23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Yeah, I know, I was just being lazy. :)

Hope you like lots of slicing cukes. IME Straight 8 is VERY prolific!

In addition to Rodney's suggestion above, there are also many less expensive sources for all those varieties other than Burpee. Just for future reference. :)

Dave

I'm becoming more of a fan of the cinder blocks bed, mostly because of the cheap price. You can even buy some top pieces that will change the look of those holes into something more fashionable.

Some people don't like how it looks, but I don't mind. So that's another factor you can think of -- do you care what other people think about the materials your bed is made of? If you don't care, then there are so many material options for making a raised bed. Some people even consider that with their cheap solutions, if it lasts 3-5 years or so, that's ok, they'll make more later and probably a little better after now knowing some of the weaknesses with the beds that they experienced.

On the other hand, the option of using planters means that you can have many more container types and designs that you wanted. Because many people don't grow in the winter time, that may not be a consideration for you either.

I am late commenting on original questions but agree that if there is a tree-roots problem, they will absolutely 'invade' any bed you will build. They will be attracted to more moisture & possibly more nutrients.
Cinder block beds could look reasonably well if you make sure they are level. Many ppl plant some flower or herbs into openings, and once they grow they usually cover lots of block. And you can plant many beneficial plants that way - or ornamentals.
I am sure you know about reStore - I stop by whenever in neighbourhood to see what's 'available'. Recently I found 7 cedar boards (2x6x10') for about 30% of reg. price. They were used on a deck, so almost no damage (just holes from screws and little change in color) and will last for few years.
Same with freecycle - often ppl. are giving away 'leftovers' - bricks, pavers, cinder blocks, wood board. Free, just pick them up.

I plant my Fortex pole bean seeds around the last week of May. Rarely later, but sometimes sooner if the soil has warmed.

tj

I used to live in Racine, just south of Milwaukee. I had success planting in beans as early as the end of April to as late as Memorial day. It kind of depended on the beans- some drying beans take longer, some fresh beans are pretty fast.

There are a couple garden centers/nurseries in the area that sell good plants. There was a something and daughters on highway 32 just north of Racine- and a really nice place on highway K? Maybe it was G- just west of 94. I always skipped Milaegers because they were so darn expensive. Steins sometimes had good stuff, sometimes didn't.

Thanks Carol , are you saying that those causing damage ?
Do I need to keep washing them ? Any other remedies if those are causing the damage

No, the aphids are not the pests that are chewing holes in the plants. Carol was simply identifying them for you.

Aphids damage plants by sucking the photosynthates (sap) from the plant. Aphids should be squished or knocked off the plants with a stream of water.

You've been given the possibilities for the chewing damage. It's your challenge to be a detective and find the culprits. Going out at night with a flashlight can be helpful.

Posted by Raistlyn none (My Page) on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 9:24

If you read the post of denninmi, it is believed that these are "easy" to grow ... hmm.

Dandelions white and yellow grow here in mild tropics 400m altitude here in the Philippines.i tasted the leaves milder than mustard leaves. I eat raw mustard leaves.climate change caused little bit cooling here in the tropics of Asia.this favor the growth of temperate plants in the tropic at higher altitude.

We are growing Sweet Potato slips little differently.Few sweet potatoes from this year's crop have started sprouting.We picked two of the potatoes with good sprouts and planted just one inch deep from the root end in a pot to see if the sprouts give good slips.

This post was edited by chaman on Tue, Oct 28, 14 at 18:22

Farmerdill said " . If the slips get too big you can cut the slip into 6 inches pieces and plant each piece."

Do the roots grow from the bottom of the cut piece or from a leaf node. do you remove the leaves that are planted under the soil. My sweet potatoes have long vines that I want to cut and plant but I cannot find specifics about taking a long vine, cutting it up, and planting the pieces. Can someone help.

Yeah I killed probably 25 of them on 10 plants. They left like a silk web under the leaves, and they were lime green I'd say. I'm kind of color blind so that doesn't help. The only pics of horn worms I found were big caterpillars. Whatever they are they sure showed up hungry.

I transplanted this early because the weather had been fantastic, 70-80 day and 55-60 night. The 20-30 mph winds had been the only deal.

The bugs may have been some of the problem. When moving peppers from indoor lights to outdoor locations you must slowly get them used to "actual sunshine". The stronger rays burn the leaves quickly. Not to worry though new leaves will appear most likely. Next time when you transfer to out side keep them somewhat shaded and relay them out starting at 1 hour then move to 2 hours, then 3 hours, then try 5 hours. Be sure and keep them protected from strong winds unless you had fans on them when in the house. I start using fans in the house at least a month before transplanting to harden them off to the wind. I also put small stakes next to each plant and a twist tie attached to the stake to help protect the plant from breakage. I start my pepper in January and can't plant until June. When I plant they are providing pepper in two to three weeks. It's Great!

Ok thanks Dave. I think I will give planting all my early Spring stuff a go this weekend.

60 degrees and sunny right now, tempting to bring all my seed trays outside.

EDIT: I brought all the nightshades outside and potted them up. It's nearly 70 degrees out! They seem to be having no problems with the direct sun. But I will bring them back in soon. I potted up all but the 2 week old tomatoes just now out of those crappy peat pots, and followed Dave's previous suggestion and only half filled the 3.5" pots with soil.

The soil temp is right for potatoes when the dandelions do that flush of blooming. Potatoes are not cold hardy like lettuce and beets.

weirdtrev: (Trevor?) Thanks for your comments. I think I grasp the general ideas of datatbase structure and the non-triviality of relationships between tables. (LONG time ago I once wrestled ineffectively with Dbase in DOS; can't remember why but I know it was agonising.) I see the potential for incorrect & screwy results which is partly why my head spins trying to visualise the structure.

It's a long time since I used Excel - I mostly work in a Linux distribution now and only boot Windows for a proprietary program that won't run otherwise - so I don't remember details of how it worked; queries for example. Haven't seen the word pseudocode before but I think I get the meaning, and I see how querying a spreadsheet could maybe fulfill my wishes instead of using a DB. I don't think there's a query facility built in to LO Calc but there is a filter facility. Maybe there's a way to store different filter configurations - I'll have to check. That would be similar to storing pseudocoded queries?

Jeepers, I'm spending more time writing about this issue that getting on with solving it - NOT really; and I greatly appreciate all the helpful advice that's been posted. Keep it coming!

VanIsle_BC
(Alexander)

Yes I'm Trevor, you're the first to ask in my over a decade of being on here. Anyway if you truly want to design a proper database you can research database normalization and ultimately Boyce-Codd Normal Form (BCNF). However for your small database, for personal use, I still suggest one table at least initially. It will save you a lot of headaches.

Pseudocode is a term for notation that resembles code but is not actual code. If you took what I wrote and put it in your database it wouldn't do anything, despite "SELECT", "FROM", and "WHERE" being clauses in SQL code.

Which program do you want to use LibreOffice Calc or Base? I see you mentioned both. Calc is similar to MS Excel and yes you can filter but that is not as powerful as queries in Base which is similar to MS Access. (I mentioned that for others that will read this now and in the future). If you wanted to identify what you can plant in the month of April for example, you could write a quick query in Base to get the correct results, or sort on "Earliest planting date" and do a visual scan in Calc. The latter has issues though because all the things planted in April wouldn't necessarily be grouped together and you would still have to examine both the earliest and latest planting dates and decided if April is in that range. There are other ways to approach the problem but they aren't as straightforward in Calc as they would be in Base.

You mentioned querying a spreadsheet instead of using a database. That wasn't what I was trying to convey. Just because it is a single table doesn't mean it needs to be in a spreadsheet program like Calc, it would still be a database in Base. The line is honestly very blurred between a spreadsheet and a database at times. I know when I need to share data with others I often export an Excel spreadsheet from Access just because people are more comfortable working in Excel.

I found some pretty decent tutorials for LibreOffice Base if you want to learn about queries and other features.