24,795 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

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Peter (6b SE NY)

This could be any number of things and impossible for anyone to identify without pictures.

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catherinet(5 IN)

Sounds like septoria leaf spot. It's pretty common (especially in tomatoes) when there is a wet/cool spring, or a very wet summer. I've found that putting a fair amount of straw under each tomato plant has really helped. But this year it's all pretty bad because of the constant rain.

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zeedman Zone 5 Wisconsin

Had to mow most of my rural garden last year. The rain never stopped until early July; almost everything I planted by seed rotted in the ground, and since it was too muddy to weed, the weeds quickly overran everything. Parts of the garden were so wet, for so long, that the main weeds there were cattails & willow seedlings! All I could do when the surface finally began to dry was mow everything, to stop further seed production.

A little drier this year, until this past week. Got almost everything in, but lost some of my planted seed again because of a 2-day rain spell just after planting. I'm still fighting a ferocious battle with all of the weeds that came up in the area that was mowed last year, but at least I was able to till enough last Fall to kill off most of the perennial weeds.

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catherinet(5 IN)

I feel your pain. I live in central Indiana, and it's rained more than ever before. Here, in mid July, it's grown hardly anything. I do have some green tomatoes, but if the flooded ground didn't kill the plants, it's caused leaf spot so bad, I'll probably lose all the leaves before the tomatoes mature. The pole beans are a bust, as are the winter squash and zucchini. I went out a couple weeks ago (on that 1 nice day we had) and used my weed-eater on the weeds. I didn't want to pull them, 'cause I needed some of them to absorb all the rain! I think I will probably put it all to bed very early this year. Fortunately, I have several raised stock tank veggie containers too, and they've done much better, since they can drain. But now the tomatoes in those have the leaf spot too. Ever since May, my garden soil has never been dry enough to even cultivate.

This is my first time living here (33 years) where my garden was a bust. It's depressing. I hope this isn't the new normal. Good luck to you. Maybe we should turn our gardens into rice paddies??? Cranberry bogs???

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exmar

Agree, closest I've come to figuring out when they're ripe is read the seed package. If it says "60 days," (or whatever) start looking at that point. That one seems small and see no indicators.

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homegardenmama

You have a beautiful, healthy watermelon! I have raised Sugar Baby Watermelons in the past. There are 3 indicators I look for to confirm ripeness. First, look at the small curly tendril on the vine, nearest to the point where the watermelon is attached to the vine. If the tendril is green, leave it to ripen. If the tendril is brown & dried, check underneath the watermelon. The underside of a ripe watermelon will be yellow as shown in farmerdill's photo. Sometimes the yellow underside might not be as bright...more of a creamy pale yellow. And last, the outside of the watermelon will lose it's glossiness. If the tendril is brown and the underside is yellow, the melon is as ripe as it will get. Some people thump watermelons to check ripeness. A deep hollow-sounding thud, instead of high-pitched, indicates ripeness. I have never used that method successfully. For me, judging the sound of the thump would require having a known unripe melon nearby to compare the sounds.

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Jim's(6 East end of Long Island)

My plants do the same thing and seem to bounce back within a day or two. After laying over, they still continue to produce a very robust amount of beans.

I do not know if I should have done something, but mother nature seems to have taken care of it for me.

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digdirt2(6b-7a No.Cent. AR HZ8 Sun-35)

For future reference all container grown plants need regular feedings of some sort because the nutrients leach out every time you water the plants. Many recommended feedings every 10-14 days depending on which fertilizer you choose to use.

As for the downey mildew, like Rodney said - fungicide spray of your choice but it doesn't cure it just slows it down. But honestly, if these haven't been fed since planting their odds aren't good. You could replant and probably get better results as there is still time.

Dave

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jean001a(Portland OR 7b)

too many plants in a small container.

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Peter (6b SE NY)

Pulled some test carrots. Bolero looks awesome, grocery store size. Purple Haze not so much.They tasted awesome too! I love fresh garden carrots, they taste so much better.

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galinas(5B)

Mine for some reason always more bitter then store-purchased... I thought it is because of a hot summer, but looks like your summer should be even hotter... May be they don't like my soil...

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elisa_z5

daninthedirt said: it is a drought tolerant succulent and loves sun

My garden is certainly proving this point: I've got a 12' by 25' section being solarized, which has had clear plastic over it for nearly two months. No water has gotten under there and everything else is dead, including (sound of angels singing) the quack grass. HOWEVER, the purslane is growing happily and big. Guess I better get under the plastic and pull it up before it goes to seed under there.

defrost, for a future "living mulch" or underseeding idea, I find that lettuce works great. It is shallow rooted, and in the warmer months it enjoys the shade of the bigger plants. I like it best among the broccoli and collards and between the tomatoes -- don't think I'd like to try to harvest lettuce from under those prickly squash leaves!

Update: pulled up the purslane from under the plastic, got it ready to take down the hill for neighbor's chickens. Tried some as a salad. Tried some sauteed with zucchini and garlic. Wow! Thanks for this post -- I've discovered new food :)

Purslane: it's what's for dinner.

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gumby_ct(CT it says Z5)

Just think - don't have to plant it or water it. What's better than that?

Better save some of those seeds eh?

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booberry85(5)

Good show despite the critters and the weather!

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Jim's(6 East end of Long Island)

Congrats! Looks great, critters be damned.

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RadicchioIs it hard to grow? How bout without spraying?
Posted by keepitlow(6)
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thompson_carlisle

That's what I want to know! Bought some at a farmstand here in VT with all the outer leaves. Look tasty, can't find any answer to this question and the girl at the stand didn't know.

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theforgottenone1013(MI zone 5b/6a)

There shouldn't really be any difference between the outer leaves and the inner head except for them maybe being tougher and less tender or more bitter.

Rodney

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glib(5.5)

this can be computed. Say I produce a head of cabbage (3lbs) per square foot, at 0.5% ash (whole foods catalog number), and the (mineral) soil is typically 150 lbs per cubic foot. It will take about 1000 crops to lower the soil by one inch. Soil subsistence seldom creates sinkholes. Much more often it will create shallow depressions, as is this case. A possible other hypothesis is soil compaction through human traffic, or more abundant watering having leached the mother rock a bit. But they seem like small effects.

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daninthedirt(Cent TX; HZ10, Sunset z30, USDA z8a)

3 cabbages per year from a square foot of garden is certainly a pretty optimistic number. So the calculation is an interesting one, and I suspect it proves the theory isn't relevant. The idea of mineral leaching is a good one. The difference between a garden bed and the soil next to it is deep cultivation, and that deep cultivation makes the soil far more permeable. So irrigation of a garden bed can, in principle, carry away a lot more dissolved minerals than an uncultivated bed, in which the water just soaks in and eventually evaporates there. In principle, what this ought to do is to very slowly drop the bed level, and very slowly increase the level of the surrounding soil.

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grandad_2003(9A/sunset 28)

Digging up this old thread after doing a multi-year experiment.

I've had great results with Ambrosia cantaloupe over the years until I began trying other cultivars. So my experiment was to plant only Ambrosia vs. planting Ambrosia and another cultivar. The results thus far are - in (3?) years where only Ambrosia was planted all melons were sweet, vs. in (3?) years where another variety was planted along side Ambrosia, some Ambrosia melons were sweet and some were not. So, was this coincidence or were the non-sweet Ambrosia melons cross pollinated? Or, could it be that the seeds planted in the inconsistent years not true Ambrosia Hybrid quality?

Second, our local garden center expert prefers Aphrodite over Ambrosia...says it's a sweeter melon.

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vgkg(Z-7)

I never did get back here to update my Goddess melon tryout in 2012. Though they got off to a good start many of the Goddess melons were lost due to ends splitting open and the ones that did ripen properly had too firm/crisp of a texture for my tastes as compared to the melt-in-your-mouth Ambrosia melons. The last couple of years I've returned to planting only Ambrosia cantaloupes and am content with sticking to them.

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elisa_z5

Take a container of soapy water and go around shaking them into it. You can really take care of a lot of them that way. You'll be putting them into the water, not putting the water on your plants.

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