23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Ahhh. I guess I'll just grow tomatoes this year then as they are already established and it is too late to dig them up and move them further apart. Perhaps I can find another spot in the yard to try cucumbers, minus trellis or remotely decent soil, and see what happens.
I do much more than a Soft blowing fan.. The winds outside could be brutal, you have to get your seedlings ready for that wind. As soon as my seedling sprout they get a fan on high, and bright fluorescent fixtures just touching them.. That combination, there is no way you are having leggy seedlings!
Yes trial and errors are the best teacher . There are other easy ways to learn but to me easy come easy forgotten. I must read 2000 books from first grade to high school to college to the master program beside I learned fast reading and I love reading books but if I say I remember every thing I read I be lying. BUT I remember vividly every thing I screwed up and was corrected even from my childhood. These knowledge acquired from trial and errors is stored in the brain and never leave. I rest my peace.
Abe
Let the garlic grow through it until a couple weeks before harvest then rake off. This is common practice. Garlic cannot handle weeds. Using straw in the garden is terrific! Still, that said, if you don't want to except for garlic (I am weeping about that) you could use it on garlic again if there is no disease present. Garlic has little pests. The upper Midwest had a severe garlic disease last year so it does get diseased!
And here I was thinking of taking it off so that sun would warm the ground, since I didn't even plant the garlic until February, and I figured it needed to get rolling in order to have a chance to produce a crop this year. Based on the input above, I'll just let it ride for now.
Thanks, everyone.
You have what is called damp-off a fungus disease that attacks seedlings when the soil is kept too wet and there isn't adequate air circulation. Note the dark pinched in stems near the soil line. Then they were further damaged by putting them outside.
Those that are not affected can be saved perhaps by reducing your watering and using a small fan near the seedlings to increase air circulation.
You'll find a FAQ about it over on the Growing from Seed forum here. You'll also find instructions there on how to properly harden off plants prior to putting them outside. These seedlings are in no way ready to go outside much less be left out for hours.
Suggest some Google (or here) research into "damp-off" and "how to harden off seedlings". There are many discussions here about both and if you learn first how to do it the right way then you save your seedlings and lots of wasted work..
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: FAQs - Growing from seed
Ah, within a couple years I would like to start selling produce to restaurants and at the same time doing consulting and garden support for their own growing. I have read a lot of stuff about chefs and so on trying to grow their own food supplies and not knowing what to do.
No, don't put the soil and plants in the compost!
Unless you are a very hardcore composter and keep your pile VERY hot, the seeds and roots will survive and will invade areas where you spread the finished compost.
Weeds are why FSM created municipal composting. Big, hot piles. Or the landfill.
I hope it's not too late. I planted tomatoes and egg plants today. ;-)
I had planned to start a bit earlier, so as to have larger plants at transplanting time. But I think this is OK. It is surprising how quickly small plants catch up when they get into the ground.
Jim
Agreed-you aren't even past your last frost date.
Plant cool weather tolerant vege now, such as snow peas (will grow in containers as many as 1 seed per inch) or can be direct sewn into prepared soil.
Radishes-the small ones mature in 25 days.
Spinach, lettuces, etc put out starts now and pick outer leaves until it gets too hot.
In late may or June put in tomato and pepper starts-it probably is too late and not worth the effort to start from seeds yourself this year for those plants.
Squash White bush, yellow, zuchs, need warmer weather-direct sew them when you pull the snow peas and radishes.
What trees grow good in NJ?
That's a question for the Trees forum not the Vegetable Gardening forum.
What makes you think you have missed the planting season? Is your garden all ready for planting vegetables? If not then now is the time to get it ready but it is too early to plant much in the way of vegetables yet.
Dave
"I'd wash any tree fruit, especially (apples, peaches, etc)...and potatoes. They tend to see a lot of pesticide/herbicide action. Potatoes are generally harvested after using a chemical defoliant to kill the tops."
If they use a chemical defoliant on the potatoes, how do they get the next crop to grow. They couldn't even get a green manure crop to grow after that. I am just curious. Maybe I don't understand, but it would seem that way.
"If they use a chemical defoliant on the potatoes, how do they get the next crop to grow."
Many/most agriculture chemicals break down into ineffective or inert levels a lot quicker than some believe.
The defoliants are applied to make digging the potatoes easier for machinery.
The most commonly used potato defoliant...Carfentrazone...breaks down rather quickly even in residual/dead leaf litter (which is "tilled" in...kinda...when the potatoes are dug). It's "half life" is less than a week in ideal conditions (warmth and microbial action, mostly).
The only thing the farmers are trying to do is kill the tops...not long-term weed suppression.
This post was edited by nc-crn on Sun, Mar 31, 13 at 16:09
Some sort of cutworm, maybe Red-backed?
If they're eating the fruit then I would apply bacillus thuringiensis (BT) to my crop. Then till the soil at the beginning and end of each season, to help destroy the pupa that lie in the soil.
This is really a Growing from Seed forum question and comes up often there. There is a FAQ there about it.
But the basic answer is a brief 10 min. soak is sufficient. Even a good misting with a 10:1 water to bleach solution followed by a period of outside air drying is sufficient.
Dave
Yes, they are globe artichokes. this is there second year, they died back towards the end of the summer last year, and i thought they died but they emerged back a few months ago after a good winter.
I want to move them, because I made wrong calculation of distance, so they are kind of closer than they should (that's one reason) and i think this maybe a reason for their slow development... plus the old pine trees in my garden are invading my veggie patch with their roots.
I don't know if the following may help... I had moved my two year old artichoke because the location had too much sun and too close to a large ash tree. I dug it up, and the root felt like a huge potato about half size of a football. I moved it on October of 2011. After having it moved, it grew huge. In 2012 it was just one huge Artichoke plant and gave about 6 or 7 globes. This year, it has propagated to a much larger, about five different artichoke plants. I can't wait to see how many globes it will produce.
To start you'll have to get up early to do it for an hour in the morning or do it in the evenings after work. Say an hour at a time and monitored closely. If you do that for 5 days then by the weekend they should be ready for something like 2 hours out, 2 hours in, 2 hours out, etc. Come Monday they can probably stay out in a well shaded, wind protected area.
Dave
Lots of ways to cope with this. For example my house faces North. If I put the seedlings out in the lawn, but close to the house, they will be in shade at 10 am. but wait, I am worried about frost. The brick patio in the back is some 5 degrees warmer, and with my work bench is outside because I am starting all sorts of trees and vegetables, I can put seedlings behind the bench, they will get some sun around 10 am, then sun after 4pm. If I am really worried about cold, I will put them on top of two to four five gallons pails, full of water. There are week ends, as others have said. There is protection from prevailing winds. I can put them under the hammock for filtered sunlight. My problem are the squirrels looking to dig for acorns in my seedlings pots.
Check for spider mites.. My plants last year had the same problem and I figured out the damn spiders string a web and pulls the leaf so it lookes "curled".. I just squished the tiny spiders and sprayed with water and it was fine.. Although my plants didn't have discolored leaves, it could be several problems..
Joe
qibu, your tomato leave are showing signs of nutrient deficiency. It looks like zinc deficiency, or iron. Please google tomato leave margin yellowing.