I have been doing this for years.

It works so well I even went out and bought a stupidly expensive bagger for my riding mower so I could get more clippings than what the push mower was giving me.

When you first put them down, give the stems of plants an inch or so of breathing room, the clippings can heat up a bit as they decompose.

Grass clippings are fine for mulch, but as JWW mentioned, they should be composted some. Not only because of weed seeds, but FRESH grass is high in Nitrogen and a 3" thick mat of it will heat up like a compost pile. Don't want to "cook" your veggies.

Kevin

This post was edited by woohooman on Sun, Jun 16, 13 at 15:35

Chard has been fairly trouble-free for me insect wise; some years spotted cucumber beetles chew on it, but they seldom cause more than minor damage. Other years the grasshopper damage becomes noticeable.

But the worst damage I ever had with chard was due to... goldfinches??? A flock of them learned to peck on the leaves, and within several weeks, had eaten a stand 12" tall down to the ground. The next year I used floating row cover over the chard, which effectively stopped the bird damage, as well as the beetles. I highly recommend the use of row cover for the best-quality leaves.

Thanks for the advise!

To be honest I'm not to sure low levels of N is going to affect uptake of nutrients in the soil as the plant itself will be trying to uptake what it needs I do know that some of your micro nutrients do aid in the metabolism of the plant and its up take of macro nutrients I believe zinc is one of the important ones the only way to really tell is time if there is a deficiency the plant will show it then u have to identify and amend the soil don't worry as you can apply micro nutrients as a foliar spray for a instant boost as well as amending the soil if you can find them in liquid form

It probably depends on the OM%. My empirical experience is that with 21% OM, clay soil, the fertilizer is not leached by two inches. I also expect that leaching will be an exponential function of precipitation, that is, if x inches leach 50%, 2x inches will leach 75%.

Thanks for coming back to update. My main garden beds were in full sun 10 years ago when we bought our house, but since that time, the neighbor's trees have grown much bigger and the new owners no longer do any trimming. Result - my main garden is becoming part-sun.

I've compensated by building a new raised bed closer to the house, but although it's in full sun all summer, the house shades it from Oct-March, which means no spring or fall gardening to extend the season. Needless to say, I'm doing a lot of thinking ahead to figure out what I can plant where (and there may be yet another raised bed built to catch fall/winter/spring sun). So although I'm located further north than you are, I'm very interested to see your results. :)

I grow exclusively in containers because of black walnuts and other trees surrounding my small yard. The containers are smart pots scattered around my back yard to get the most sun. A friend said they looked like a bunch of top hats. The tomatoes have the primo spot where they get about 6 hours of sun broken up into three periods. When I grew hybrids, I got decent yields. Since I fell in love with big heirloom types a few years ago, I've had to settle for lower yields. But I'm gradually learning what will do best in my situation. I have had good luck with mortgage lifters, goose creeks and kosovos. I say, work with what you've got. Even an early girl from the garden is head and shoulders above a grocery store tomato.

I want to add that I've been growing scarlet runner beans in a small plot on the north side of my house where they only get early morning sun. They climb up to the roof where they get a lot more sun fairly quickly and attract hummingbirds. They are a lot of fun to grow. I do need a ladder to harvest them, though.

Spraying sugar water on any plant seems a REALLY bad idea. If you spray apple juice on the ground, it'll be covered in ants before long. Why would you want your tomatoes that way? They look pretty healthy, and they should take care of pollination all by themselves. Tomatoes don't need insects to pollinate.

If I read your post correctly, it's a last-year problem that you're trying to cure this year. But you've taken more trouble this year with your planting medium, and you say these are just the first flowers coming out. Patience!

Now, if it's getting very hot, tomatoes will shut down fruiting. Blooms will appear and just fall off. But I would think that Philadelphia shouldn't be that hot.

Thanks for all your comments,

I just took more photos this evening and saw some loose blosoms and took some photos. The first photo was just haning from a leaf and looked frayed so I opned it up and was currious and saw a little mator that didn't make it.

The seconed one was from the same plant and looked real healthy. It dropped when I tried to shake the plant a little bit.

you can see why I have concern (and jsut looking to see if there is a helpful solution to help deter this while it is still early) but I am aware of the maturity issue and the stress they did go through to get to this stage with the weather and such and patience is probably the best thing to have this early.

Thanks again all for your help.
- Mr Beno

I guess that I'll never know what the worms were. They were nowhere near as big as any corn borer that I have ever seen. They were about the size of 1/4" to 3/8" long pieces of spaghetti and they were white. I guess that it could have been the larvae of some moth.

None of the other vines seem to be affected, so maybe I should just count my blessings. I'm just wondering, though, if there's some type of prophalactic treatment that could be given to the rest. What do you do for vine boring pests?

Spinosad has worked for me with various borers (including squash vine borer), in conjunction with digging as many as possible out of the vine with a bent pin.

Spray spinosad in early morning or late evening, as it can do harm to day-flying beneficials as well as the baddies.

Liquid fertilizer probably isn't needed. Why not sprinkle on a granular organic designed for vegetables? There are several to choose from and they also contain micronutrients. Feed the soil, and it will feed the plants.

Here is a link that might be useful: My raised bed garden

I use a sprinkler system a fanout spray type one. Here in N.Y. we got alot of rain the past few weeks so the soil is moist. The 2 main issues I have is the basil looks like somethings eating it and its not growing as nice as it usually does. the peppers are staring to flower, fruit, and a few tomato plants are starting. I planted string beans last week and nothing sprouted through the ground yet but I guess more time is needed. I just want to stay on top of my garden to make sure it keeps flourishing, One other thing I noticed is compared to my father in laws (a few blocks away) garden his lettuce grew fast while mine grew nice but seems stunted which is what makes me think I need fertilizer.