23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Uaskigyrl, you have a great attitude! All new gardeners make mistakes, so expecting them and having fun with them is the best way to learn. :)
Dave, you taught me something new. I had no idea about the roots of marigolds and sunflowers having a growth retardant affect. Does that apply in the main garden, too, or just containers? I don't generally companion plant, but I'd be curious how far away marigolds need to be planted from veggie crops to be "safe".
And me too. I knew about sunflowers, did not know about marigolds.....So maybe it was the marigolds in the early years that were causing less than outstanding tomatoes....maybe I double dug my beds for nothing? Either way, no more marigolds with tomatoes.
Something to plant? No.
What you can do is add beneficial nematodes to the soil and let them take care of them but based on your previous post about this your problem is minimal you said - 8 worms in traps - so the cost of b. nems might not be justified. In such a small area as your garden using several potato traps should get most of them but be sure to check them daily.
If you have no objections to chemicals then this fall you can treat the bed well to kill them off before planting next.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: your previous post
See pics below. Note pic of flying ants vs. termites.
Here is a link that might be useful: Pics of migrating termites
Glad to know!
The black part seems to be growing and spreading on the leaf and some of the other leaves is having tiny bit for dark parts on the edge as well.
edit: went out and took a quick picture
This post was edited by bobosaur on Fri, May 17, 13 at 15:20
Harvesting should be done when heads are tight.
You'll know when it's a tad late when the florets start to separate. You'll then know for future harvests.
t-bird: give them some time -- most heading broccoli, in my experience, take about 80-90 days to harvest.
Kevin
Yea, 40 is about the max for that space, maybe a few less is better. Trimming suckers is one of those topics people can discuss forever, but my opinion is leave them alone. Suckers often tastle, which is helpful in smaller plantings for pollination. Sometimes you even get some good ears on the bigger suckers.
Don't forget to side dress with a nitrogen rich fertilizer once or twice as the corn grows.
If you do not have a good hill ,and if you get a lot of rain and wind, then vines would fall down and with continued rain they will get stem rot and die. This has happened to me before..
I would drive few stakes(about 2 feet high) here and there and run a twine around them to hold the vines up. I have just one row(about 10 hills this year) and I am thinking about doing it myself.
Seysonn...we're on the same wave length. That's exactly what I'm going to do. I have a 30ft. row of LaRattes. This is my first year growing them, so I started one in a container in January to see how it behaves. Now, fully mature, it has 4ft vines!
All depends -- brassicas are cool weather crops but most can be planted in the late summer here. That's why I always start them under lights indoors. I'm still trying to get a decent brussels to grow-- I think I finally figured it out though -- I think I need to start them in the dead of summer or... not try any longer
They're all different though -- what may be good for kale and collards may not be so good for the finicky cauli. I've even read recently that cold can cause bok choy to bolt.
Kevin
Ive just asked a similar question! They are eating the roots of my lettuce and a couple of herbs, but always the smaller ones.
They are the larvae of click beetles as far as ive found out online and can live for years in the soil before becoming adults. The adults dont cause as much damage as the larvae and ive not seen one yet this year.
We have click beetles *everywhere*, so I'd like to do something about them as well as the worms. Yesterday I checked my traps and found five worms on one carrot. I was not happy. Well, I was happy about the fact that they're dead now (squish), but I wasn't happy to find so many there. I found probably eight altogether checking all my traps, and that was only a day or two after checking them last time. (I should point out the fact that my "garden" is just a hobby garden. I planted a narrow flower bed and one raised bed that I made from an old dresser. So eight worms in what is roughly a 14 x
By just looking at your soil, it occurs to me that it has TOO MUCH chunky compost.
It is a well know fact that such organic matter ,poor in nutrients , will absorb most of what you are trying to feed to your plants. This will continue until that compost,chips are satured with nutrients . Then will come your plants turn to hav something to eat. In the future, as the coarse compost disintegrates, the nutriens will be released.
From the most recent photoes, it seems to me that your plans are getting a bit more nutrients. That means, up untill then the compost(or whatever the medium) was absorbing the food.
I rooted some cuttings from a sweet potato vine last fall before the first frost, and planted them in the greenhouse for the winter. They didn't have enough light and crawled around all over the place losing most of the leaves except at the ends. Now I can cut those long vines into about 8 inch pieces and they root and sprout in in water in just a couple of days. I could have hundreds of sweetpotatos from this easy method and have been giving cuttings away right and left. The problem is that I have no idea what variety they are.
An acquaintance offered me some thornless blackberry transplants this past week. I scored two new friends and 8 beautiful thornless blackberry plants. I plan to intentionally root new plants once the berries are picked so that I can pass on those plants to others. Keep paying it forward is the way to go!
and final post today. Another shot of the infected area...
I sure wouldn't pull those plants! They look fine. Except for that one strange thing.