23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

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Nitsua(6b MO)

Depending on how you're suspending your light fixture, you may be able to suspend it at an angle so that there's a high end and low end to the fixture. Then you just arrange the plants underneath according to height as best you can - sort of like when the children line up in The Sound of Music.

    Bookmark     March 30, 2015 at 4:57PM Thanked by ilovecucumbers Zone 6b, NE PA
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ilovecucumbers Zone 6b, NE PA

Thank you everyone! I plan to plant the tomatoes and peppers tomorrow. I'll post a photo so you can see how it all turned out. :)

    Bookmark     March 30, 2015 at 5:50PM
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Peter (6b SE NY)

That's a pretty epic auto correct fail.

I would personally not be worried after a single winter.

    Bookmark     March 30, 2015 at 4:35PM
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glib(5.5)

oh boy, all this time I have planted where earthworms, mice, slugs, chipmunks, squirrels, roly poly and birds defecate. Garlic and brassica beds outside the fence get fertilized by deer, rabbit, and groundhogs. I am way outside of organic standards.

    Bookmark     March 30, 2015 at 5:46PM
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petrowizard(z5a NE IL)

George, you've sold me. It certainly sounds like the garden huckleberry is worth an experimental season. Unfortunately, I don't have 10 acres to play with, and end up growing some things in 5 gallon buckets. So I have to plan carefully for seed starting, planting space and yield. But from your description, it sounds like the GH may just thrive in a bucket and I'm looking forward to a new garden experiment. Thanks for all the information, and I hope to hear more in the future about your jam.

Petro

    Bookmark     December 6, 2007 at 12:53PM
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mmqc101

Obviously, if you're getting green foam, you have picked the huckleberries too soon. When ripe they are uniformly a deep blue black. In fact, they may be mildly poisonous if still green. When they are ripe, you do not need to use baking soda or even lemon juice, just berries, water and sugar.

    Bookmark     March 30, 2015 at 3:57PM
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vgkg(Z-7)

Cutworms do their total damage very quickly on baby plants and as Nitsua above mentioned DE works slowly via death of 1,000 cuts. By the time a cutworm dies from DE the damage has already been done. DE is best for killing insects that destroy adult plants more slowly such as sucking insects.

    Bookmark     March 30, 2015 at 6:53AM
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daninthedirt(Cent TX; HZ10, Sunset z30, USDA z8a)

Yes, by that measure, DE might well be helpful in general control of cutworms. But it is uneffective for protection of specific seedlings. The lore is that it is good for the latter. It is said that a ring of DE is a barrier that cutworms won't cross. I think that is simply untrue. They'll cross it once, but maybe not twice. So the best way to apply it for general control is not as a barrier, but spread uniformly over the bed, ideally well before the seedlings are there.

    Bookmark     March 30, 2015 at 7:05AM
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nugrdnnut(6a n-c WA)

And if you are planting long rows of seed...

Johnny's 4 row seeder

I am sure there are plenty of inexpensive helps out there.

Please share yours!

    Bookmark     March 29, 2015 at 8:00AM
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floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

I use a metal tube from an old vacuum cleaner to plant large seeds so as not to stand on the soil in wide beds.

    Bookmark     March 29, 2015 at 8:13AM
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ilovecucumbers Zone 6b, NE PA

I've got extremely bright grow light inches away, which is on 16 hours a day. I didn't want them to get burned!

    Bookmark     March 28, 2015 at 5:58PM
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barrie2m_(6a, central PA)

Don't get over concerned about the looks of the plant. Just keep the plant alive and set your goal to produce a healthy root to transplant. You'll have your work cut out in preparing a bed and caring for the first year plants but if you keep focused on root issues all else will fall into place.

    Bookmark     March 28, 2015 at 7:01PM Thanked by ilovecucumbers Zone 6b, NE PA
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digdirt2(6b-7a No.Cent. AR HZ8 Sun-35)

The condition is called "Blossom Drop" (lots of info available on it if you search that term) and can affect any fruiting vegetable. Can be caused by excess nitrogen fertilizers, over-watering (in peppers), high winds, but the most common cause is temperature and humidity extremes. Fruiting plants will only set fruit within a certain range of temps. Outside that range the pollen is inactive, the bloom can pollinate itself, and the bloom dies and falls off.

Would need a great deal more info about your growing conditions to be more specific, but the damage on the leaf in the pic sure looks like excess nitrogen burn to me. Pepper plants are not tolerant of high nitrogen levels.

Dave

    Bookmark     March 26, 2015 at 8:50AM
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barrie2m_(6a, central PA)

Agree with Dave that N excess appears to be the problem but if your garden is near a road that received salt this winter the signs may look the same. You could perform a Total Soluble Salts test to check soil salt level. You might even do the same on your water supply.

    Bookmark     March 28, 2015 at 4:08PM
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merritt623

I will definitely look into someone who can prep the beds in advance of our arrival. That would be a lovely thing to pull into after a 1500 mile drive. I'll definitely take balloonflowers advice and come armed with my cuttings.
Galinas, you have outdone yourself. Thank you so much! I'll try to identify some good places for seedlings, but you may just end up with an email from me :)
You have all put my mind much more at ease. Now I feel like at least I know which way is up. I can't thank you enough. And I'll let you know how it goes!

    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 7:15AM
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nancyjane_gardener(Zone 8ish North of San Francisco in the "real" wine country)

I would start everything from starts for this year, anyway.

Get to know your new community. Where are the organic nurseries/places to find organic compost/soil etc. You might want to get in touch with your local freecycle.com to get manure/compost/soil. Freecycle is like Craigslist, but a little more local. Also check out the farmers markets, both for plants and veges you might not have time to get going in your area right away. In the NE, you seem to have a limited growing time (I'm in No C, so I have a 6-8 month growing time.)

I would look up your extension office to look up optimal planting times and transplanting times. I'm guessing that you have a fast intense growing period, where we have a long , slow growing time.

We are lucky to have a very organic area. Our dump compost is certified organic, there is a farm inside the city limits (100 YO) that sell their homegrown organic starts for 1/2 of what hoity toity organic nurseries charge. We also have several garden sales( ALL happening right NOW!) of organic starts. We also have a Baker Creek store just a town away! Nancy

    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 6:20PM
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bcomplx(z6VA)

I also have had no luck overwintering the purple sprouting broccoli, so this year I started some seeds early and hope the plants are mature enough to accept spring chilling. They are hardening off now, will go out under cloches in a few days.

    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 5:13AM
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ffreidl

Nope - didn't have a hoop house. Guess that was kinda dumb! Oh well, now I know.

I was lulled into a false sense of security by the broccoli that survived on my deck last year with no cover, but I guess the deck has it's own microclimate. We had a lot of snow cover this year (same as last), so I thought maybe that was the trick. Next year, I'll cover 'em.

    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 2:54PM
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tomatoesWhat's your favorite?
Posted by sweetgardenangel March 27, 2015
4 Comments
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digdirt2(6b-7a No.Cent. AR HZ8 Sun-35)

If you want to read through lots of "what's your favorite tomato" discussions check out the Growing Tomatoes forum here. There are several discussions running there now.

Are you more interested in cherries or beefsteaks, reds or some of the different colors, determinate plants or indeterminate plants? Don't really care much for cherry types except maybe Sungold and a few of my personal favorite large-fruit varieties out of the thousands of varieties available are Mortgage Lifter (any strain), Cherokee Purple, Giant Belgium, Richardson, Todd Country, Big Rainbow, Tidwell German, Sainte Lucie, Black Krim, and Neves Azorean Red just to name a few.

Dave

    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 2:26PM
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digdirt2(6b-7a No.Cent. AR HZ8 Sun-35)

Here is a good discussion with some 90 responses with long lists of favorites for 2015.

    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 2:30PM
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digdirt2(6b-7a No.Cent. AR HZ8 Sun-35)

Whether it is a vine or not all depends on the variety. There are easily 50 varieties of zucchini.

From the photo I would suspect it is just a break from the branch weight and that is a fairly common problem when even the bush types are grown in a container, especially when the container is to small to "contain" the plant. As the plant outgrows the sides of the container the weight of the branches causes bends and breaks.

However SVB (squash vine borers) are also a real threat. That yellow in the pic could be the dross of an SVB and I see all sorts of little black specks on the stems that are possibly eggs. But they don't normally cause a full break like that. No idea what your zone or location is but if you have a plant that big already then I assume you are in deep south and SVBs would already be active there so researching them would be beneficial. Tons of info available here about them in past discussions.

Dave

    Bookmark     March 25, 2015 at 12:31PM
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Cliff Pruitt

Sorry for the delayed response here. (Busy work week) Thank you both for your comments.

@balloonflower, I don't know enough about the variety to know if it's specifically intended for containers, but this isn't really growing in a "pot". It's a 4 ft x 8 ft planter intended to be used as a square foot garden. The Zucchini is planted in one corner so that it's leaves will be outside of the container on 2 of 4 sides.

@digdirt2, I'll look into SVB a little more. From what I've read after reading your post, I don't think that's the case in this instance. I havent seen any of the adult moths around and the "specks" in the photo are just soil debris from rain. That said I'll look into placing some yellow traps out to keep an eye out for them. I'm hoping it's just a weight issue. I've tried gently "lifting" the branch to see if I could just support it a bit, but it seems reluctant to bend upward. I suppose possibly it could have already begun to heal in it's new position. None of the scars / wounds are outside of the container though, the main stem hasn't yet reached over the edge.

I'll keep monitoring it. I'm in Zone 9 so it's already quite large and flowering. Hopefully nothing causes it to fail completely on me. Because of the space needed I only planted one.

Thanks again for the comments!

    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 2:29PM
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floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

Radish seedling. That one is now a goner - they don't transplant. I thought it was only kids that pulled stuff up to see if it was growing ;-)

1 Like    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 1:50PM
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vgkg(Z-7)

OOPS!!!

My bad Wayne. Not OragneGLo, I tried it a while back but got the same results you stated. I meant to type "Gold Strike", an orange watermelon that beats all I've tried so far and I think it was one you suggested a few years ago? At any rate I like it and Raspa as my 2 top sweetest melons though they both push my henia to the limit :)

    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 7:12AM
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wayne_5 zone 6a Central Indiana

vgkg, I have had varying results with Gold Strike too. Some are superb and some have lacked that extra flavor. Yellow Crimson is good....let melons mature.

I guess I just don't understand starting with Sugar Baby. I would think that it would be more of a fair melon than great. Melons are very disease prone and I would want my first endeavor to be of the very finest varieties...before I might get disease in the soil...been there much.

    Bookmark     March 27, 2015 at 9:59AM
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