23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Your weed situation does not look unusual for an area that has only been tended for a year or two. Stay on top of the weeding this year and don't let any of the weeds set seed. Hoeing and mulch are great suggestions. Use the hoe when the top of the soil is dry and then most of the hoed up weeds will fry in the sun and not reroot.Try using a thick layer of leaves or straw over recently weeded areas whenever possible. It makes weed control and watering much easier for us. We'll be stockpiling raked leaves from non-gardening neighbors again this fall.
Next year should be easier for you if you keep up with weed control this year.....but weeds and their control are part of gardening. If weeds won't grow in your soil, do you really want to eat crops that will grow there?
Not sure if it can be said enough, but keep on top of hand weeding or hoeing this year and you'll see fewer and fewer weeds come up in successive years.
It's taken 3 years of weeding and a portion of my veggie garden still sprouts grass...
Sintria, GREAT photo's! I can see that (slug type) critter would be a muncher for sure. I wish I was able to identify bugs better, I will often to google image searches when I see strange guys in the garden. Problem with killing them outright without knowing what they are is, many will do some limited damage as youths, but transform into the benificial garden helpers as adults. So, I really hesitate to do anything about bugs eating SOME plants unless they are going to wipe everything out, I hate boarers though and earwigs drive me insane:( Often too, the more "bad" bugs you get, the more preditors you attract. If there's little or no food source for the preds, like wasps etc, they just won't come to the garden and take a good chomp out the few that we do get (but the few that could eat the whole garden up)
I "attempt" to work with nature when ever possible, and when it's starts to get me angry, I pull out my water gun and shoot me some bugs with soap and water, man that can feel GOOD (sort of ashamed to admit it:)
I think you folks in the warmer climates have a lot more to deal with pest wise, then those of us in the colder climates with the harsher winters. I'm in Ottawa Canada.
For the most part, I have made peace with bugs, so long as they only take a leaf or two. I had chunks taken out of my tomato's last year too and THAT I was cranky about, left with only half of each tomato for me! Now, squirrels are a different story, they are digging all over the place and not even looking to EAT the plants they distroy/dig up as they look for seeds and nuts, ARG!
I forgot about Tanglefoot. That is a good barrier. Sevin contains carbaryl, which will kill the beneficial along with the bad bugs. If you have lots of ants, look for aphids, which they farm - they protect them from predators and eat the sticky stuff the aphids produce.
The link below tells you more than you probably want to know about ants, but if you scroll down, you will see many suggestions for managing ants.
Here is a link that might be useful: ant management
Not looking to fix anything now. I've seen 15-20 years quoted in most references and was looking for folks' experiences with what to look for when the time comes to replant. My family enjoys asparagus and knowing there is the three year no/limited pick "rule" I was doing some planning ahead.
Not sure about that. Gregor Mendel did his experiments on peas, and he was looking for effects that recessive genes had on the pods (that is, the fruit). I guess, simplistically, the way I look at squash fruit are squash pods for the seeds within. The fruit is, in fact, the seed.
I too am sure that you can get fruit with one plant. The question was whether you'd risk problems from recessive genes. I suspect that doesn't happen very often, because I suspect that lots of plants are fertilized from their own flowers. But if you're doing hand pollination, and have a choice, that's a useful strategy.
It's always a good idea to give your plants a good look when you buy then and again when you get them home (as a form of double-checking).
Nurseries are generally open air vectors for all kinds of pests and when one is managing 100s-1000s of plants, they can't get them all...and they're not going to spray anything powerful enough that people can't access the plants for 24-48 hours.
I wouldn't. I'd plant something not in the pepper family instead. But you can try. If it turns bad also then the virus is already in the soil there and it will need to be dormant for a season to die off.
If from the same seed source and you grew these from seed yourself then the odds are the rest of the seed is also contaminated and should be pitched.
Dave
Since these are containers they will require regular feeding as the nutrients leach out every time you water. Many on the container forum recommend feeding weekly using a 1/2 strength dilution of nutrients. Some dilute it to 1/4 strength and feed it with every watering.
Bone meal like most granular organics doesn't work well in containers as there is no active soil food web to convert them to useful nutrients as there is in dirt. Liquid organic fertilizers work well but not dry or granular.
Plus bone meal is very slow acting - like 6 months from now. So it pays to understand your fertilizer and how it works for best results.
Peppers are even less tolerant of high nitrogen fertilizers than tomatoes are. Fortunately most liquid organics are well balanced.
Pumpkins and squash are both fairly high P demand plants but again a granular organic is going to be slow acting.
You can learn much more about growing in containers and the unique needs of container plants over on the Container Gardening forum here.
Dave
I tried almost everything including organic untreated potatoes. I put it right in potting mix, and it rooted, but no soots. Oh well, better luck next time. I grew 4 slips last year that my father in law brought up from Florida. This is what they looked like when I dug them up, and yes, they take a LONG time to mature especially up north. I used black landscape fabric.
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Edweather, those are beautiful sweet potatoes you harvested. I used the toothpicks method to suspend my sweet potatoes over water with about a third of the potato or less in the water. I've gotten lots of beautiful slips. When the slips are about 6" long I put them in a canning jar with a couple of inches of water in the bottom. They developed roots so fast I couldn't believe it. I hope I get as nice a harvest from each of mine as you did.
The sweet potato leaves from the one potato that developed a little sprinkling of white on them have died and it looks like it's spread to a couple of leaves on the potato I had next to it and the newest leaves on it have died. Isolation and destruction time. No matter, I have plenty more slips on the first sweet potato growing like weeds.
I'm glad I don't have to hand pollinate my squash or cucumbers. Right now I am having a hard time giving enough away. I haven't seen many bees this year but I have something pollinating my plants. You will probably have the same thing even if you don't see any bees. Once the plants get started they should take off and you won't have to worry about them.
Will they grow? If they do nothing in 2 weeks [after transplanting] or are very weak then, they probably will not do much. I tend to get those little ones too with my order. I usually put 2 of those together. I like to soak them after they arrive in a bucket with 3 inches of water overnight [keeping the leaves up out of the water] and this gets them ready for setting out.
Thanks farmerdill, that's what I thought. My conditions have appeared to be ideal for hand pollination this past week. Most of the fruits that have set are too short. Those usually don't make a good melon and I think were not fully pollinated. I'll keep trying hand pollination and hope the bees show up soon.
because that is what most soil mixes call for.
What soil mixes call for lime? Commercial bagged mixes sometimes include some lime but how much if any all depends on the company recipe.
If you are using a specific recipe to make your own mix and that recipe calls for adding lime then that recipe should tell you how much to add and which type of lime to use. Otherwise it is just guesswork.
My question is, if I don't add lime is it going to cause problems for the plants I'm growing in the soil mix I created?
There is no way to know the answer to that without knowing the pH of the mix. It is the pH that determines whether the plants will have problems or not. That is why most people buy mix that is already pH balanced rather than try to make their own.
Dave
kawaiineko:
I'd go over to the container forum, tell them exactly what your soil mix consists of, and ask them if they think it needs some lime. However, a cheap, reliable ph test will tell you where you sit. Lime usually is added for 2 reasons -- adjust ph and deliver calcium and magnesium. But there are different ways of delivering these nutrients to your plants without raising/lowering the ph.
Kevin
@pnbrown I'm a bit intimidated at the idea of growing any kind of bean. Just not familar with their growing process I guess.
@SunshineZone7 Maybe I planted them earlier, I was thinking it was April sometime. They're still green and bushy and I don't think I should have dug any out yet actuality. I saw a few bubbles in the soil and brushed some aside and saw that first big one and got excited and dug up a small section and stopped when I saw so many tiny ones.
@Silverkelt I'd like to say I get the Kec's because of research but I actually just grabbed the first seed potatoes I could find at a nursery. ^_^;; They were really good. My fiancee who is a picky eater (really picky, pizza and hamburger helper only!) enjoyed them.
In the picture, the Potatoes are up against the fence row.
This post was edited by Syntria on Mon, Jun 10, 13 at 10:20
Congratulation! I too planted potatoes (red) this year for the first time but used an old clothes basket to plant them in. I remembered hearing about this on the radio. As the plants grow you add more dirt. Simple! What I didn't remember was you plant more potatoes as you add layers! So I wound up with plants about 4 1/2 feet high (two clothes baskets) but potatoes in the bottom 10 inches. Next year! It was fun though and they tasted great.
Yes it is true so as dry as possible. Too much chance of injury to them and subsequent rot.
Depending on where you live it is awfully early to be digging them anyway.
Dave