24,795 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Do not assume the ants are not at fault. They may or may not be. I agree that they are attracted by the sweet nectar, but they may do some severe damage at the same time. People will insist that ants are never a problem until it happens to them. Monitor the blossoms that are visited by ants and those that are not. If the anty blossoms fail to set and the antless ones succeed, I would suspect the ants are causing an issue with their chewing. Otherwise it's a non-issue.
Danzeb, did you take that picture in your garden? What is that ant doing? What is it carrying away?

I'm bringing this thread back to the top because I wanted to give an update.
I think you guys are right. The trick is germinating them in peat moss. (Perhaps there is some sort of chemical reaction or microbial reaction that aids the process.) I took the seeds that had been in paper towels (not sprouting) and shoved them into cell packs with peat moss and put them back on the heat mat. Within a couple of weeks they were all sprouted.
Still have not tried the dog-do-do-method yet...but plan to.


I sympathize with the OP since CA conditions are different from our Midwest. Yes, with sandy soil (2 inches of compost do not change anything, you need one foot plus to start having a bit of loam) mulch is less useful, since losses are mostly from below, and I would recommend daily watering or every second day at the most. Still, at such a site I would mulch heavily, to eventually get some OM in the soil and improve water absorption. It will still help with evaporation and improve surface roots. In fact, I would rent an excavator and make low hugelkultur beds.
I know that at my previous site, which was pure sand, watering with drip every two days was normal, and this was wet Michigan. One hour after watering, the soil was dry, and the soil 5 inches from an emitter was dry regardless. The soil there, I had to excavate around the house to do a foundation job, was bone dry to 8 feet in midsummer, so these ideas that the root need to be developed do not work in very sandy soils. I can not give further advice without knowing the plants involved, the density of planting and the density of drip.


Mark your calendar for Sunday, June 28, 2015 from 12:30 p.m. until 5:00 p.m
If you live in CT it is worth the trip.
The new website is here http://www.bethelgardenfair.org/
They have an all new and very impressive "Demonstration Garden" you can get some ideas from. More info at the website.

Not enough info Carolyn, sorry. Variety name? Container or in ground? Direct seeded or transplants? Time of the year planted? What nutrients? etc. Need to know much more about the growing conditions you provide.
"Leaves and stems turn white" doesn't ring a bell except that many varieties of zucchini normally have a silvery pattern to their leaves like this one does . But not the stems.
Then there is a disease called powdery mildew that can turn the leaves white and can kill the plants if it isn't treated but it doesn't stunted the zucchini themselves, only lack of pollination does that.
A photo and many more details would be helpful.
Dave

That's an important point about male and female flowers. Squash and cukes will start out producing only the former, because they are easier for the plant to make, and they'll attract pollinators to the bed. Once that attraction is done, the plants start spitting out females as well. If you have both, but no fruit, you might try some hand pollination. You may not have insect pollinators around. Hand pollination is a little laborious with the small cuke flowers, but should be really easy to do with the squash.
Now, some cuke hybrids are gynoecious, in that males don't happen on the plant. Seed packages of such cukes usually have dye-marked monoecious seeds that offer those males. I think those gynoecious hybrids are supposed to be able to fruit by themselves (producing seedless fruit), but I'm not aware that it really works that well.
I'd be careful about fertilizing. There is no "magic sauce" for fruiting, unless the soil is recognizably deficient in something. If this is your first year gardening, you'd do well to get a soil test, or see what your neighbors got when they did it. If you had a potassium deficiency, you'd probably see leaf-cupping on older leaves and leaf scorching. Such deficiency is more common in acid soils. Too much potassium will encourage foliage development, like for nitrogen excess.

Some fruit bearing depends on temperature, and there's nothing we can do about that. Be patient. Like a previous poster said, the first squash flowers are usually male. Female flowers will show up later. My cucumber is producing like crazy, but the early season flowers just fell off.

Dave gave excellent advice above, and I don't need to repeat it. But I want to call attention to the phrase "soil is poor". There are MANY ways soil can be poorly suited to vegetable gardening, and many of those are ways that fertilizer simply doesn't fix. Your soil can be clay or, as I think you say about yours, sandy. That is, it may drain poorly or too well. That's fixed by adding organic matter like compost. Lots of it. It may be poisoned with something like salt, if you're on a coastal plain. That's harder to fix, but there are plants that will tolerate it to some extent. Your "poor" soil may well not be deficient in any chemical nutrients, and if you can't point to specific symptoms of nutrient deficiency in plants, the only way to tell is with a lab analysis.
BTW, bottom yellowing leaves on tomatoes can also be just early blight, which is very manageable, and unrelated to soil nutrients. It could be related to daily watering.

I do an early set of broccoli, cabbages and cauliflower that went in earlier and next week or two I will put out second (main crop) of those. As days get shorter and temps cooler crops will take longer to mature. Carrots will go out too and spinach a little later. I'm in zone 7 (NJ). I've found waiting until august is to late but I get milder weather because I'm close to the coast.

Germination will be reduced at higher temperatures but especially with lettuce. You are better off germinating in a cooler environment like a basement or garage and transplanting.
If you plan on growing lettuce in heat pay particular attention attention to heat tolerant varieties. Performance varies in many ways, the most serious is probably tip burn but some varieties bolt quickly in hot weather, others just wilt at higher temps.


Wow congrats Charlie. Mine were planted out something like the first week in April and are showing no signs of sending up a pod. I hope it wasn't an entire bust. They got tons of cold weather in April so if they weren't vernalized I would not want to try it again. Plus they have been bug magnets and I have lost many leaves. But I knew they were an experiment, really I just wanted to do them because of how early I got to start. I am glad you were successful! :)


There are three possibilities you might want to research (other than the common soil dwelling pests that is) and compare the symptoms described to your plants. Bacterial Wilt, Fusarium Wilt, and Verticillium Wilt. This last one is slim possibility as it begins with the top of the plant but it can be easily diagnosed by cutting open the stem lengthwise and looking for the brown streaks in the pith.
B. Wilt is the most likely if you have had all the excess rain like much of the rest of the country so that the soil is constantly wet. F. Wilt is normally associated with cucumber beetle transmission.
Dave

I would second Elisa's advice, re: use of a soap spray. Provided that they are completely covered, both adults & nymphs are very susceptible, and perish within a minute or two. There are several formulations that can be used, but I recommend the use of a mild soap, such as baby shampoo, or Safers insecticidal soap. I add rubbing alcohol to my mix, it paralyzes insects briefly, to allow the soap to work. This even seems to kill the eggs.
The nymphs tend to cluster together, so you can wipe out large numbers quickly. But if you know there are squash bugs in your area, the best solution is to watch for & kill the first adults, then search under leaves for any egg masses. The first adults often can be found close to the ground, near the stem, or under leaves which touch the ground. I've noticed that cucumber beetles can be an early indicator, they tend to swarm on plants that are already weakened by adult squash bugs.
Unless you use Safers in your spray, it is best to hose off the plants after the bugs are dead, to avoid damage to foliage.
Oh, and the soap/alcohol spray is also a good way of killing ants & wasps in the home... and it wipes clean. ;-) I use it to kill paper wasps when they build nests in dangerous locations... spray the nest at night, when all of the adults will be present on the nest.
A high-volume spray bottle is best for applying soap spray, such as those sold in farm & fleet stores ("horse sprayers").





Water after transplant once and thoroughly. Then watch and wait.