24,795 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Where I live, the water used for irrigation is very hard, so I find any winter moisture beneficial in helping to leach out some of the extra minerals. Not to mention, it is much easier to feed the soil than it is to kill bugs, so I would be inclined to leave things uncovered.

I think growing seedlings indoors can be pretty much ideal conditions, if you have good lights. How else would it be less than ideal? Nothing sacred about sunlight or outside air, though once mature, needed free pollinators aren't around. The trouble with growing indoors is available room. Hardening off is a stress that direct-seeded plants don't endure, because they've already endured the stresses from the varying and often suboptimal temperatures under which they've been trying to sprout at.
Direct seeding puts tiny fragile seedlings at the mercy of driving rain, wind, temperatures, and even cutworms.

Thanks all for your input. Lots of knowledge among you! Thanks for the info on rotating crops. I was a little take aback when my garden friend advised me my beds planting should be rotated that often! The info offered by you collectively makes sense. Thanks for the summary info of the tap root explaining my tomatoes' growth. For those asking for photos: This is the volunteer:
This is the horrible example. Yes, there are tomatoes but the leaves look pretty bad and generally unhealthy. It is growing in a bed with zucchini and basil. Yes, I'm training it up a string to trellis above.


<Splitting tomatoes will only occur IF the plant is not consistently getting enuff water then you have a rain where the plant can get as much water as it needs and wants.>
That's a bit too broad a statement for my comfort gumby. First because some varieties are much more prone to splitting and cracking than others regardless of the water consistency. Second because splitting and cracking can be caused just as much by the gardener over-watering and just as much by under-watering as by over-watering.
Dave

Certainly some varieties may be more prone to splitting - so are you saying that water does not play a role?
I don't think you can overwater a tomato plant - well maybe you can (if it was in a pot or clay soil) but that is NOT the cause of splitting it is because your plant is NOT used to taking in the water it wants and needs.
Said another way splitting is a sign of underwatering followed by overwatering - overwatering would cause the plant to yellow, not produce fruit, and die.
I have posted this link before - it is useful for more than tomato plants.
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010137veg.roots/010137ch26.html

If your problem is slugs eggshells is a great fix. Crumble them up and put the all around your garden. They a FULL of calcium and nutrients that is great for your plants and soil. Also, slugs will not crawl over the egg she'll crumbles as they hurt there bottom side. It won't do anything for insects but its so easy to just toss them in there you might as well give it a try!


Marianne and Sulani62,
Thank you! That sounds like a wonderful rule to go by Marianne (this is my first time growing eggplant but definitely won't be the last and that is a rule I won't forget :)
Sulani -- did you get a good harvest from yours? We've got 4 Pandoras and 4 Astrakom eggplants in the garden and the Astrakom's started off having 4 or 5 fruit on each plant at a time but production now seems to be falling off with them quite a lot (about one per plant). Guess it is a good thing that the Pandora's are just starting to fruit.

If you can hardly find the outside of your borderless raised beds because weeds have overtaken both the pathways and the beds. Or if while you are harvesting bush beans you find yourself spending less time picking beans and more time pulling weeds just to get to the plants.
Rodney


Agree with Wayne that baited traps are quite effective in eliminating mice in the garden. I just use the old fashioned, cheap wooden ones you set (with care ;) and bait with peanut butter. And yes a mouse can nibble 1/2 through a corn stalk over night.
Dave

Agree with the others. Trying to contain a butternut and its vines to a limited area is futile. It will go where it wants. I don't understand about the raised bed sitting on top of a rock bed but if that means the squash will be laying on rocks you will want to put a layer of straw mulch or something under them.
Dave

I've been using the following technique for butternuts for several years and it works great. I have a non raised but permanent bed garden and I can't handle an immense butternut wandering everywhere. Also, I visually inspect every single leaf throughout the growing season about twice a week for squash bug eggs. Here's what I do. When I can see that there is a good fruit set and the vines are getting to the 5 ft length, I cut off the growing tips of the vines, and any side vines that are starting. This keeps the plant in bounds and makes the leaf inspection not quite so daunting. I get great squash and have gotten as many as 18 butternuts from two vines growing in one hill.


"I believe that corn is an exception here, in that, for example, sweet corn and field corn cross pollinate and the effects are seen in the first generation. Of course, in that case, the fruit is the seed."
The same holds true for beans and peas. If cross pollination occurs, the pods will still grow true but when dried the seeds inside can be different than what was originally planted.
Rodney

I'm growing melons for the first time this year. Since space is limited, I chose smaller varieties, papaya dew and Minnesota midget cantaloupe, so I can trelles them. Everything I read says that any cross pollination will not be apparent in the fruit. But, some of the developing melons are football-shaped like a papaya dew with the end to end striping of the cantaloupe. Has anyone seen this before?


Devil's eyelashes? So very appropriate. The seeds/goatheads survive for millennia, waiting for enough moisture to germinate or for you to be stupid enough to till the soil and bring them up. Any time I see it, it gets pulled immediately, even if it is growing in a parking lot crack. It is a compulsion.
It turns out that we do have desert spoon, too. However, it and all of our cacti, agave, are on the natural parts of the property, where I do not weed (we are on acreage). They are no fun when we are collecting rocks. I think buffalo bur first made it into my garden with a load of wood chips from the transfer station. At first I was curious as it did look like watermelon leaves but once I saw those burs, I pulled it. Curiosity ended there.


It all depends what all varieties are around you of the same species. Summer squash and many winter squash are the species C. Pepo and they all cross. The diversity of culinary use in the species is too high to think a volunteer will be good for anything, unless you last year planted a very limited amount of varieties. Like if around you was just summer squash and some acorn/ dumpling types they may be good to eat as immature. But if you had pumpkins and gourds it wouldn't be worth bothering. C Pepo is not a good species to let freely cross.



Thanks, Dave! Maybe I will at least get some squash that is decent. I tend to collect seed, being as much curious as cheapskate. I also tend to keep seed too long, but it looks like some seed is forgiving. This year I tossed 9 yr old seed onto the bird table and front garden and was surprised to see a few dill plants and some sort of mustard-related green (probably from a mixed mesclun sort of packet. I wish I could find the yummy (?heirloom green-when-ripe tomato seeds that I carefully saved.
I have a bunch of clematis seeds from two years ago (or last year) and read about how to sow large flower type clems (it can take up to three years? gasp. I just tossed some into one garden, but nothing so far -- the soil is dry and sandy there. I know that it is _not_ an easy way to get clematis plants, but I wondered what I'd get from a maybe Nelly Moser and maybe Anna Louise combo. I have them (in the wrong spot, my veggie garden) side by side on a garden fence. My garden in the back is a mish mosh of "holding area," experiment area and vegetable and flower garden. Long story.
Waiting,eat those blossoms!