23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Not a complete success! I should have many more flowers than I have!
I'm only watering about once a week (no rain here except for a freak storm that dropped about 1/4 inch)
I'm wondering if I ought to REALLY flush them, like flood them a couple of time to flush out the excess fertilizer? Do you think that would help?
Considering my very long growing period, can I expect more tomatoes???? Please? =) Nancy
PS maybe I'll ask this over in the tomato forum, also.
We have fought back persistent perennial weeds for several years, and we gain substantial ground each year by staying after them. Tap-rooted burdock and dock are especially un-fun, but with persistence, you can gain the upper hand.
For weeds in walkways and other places away from cultivated plants, I use boiling water. Once canning season starts, all the used boiling water goes on walkway and driveway weeds.
Well, if you want to kill all plant life in the area, you can mow (if needed) till, then water and cover with black plastic. Most seeds under the black plastic will germinate, then die. I have done this and it works well. It takes maybe 2 weeks. Earthworms and bugs are not harmed at all, at least for me in my climate. I did this in spring, so it wasn't that hot.
Solarizing with clear plastic is something that people do on lawns, and I believe it works, but I have never tried it. (I kill all my lawns by forgetting to water them). But anyway, to solarize a lawn, you water like crazy, then cover with clear plastic in the middle of summer for several weeks. The heat kills plants and most pathogens, too, supposedly. I don't think it would hurt mobile organisms like bugs and earthworms (I assume they would go deep during the day, and come up at night).
In any case, the plastic needs to be close to the ground for this to work. It isn't going to work if you have shrubs sticking up everywhere.
Black plastic works by totally excluding light, and maintaining favorable conditions for germination underneath. Black plastic will eventually kill any plant that needs light to survive, but for healthy shrubs, this may take much too long to be practical. Oh, and the coverage must be fairly complete. If light leaks in, the process will take longer or not work. Also, I don't think black plastic it will stop rhizomes or ground-creeping vines from snaking through the area.
Clear plastic works by raising the soil temperature extremely high so that most living organisms die. The high moisture is needed to let the heat permeate as deep as possible. There may be heat-loving decomposer type organisms at work in solarization, too. I don't know. If so, the moisture may help keep them alive. I have seen reports that it works even on Bermuda grass, so I assume it can kill rhizomes and vines. Of course the bermuda may start to spread back in once the plastic is removed.
--McKenzie
Sorry to discourage you Deli. Like I said, let's see what others have to say. My way might be a bit of overkill.
It's not too bad... an hour or less for each treatment for your setup. After a few weeks, you'll be able to relax for hopefully a few ...:)
By the way(with my experience with PM and squashes/zucchini),. you can actually control it enough to get some harvests out your plants, especially zucchini.
Good luck.
Kevin
I had powdery mildew on my squash and zucchini plants....I bought a Garden Safe product at Lowe's called Fungicide 3 (basically neem oil) and it worked pretty well and this was AFTER my plants were infected. I recommended to a friend and it helped her plants a lot too.
My squash and zuchinni are doing a lot better than I expected, but I do keep moving the small fruits so they don't drown. Tomatoes, some doing better than others. Very worried, the farm my horse is on uses 2-4-D, but I made sure to use what had been sitting for at least 6 months, some of my palnts have a slight leaf curl. Only in the bed that was amended with that. Hoping it was just too much rain.
We got 2 1/2 inches yesterday.
We got several inches from Wednesday into late Thursday afternoon. I am now very grateful for living on a hill. My garden that looked like a lake at 6:00 am had NO standing water on it when I got home last night. Of course, all my broccoli plants are lying down but they are not snapped off so DH is supposed to straighten them up today and put support stakes behind them. Everything else came through pretty well. Tonight I am going to spray all the tomatoes with Daconil and then hope that they don't blight from being so wet. My peas are absolutely ecstatic with this weather, but they are in a raised bed. We are going to be picking and freezing a bunch of them this weekend. I am so VERY thankful that they didn't get blown away!
Glib, I bet I feel toward rabbits like you feel toward deer. "I have a garden" should be all the reason needed to get a No Limit year-round permit!!!
Edie
I started adding chard to Asian-style stirfries last year when I had a bumper crop of chard but not enough peppers or green beans - which were previously my standard for stirfry - and it quickly became my favorite way to eat it. I also saute with onion/garlic/olive oil and layer the resulting delicious mess in a baked pasta with red sauce and goat cheese.
I just had to pull half of mine out because of a fungal disease but the remainder is recovering quickly and already growing to fill in the empty spots now that our endless rain has let up. I think this stuff is indestructible.
This time of year I start leek seeds outdoors and grow them in crowded pots until I have the space to plant them, usually after early potatoes. I will start more seeds in a month or so for using as overwintering leeks. Just harvested the last of my 2012 leeks last week, leaving the plants that are actively multiplying by division. When replanted, the little plantlets that cluster around the mother leek grow into strong plants quickly.
Planatus, you just answered the question I was going to ask here... Before I even asked it! *cue slightly spooky music* You can be The Plant Psychic! Seriously, I was wondering if this would be the time to start them for fall and winter, so thanks, cheers!
Thanks guys. I guess I will be patient and wait it out and see what happens. It was the what seems to be slow/stop in growth and light/green yellowish turning of the plants that concerned me. I'll basically let the soil dry out well from the rains and then add some more plant food on next watering. Hope nitrogen will bring back some of the color it had. Hopefully the peppers and cucumbers regain some of their color and continue to grow. The grape tomatoes only one who seems to still be growing at great pace.
Thanks guys. I guess I will be patient and wait it out and see what happens. It was the what seems to be slow/stop in growth and light/green yellowish turning of the plants that concerned me. I'll basically let the soil dry out well from the rains and then add some more plant food on next watering. Hope nitrogen will bring back some of the color it had. Hopefully the peppers and cucumbers regain some of their color and continue to grow. The grape tomatoes only one who seems to still be growing at great pace.
Yes, I blanch the chard before freezing. I roll up the leaf, and cut it crossways into thin strips (1/2" - 3/4"), then either chop up some of the stem or slice it thinly, and add it to the leaves. The amount of stem to add is up to your taste. Personally, I like the amount of body that the stem adds to the cooked greens... especially if I use the chard in soup.
The best way to freeze chard (or any other vegetable in quantity) is to use a stainless steel kettle with a large strainer basket. It makes quick transfer simpler, and avoids over cooking. If you have two identical kettles (which I highly recommend) one basket can be cooking while the other is cooling. I just use cold running water (into another kettle shorter & wider than the basket) to cool the veggies after blanching, for a period equal to the blanching time. Then pour them out into a strainer, drain, and pack into containers.
I've seen recommendations for blanching greens for only a minute or two, but in my experience, 3 minutes is the minimum. I base this upon a pound of chard at a time... and while this is a fairly large amount of chard, it will shrink down quickly once stirred into the boiling water (though not as much as spinach). After the initial weighing, I use a bowl filled to the same volume for subsequent batches.
If you mix slices of stalk with the leaves, or if the leaves are larger & heavily veined, it may be necessary to use a longer blanching time, perhaps 4-5 minutes.
Blanching is not a precise science, since it varies with the volume of the kettle, the heat setting, altitude, and the weight of the vegetables being blanched. The first time I blanch something, I use the recommendations of the Ball canning book as a starting point, then look for signs & make adjustments. Insufficiently blanched veggies may float after cooling, while fully blanched veggies generally sink. Blanching also causes color change, and if the color change is incomplete, then a longer time may be required.
The best way to freeze chard (or any other green) is to pack the blanched chard tightly into a freezer box, freeze until solid, then vacuum seal the frozen "brick" (this avoids the bad seal you can get from vacuum sealing wet veggies). Protected this way, the chard will not get freezer burn. Alternatively, freeze the chard packed in just enough water to cover it. The ice will give some protection from freezer burn, although not for as long as vacuum sealing.
This post was edited by zeedman on Fri, Jun 14, 13 at 20:53
I use the phenology sign of the wild chicory blooming for the 5-6 week flight time of this moth. You can be more scientific by using growing degree days, according to the University of KY.
"Adult emergence occurs at approximately 1000 degree days (base 50F with a Jan 1 biofix) in the early summer. Use 950 degree days as the time to begin monitoring plants weekly for initial signs of the borer's frass at entrance holes in the stems. This usually corresponds to mid June as the start of the adult flight."
WIKI has a short chart that connects growing degree days with tree and shrub bloom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growing-degree_day). Where I am, I think we are at about 500 growing degree days right now. There are apps for keeping up with GDDs, smart farmers use them all the time.
Here is a link that might be useful: UKY squash pests
Bulblet development in garlic is often a reaction to stress. Likely the head of garlic will be fine or possibly a bit on the small side.
As was said, you can plant bulblets at the normal garlic planting time. The result from planting a bulblet will be a larger ball -- called a "round."
You can eat a round when harvested. Or you can replant at the normal time, with the result that you will get a large head of garlic.
Well, let me chime in and say that I am a bit warmer than you - just North of Phoenix, AZ - and I harvested my garlic about 10 days ago. Here is a pic of what the bed looked like a couple of weeks prior to harvest. From what I read online, once the flower stalks appear (the white, spikey buds at the ends of long stems) one should cut back on or quit watering altogether to force growth energy to the bulb. Also, feel around under the soil of one bulb and check to see if you can detect the bulbs and feel the cloves under the skin. This is another sign of readiness. The flower stems will also start to "loop" and depending on variety, hard or soft neck, one should stop watering, cut off the flower heads, leave the flowers on or stand on one's own head after the flower stems "make" one or two loops, LOL.
Shortly after this photo was taken, I stopped watering all of it, hard and soft neck alike. I waited about a week, didn't cut any flower stalks off, and harvested. I cut the flower stalks off after harvest and hung 'em all up by their stalks - don't cut any of those off as each stalk is a layer of that white papery skin that protects the cloves. Since it is so dry here, I am letting then "cure" for 2-3 weeks on the back porch where it is completely shaded.
Hope that helps and good luck!