23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

::laughing at carnivorous horse::

I do wash mine with a green scrubbie ,to get the dirt out.

LOL you should never ever leave a beer unattended around him. I had to plant an extra row this year, my stepdaughter found out I grow them. She has a black thumb. dug a couple up and there was about 1 in 5 that looked like it was thinking about geminating. so I'll do it again. I think maybe it was too wet. Anyway, round two. Happy gardening today Va peeps!

Enter Compost Tea in the search box at the top of this page. Make sure it is searching GardenWeb.... lots of articles.

thanks..but what abt the white patch doesn't anyone know what to do for that...even the smallest cucumbers getting it and also turning yellow when small...

Holy cow! That wood piece looks like Jesus! You better not mulch with that! That'll be one hell of an expensive piece of mulch! Save it, you'll be a millionare! Anyone else see it?

This is terrible, but I see the profile of a comic strip girl of 60 years ago...and I can't remember her name.

Some sort of beetle. A sense of the scale of the thing would help narrow it down a bit more.

Grubs are Id by their raster (butt) patterns. See link below.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: UMass Ext - How to Id grubs

Easter dinner featured wonderful fresh asparagus at my friends home. After dinner, we took a nice walk to check out the asparagus bed. It was lined with rock salt to keep the bermuda grass at bay. ANYTHING that can stop bermuda is fantastic, and salt is so simple a solution.

for now a good layer of mulch is doing the job as well as keep moisture in and cut down on watering, mulch for us controls all our weeds so i'd have to say mulch, not so sure about adding in salt?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens bale garden

Thanks, folks!

Yeah, i worried about that usage of the word 'hill' as soon as I hit 'post' :). Around here, it means a grouping, and not a raised area. But it dawned on me just two seconds too late that the thread title would be confusing to... pretty much anyone else.

I use hills/raised mounds with 3 plants to each hill. Warmer soil = faster germinating, easier to contain, better drainage, better cross pollination so timing of M/F blooms isn't an issue, easier to hand pollinate if needed, easier to feed, easier to bury stems if any borers do get in, and most importantly easier to cover with row cover/insect barriers to prevent SVB and squash bugs.

Dave

Thank you everyone for all the great advice and links to different forums. I thought I had done a fair amount of research before I got started but I'm definitely learning from some mistakes. I tossed most of the seedlings but did transplant a few to bigger pots just to see if they could make it. I have another question:
I would like to give it another whirl and plant some more seeds and I was thinking that this time I would give them more space to grow but given that where I live I should be able to direct sow in the next couple of weeks, should I just wait and put them in the ground? Also, if I started them in the seedling tray could I transplant them after just a couple of weeks? Thanks so much for all the help!

Whens your last frost date? If yours is around may 15 like me, I would start up a batch, that 6-7 weeks of growing indoors, is 6-7 weeks longer than it would be direct sowing.. If your last frost is in 2 weeks, I wouldn't bother.. It's just preference..

You asked "If a Start them in a seedlings tray could I transplant after just a couple of weeks"

Yes, I can't see why not.. Transplant them to what the garden, or to a bigger container indoors? By seedling tray, do you mean the 72 small flats you
germinate in, if so ibadvise you to use something bigger.. Use a container big enough where you wont have to pot them up to a bigger container,leave them sit in the pot that you sowed them in, until planting in the garden.. Once you see them germinating, you can take the cover off, but keep them
moist, but NOT saturated wet.. When they sprout, put a light as close to the seedling as possible without harm.. Also put on a fan directly blowing on the seedlings.. Keep the light and fan on 12-14 hours.. Keep the soil moistto
the touch but not wet, or your seedling are going to die.. Seedling are not that hard to grow as long as you keep the soil moist, sufficient light very close to seedlings, provide a fan blowing on them.. Most people kill plants by over care.. Remember your growing a plant, provide water and light and
it grows itself.. You don't need to baby your plants and overwater them.. They know how to survive just fine, given the rough growing parameters..

Best Of luck,
Joe

I would agree, pick enough for a great dinner or two and then let it all go.
Next year you will be glad you let it have the extra year.

Yep, this year pick it lightly when the spears are between 6-8 inches and definitely before the top begin to open. But it's still young so go lightly.

You can never have too much garden space so make it as big as you can afford to and have the room for or if spacing is tight, split it into more smaller beds. 3-4 feet wide means you never have to walk in it or waste any space on paths so I prefer long narrow beds over shorter wider beds.

Dave

Those plants would probably fit in a 4 x 6 raised bed. The squash can hang over the edges. You'll have room for basil, too. The space for tomatoes depends on whether you get determinate or indeterminate plants. An indeterminate small tomato like Sungold or Sweet 100's won't take up much ground space, but can have vines six feet long or more. Trellising will keep your tomatoes off the ground. The square foot gardening book will give you lots of information.

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

I try to stagger bush beans because the plants do give out at some point and I want a steady supply.

Also trying it with the cukes, which seem to be prolific producers early but as the vines age and get damaged from tugging the cukes off, rooting through for the hidden ones, etc., they tend to trail off. So I'm going to do one planting early then start some more seeds in another location a few weeks later.

If I grow squash it will be just one because two years ago I had one plant that gave me more than I could use, freeze or give away. And it just wouldn't quit. Probably should have looked for a food bank that wanted fresh produce.

In Pennsylvania, I don't think our summers are long enough for a second round of tomatoes. I've put some in in late June just to see and they never really produced -- probably not enough time before the nights got too cool.

If you grow leaf lettuce you can cut the leaves and the plant will produce more, but after the second or third cutting it gets bitter so it's either time for more plants or just go to a late summer planting for fall harvest since lettuce doesn't love the heat.

I grow backups, but I don't stagger.

Unless you count two planting a year (winter and summer) as staggering -- I do that sometimes with greens and roots. Or sometimes I just grow them in the winter. If I have a huge winter crop and am tired of them by spring then I don't plant for a summer rerun ;).

I agree that the terminology can get confusing but once you have a chance to see several brands of bags of potting stuff next to each other, the labels make the differences pretty clear.

Common usage for the terms is

soil=dirt, the stuff the ground in the garden is made of and has no use in containers

top soil= dirt, which may or may not be of better quality than garden dirt and has no role in containers.

potting soil=bags of other ingredients, usually some peat, vermiculite or perlite and some sand mixed with some dirt. Quality of most potting soils currently on the market are considered only poor to fair.

potting mix=soil-free mixture of peat, perlite or vermiculite or both, and sometimes some coco fiber. The quality far exceeds that of potting soil and is commonly referred to as a soil-less mix even in the US.

So when you use the term soil we aren't always clear on exactly what you mean and thus the warnings to not use soil (dirt) in containers, only use a soil-less mix, a potting mix.

If you wish to buy in bulk rather than in the big bags and fill your own containers then some nurseries will make up a soil-less mix for you and sell it by the cubic foot.

If you want to buy bags for your plants most brands are sold in 1 cubic foot or 2 cubic foot bags. A 1 cubic foot bag is equal to approx. a 6.5-7 gallon container and a 2 cubic foot bag is equal to approx. 12-14 gallon container.

Hope this helps.

Dave

Every response has been great and much appreciated, this really helps out tremendously. I will keep this post updated as I move along (plus with any other questions : ). I am about 2-3 weeks away from hardining off the plants.

Thank you everyone again.

-Mr. Beno

I assumed the OP meant as in the next row over or whatever. Not right next to them.

Dave

I had a idea about putting potatoes in about two or three bales of straw, has anyone tried this before?

Than when you dig the potatoes out of the straw you can compost the straw.

What I am putting in my garden is tomatoes , papers, Ground Cherries, melons, cucumbers, winter squash, maybe beets, lettuce if I can find some type of container to put it on so the rabbits don't get it before me. I will be putting more onions out as soon as they can be put out ( I am talking about the ones that look like grass). Can anyone tell me how to grow these since every year they die on me?