23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

1. Do you consider yourself at least moderately intelligent?
2. Do you read the instructions on pesticide containers?

If you answered Yes to both questions, don't hesitate to use Rotenone for SVBs. It works, and used properly, it is NOT harmful to the environment. Kind of like driving a car - assuming you don't drive drunk or deliberately drive up on the sidewalk to see people scatter, it's both useful and harmless.

Pyganic is another useful control for several garden pests. If you have problems with Japanese beetles on beans, try Pyganic. It is expensive, but very effective. If used on a 5 to 7 day spray schedule, it is fairly effective at controlling SVB.

I use cardboard with mulch/wood chips between some of my raised beds. It seems to work fairly well for me. The weeds that do come up are easy to pull out. I've also started experimenting with paver stepping stones surrounded by different groundcovers (creeping herbs, sweet potatoes, strawberries, etc). That is still an experiment in progress, though using sweet potatoes as groundcover does seem to choke out the weeds (as well as completely cover the stepping stones).

I put down 1X1 paving stones and allowed the grass to grow around them as shown in picture. Bad idea! I prefer something you don't have to cut and something that highlights the garden. I recommend a concrete walk. That will be my next improvement.

Oh, btw, unless you are planning to spend the big bucks for a stone-burr high volume mill, you cannot do better than the Diamant mill. I have had one for about 16 years, couldn't be happier with it. I noticed the price has come down quite bit lately.

Thank you for the responses. I'll look at some of these recommendations. I expect to grind only to coarse meal. I think Baker Seeds is fairly close, so I'll see what they have, too.

Your husband is dumb. Pardon me for saying so.

I'm pretty sure they will recover since they have energy stored in the seed piece and roots. It's still fairly early in the season for you.

You must be down under, so I suspect the plants had already done a majority of their vegetative growth. I suggest dig a couple up and see if they have formed any new potatoes yet, if so harvest them all. Either way they are unlikely to make much more progress - the little sprout the old tuber will put out after having put nearly everything into the first attempt will not amount to much. Better off using the ground for something else unless you have loads of garden space.

And a very typical view across a British Allotment in Autumn - Dahlias and Dustbins. (Not my allotment, my neighbour's.) All photos taken this morning - November 3rd.

FloralUK, Thanks so much for all the photos. Really cheerful and attractive. Love the Nasturtiums and that Chard really is very pretty. How low a temperature do Dahlias, survive? I don't have room for them in my Veggies bed, but maybe the Perennial bed.

Probably Chinese celery. CC grow tall wit a lot of leaf branches and a lanky stem. I like its flavor better than traditional celery. I have tried to grow it from store bought (by rooting) but did not get good results.

It could be lovage too, very similar looking to celery.
Grows tall.

agree. I always prefer the crop all at once, except perhaps for salad tomatoes. If the crop is extended, you have to go through the entire patch every second day. Much better to go through one row at a time.

I get three pickings from Royal Burgundy bush bean, and it's meaty. Contender holds up well, too. Still, I plant bush beans twice, once in late spring and again in early summer.

I used the type called "benne", a landrace from coastal SC.

It is very likely the same that Jefferson kept trying to develop as a viable edible oil source at Monticello. Apparently it grew well enough in the climate there but harvesting and pressing were problematic, probably for financial reasons. What is less well known is that benne oil was produced for many years in ante-bellum SC and GA, part and parcel of the rice culture, both of which were brought with the slave-trade. It was the Africans themselves of course who brought the cultural knowledge for both those crops.

Forgot to mention:

Although the established plants are fairly drought-tolerant, the seed needs moist soil. So if your soil is sandy - which is good for the mature plant - you have to keep the seed-bed moist. This can be a challenge at any kind of scale, or if attempting dry-land culture, because by planting time for sesame the weather is hot and if rain is not frequent germination will be very poor.

"As a side note, once I dug up the main rows I left intact the trailing vines which re-rooted and now I may have more out there to possibly harvest before first frost. Will wait and see if this is true or not. Be nice to get a 2nd crop even if they are smaller."

Just to update my quote above - Today I dug up those leftover runners from my harvest on Sept 1st and I did get a good 2nd crop after 2 months of decent weather. I est that this 2nd digging was about 40% of the 1st harvest, not bad for just letting them run wild. Half of them are bakers and half are smaller for yam dishes. Next year I may do the same but prep the nearby soil for better re-rooting head start. Hope you all had a good crop!.

shayneca25,

How do you cook sweet potato leaves?

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/asianveg/msg0717221413726.html?14

http://www.stokesfoods.com/nutrition.htm

Since the Stokes Purple is locally grown in the USA, it is NOT irradiated before it reaches the consumer. Other varieties of purple sweet potatoes that are imported from overseas must be irradiated when they enter the USA. Also, Stokes Purples have not been genetically modified in any way and are classified as Non-GMO sweet potatoes.

Just planted the purple skin purple fleshed sweet potatoes slips ordered from Georges Plant Farm.

I dug some of the purple skin purple fleshed sweet potatoes last week, It tastes good to me, next year I will grow more .

Thanks for the help! It definitely was red spider mites, once I looked closer I could see them. I mixed up an organic insecticide and it seems to have gotten rid of them but I'm going to keep sprtizing the plant with it for a while.

I live in NYC by the way and have it in a window that gets a lot of sunlight. Before the infestation is was growing quite happily.It has about six tomatoes growing right now. I'm going to try giving it some plant food to help it recover. Wish me luck!

I think having it inside causes spider mites for some reason. I've never seen them outside on maters. Try to isolate it from your other plants so it doesn't spread. We always threw out plants at the garden center I worked at that had spider mites. My boss said they were so hard to get rid of.

Here is interesting story about this

You need to learn about onions to grow them.
Look at
http://www.dixondalefarms.com/
click on Learn option near the top
and then look at the online guides, Downloadable Guides
(PDFs) and Frequently Asked Questions. Look at the catalog and learn all you can. Several questions are answered in detail in the guides.

This year I planted a few Yukon Gold in a couple of barrels, They grew well, and died off in mid August. I did not get them harvested, was gone on vacation, plus being tied up with tearing out my kitchen, I just did not get to it. Now in late October they are growing again. Should I just let them grow and when the frost gets them dump them out or dump them out now??? Leaving them in the barrels over winter is not an option as they would freeze.

OLD thread:

Potato maturity is very similar to tomatoes. In average it take 90 to 120 days from sowing seeds to harvest.

Now then it depend on where you are. For example, in North GA I used to plant in mid March and harvested around early July. Starting in June, I would reach in and get some young ones for cooking. Then In August I did fall planting.

It seems to me that a little bit of regular soil cultivation, even with a soil rake or a hand fork, would do the job. Wouldn't hurt the veggies you have growing either. Just dig 'em in (the weeds). You do that before the weed roots get deep, and they won't be competing with your veggies.

I also get big winds from the horse fields next door and don't like to go out during the winter and deal with windblown seed( I just pick the chard,kale,lettuce etc)
I plant 2 of my 8 beds for winter stuff and pile as many shredded leaves as I can, then cover with perforated cardboard so water can get through. Because most of the beds sink a bit, I usually add compost/soil about a month before planting in order to settle.
Cardboard usually lasts me 2 seasons. Nancy