What Are Some Tips for Successful Gardening?

[turbo]

The daily torrential rains let up today, so we got cool and cloudy instead. The lawn was still pretty wet, but I got a chance to mow - had to keep the RPMs up and the ground-speed down. Wet grass can drag down a 50" mower deck, even with an 18 HP tractor.

I'm stripping out green bean plants as they succumb to powdery mildew - I usually use sulfur powder, but the relentless rains make that treatment tough. Tomatoes are experiencing black stem rot, and we are thinning those aggressively to try to salvage some of the crop if we get sunny dry weather again. Ever...

The bright spot is that the peppers are doing well. Bell beppers, jalapenoes and Hungarian wax chilies are all thriving. The habanero plants were stunted and small when we planted them and they have never picked up. Here's a shot of the Hungarians - these chilies are about 8" or longer and all the plants are loaded.

 

[Evo]

Those are some happy peppers turbo!

I am waiting for the "severe Thunderstorms" to hit. The Weather Channel is prediciting "severe Thunderstorms" for 9 of the next 10 days!

Greg is changing the smilies around to confuse me!

 

[turbo]

Those Hungarian chilies are WAY tasty, too. My dill is stunted and tiny. Luckily, one of my neighbors started his dill early, and despite the daily downpours, he's got nice plants with large flowering heads. I'll have to rely on him for my dill florets, and will use my traditional dill-pickle recipe to pickle the Hungarian chilies. I did that to the jalapenos last year and those pickled peppers are disappearing fast. The jalapeno crop looks great, too, and many of the peppers are getting the nice purple streaks on them, prior to ripening.

We've got more rain and thundershowers in the extended forecast, with temps in the low 70's. Hopefully, we won't get the "severe" ones with the heavy down-bursts. I had to stake up quite a number of my tomato baskets today. The plants are heavy with fruit, and the soil is VERY soft and wet.

 

[Moonbear]

At least your peppers are enjoying the rain. We've had light drizzles all day, but no downpours. The tomatoes seem to be excited that even that much of a let-up has happened. I heavily pruned yellowing stems this weekend again to give the rest of the plants a fighting chance. At least I've gotten a few tomatoes off the plants already to enjoy fresh eating. I was hoping for better success, but will take whatever I get at this point. I wonder if commercial crops are suffering as badly.

 

[turbo]

We're getting some tomatoes, too, Moonie, but I'm pretty aggressive about culling any with soft spots, black stem rot, etc. I'm saving as many as I can, hoping that someday we might get a stretch of warm dry weather that is conducive to ripening. This has been a horrible gardening season. The bright spot is that most of the peppers seem to be toughing it out, so I can lay in a fair crop of hot salsas, relishes, etc. The "edge" is going to be off the heat unless the habaneros pull off a miracle turn-around, though.

 

[hypatia]

I picked green peppers for dinner, and when I cut them open, I discovered they were full of water and were rotting from the inside! I've never seen such a thing.

 

[Ouabache]

we didn't get it that bad but we had another storm go through this AM. the wilt causing more to fall --more today:
The wilt/blight --bottom limbs first, then it sneaks up the vine:

Sounds/looks like http://pmo.umext.maine.edu/factsht/Earlytom.htm (Alternaria solani ). With all the rain, and not enough warm dry weather, the inoculum is building up to devastating levels. My tomato plants are also under attack. Too many suckers per plant, which decreases air flow in a wet season and the fungus is having a field day. Most practical management for organic gardener is to prune off all the yellow foliage, infected fruit and discard (not compost). Throw away!
I'm already aggressively thinning suckers to maybe 3 or 4 per plant to improve air flow (I'm not a proponent of single stem plants). Also make sure you keep the stems off the ground (they will fall over with all the rain), re-stake/cage them as needed.
On a positive note, my plants are HUGE and laden with many tomatoes.

 

[turbo]

We finally got (after ~3 weeks) a fairly warm and sunny day without rain, so I harvested the garlic. I have shaken off as much mud as I can without bruising the bulbs, bunched them, and hung them for curing. I took care to segregate the larger, healthier bulbs to use for this winter's planting for next year's crop. I'll tend them from time to time, cleaning dried dirt with a soft brush and making sure that mold doesn't have a chance to set it. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate and give me some good dry days for a while. Gardening is slow going at times, but can get touchy when conditions aren't favorable. Almost everybody in livestock here has lost their (sometimes only potential) first and second hay crops and is hanging by fingernails hoping for some small gains in the traditionally poor late hay crops. This weather is going to put some dairy farmers out of business, and already horse-breeders and beef-cow farmers are selling off in advance of winter.

 

[hypatia]

Nice framing on your garage, did you build it yourself?

 

[Evo]

I picked green peppers for dinner, and when I cut them open, I discovered they were full of water and were rotting from the inside! I've never seen such a thing.

That is really bizarre hypatia. We seem to all be having weird gardening problems this year. The cold this summer is really messing with the vegetables. But I am not complaining about the weather!

 

[turbo]

Nice framing on your garage, did you build it yourself?

I estimated and priced the project (do everything myself), hypatia, and then I called a local specialist. He's a little younger than my father and he grew up in a town even farther north than ours. He generally sub-contacts slabs, but since my garage was modest-sized, he agreed to do the slab, too as long as I pitched into screed it, and when he priced out the total project, it was less than my cost of materials. He and one employee came in and we did the floor, and the next day, two of his employees showed up, the materials were dropped at about 10:00am, and the garage was finished, roofed, with windows and overhead door installed before 5:00 pm. It's a very solid and well-built little building.

 

[Evo]

Here is some of what I picked today that is going to become ratatouille tomorrow.

 

[iBop]

What is the yellow one's name ? Is it pumpkin ?

 

[rewebster]

my, my, my, Evo---what big peppers you have!

 

[Ouabache]

Here is some of what I picked today that is going to become ratatouille tomorrow.

I'm impressed, very pretty vegetables Evo! (good color and shape)

 

[Ouabache]

What is the yellow one's name ? Is it pumpkin ?

crooknecked summer squash..

 

[Evo]

What is the yellow one's name ? Is it pumpkin ?

It's a yellow crookneck squash

my, my, my, Evo---what big peppers you have!

They're HUGE.

I'm impressed, very pretty vegetables Evo! (good color and shape)

Thanks, I'm having to use yellow squash due to a zucchini shortage. The jalapenos won't be going into the ratatouille, but they filled up empty space.

I have started adding finely diced jalapenos to my potato salad, I never knew how delightful that little bit of a change would turn out.

I'm just amazed that I'm getting anything off of my tiny shaded patio from potted plants. I probably spent $100 on planters, soil, fertilizer, insecticides, fungicides, and plant stands, I will get maybe $30 worth of vegetables this year. Oh well, I enjoy it and next year I might break even.

 

[Moonbear]

I'm just amazed that I'm getting anything off of my tiny shaded patio from potted plants. I probably spent $100 on planters, soil, fertilizer, insecticides, fungicides, and plant stands, I will get maybe $30 worth of vegetables this year. Oh well, I enjoy it and next year I might break even.

Next year you won't have to invest in new planters and plant stands. Even some of the soil will be reusable as long as you have fertilizers to add. But, yeah, for me it's not about saving money so much as getting those really tasty, fresh vegetables, and having a hobby I enjoy. I hope my plants are surviving in my absence though.

 

[throng]

I grow herbs. I only have about 2 sqrm. Adding fresh herbs is aa great way of diversifying diet. They are too expensive to shop for and you'll never need large qty. Herbs like parsley, rosmary, thyme are tough and can be neglected.

to grow a seed and reap the food is more rewarding than eating bought food because you develope a "relatoinship" with what u eat

 

[turbo]

I grow herbs. I only have about 2 sqrm. Adding fresh herbs is aa great way of diversifying diet. They are too expensive to shop for and you'll never need large qty. Herbs like parsley, rosmary, thyme are tough and can be neglected.

to grow a seed and reap the food is more rewarding than eating bought food because you develope a "relatoinship" with what u eat

We have a row in the vegetable garden for annual herbs, and a small herb garden (about 3x10') for perennials, and we also container-garden on the back deck. Fresh herbs in stores are VERY expensive and sometimes none-too-fresh, so it's a real treat to pop out and pick some rosemary, sage, basil, cilantro, dill, etc, etc to spice up a meal. I had to seal a lot of herb seeds in zip-lock bags and freeze them because my wife went to the organic seed sale (Fedco Seeds) and went a little overboard. OK a lot overboard.

Our last place had no space to garden - it was tucked into the trees on a lot with no-tree-cutting covenants so along with the sandy "soil" it was shady all summer. We got spoiled when we bought this place - actually planted and tended the garden-spot over a month before we closed on the place. Luckily, my wife enjoys gardening as much as I do...

 

[rewebster]

another one of my more favorites is the surprise lily (it has a whole bunch of other names) and I think I planted about 400 here and there--but only about 20% bloom----it may be that I need to dig and reset them, nutrients, or something--but there's still quite a few that do come up---they're about 2 weeks late this year

they're called surprise (resurrection) because the leaves that grow up in the spring (about Apr.) die off about June---and there is nothing to show where they were (or sprout up from) except maybe a few dead leaves.

there's one on the ground---the birds try to land on the stalks, but the stalks are so full of just water that they break almost like dry spaghetti when then get bent a little too much

 

[turbo]

Very interesting flowers!

 

[Evo]

Very pretty rew, and interesting information on them!

 

[rewebster]

the bare stems are about 3 feet long--and then there's this cluster of blooms at the top-----they're also called 'pink ladies'

 

[turbo]

Interesting that they throw up leaves to provide energy for the bulbs, then then the leaves die back, then a blooming stalk emerges. Garlic has an interesting life-cycle, too, though not as extreme as that plant, and it takes some timely intervention to keep the bulbs maximized. Luckily, the scapes are tasty. My neighbor has at least 3x as much are garlic as I do, and he was working a lot of overtime when the scapes started curling, so I snapped them all for him, chopped them and froze most, and took him some garlic-scape butter and scape pesto to enjoy. We get along well.

 

[rewebster]

Interesting that they throw up leaves to provide energy for the bulbs, then then the leaves die back, then a blooming stalk emerges. Garlic has an interesting life-cycle, too, though not as extreme as that plant, and it takes some timely intervention to keep the bulbs maximized. Luckily, the scapes are tasty. My neighbor has at least 3x as much are garlic as I do, and he was working a lot of overtime when the scapes started curling, so I snapped them all for him, chopped them and froze most, and took him some garlic-scape butter and scape pesto to enjoy. We get along well.

yeah--that's one reason they're nice----I can't think of any other flowers that do that sort of cycle----if you do, let me know----I don't have any, right now, that are growing in a more open place, but they really look amazing when the flower shoot comes up in a more open area with no other plants around them---with that 3 ft. semi-transparent stem and that bunch of pink at the top.

 

[turbo]

another one of my more favorites is the surprise lily (it has a whole bunch of other names) and I think I planted about 400 here and there--but only about 20% bloom----it may be that I need to dig and reset them, nutrients, or something--but there's still quite a few that do come up---they're about 2 weeks late this year

You may want to buy a test kit. For less than $20 you can get a kit that let's you test for pH, Phosphorus, Potash, and Nitrogen. The reagents come in little gel-caps, and you'll get enough to do probably 20 tests of each type. The trick is finding out the nutrient requirements of your favorite plants and matching those - then, when you have the nutrients balanced, you need to trim the pH to optimize nutrient uptake. I'm a vegetable gardener and have no experience with flowers, so I can't help you there. Beautiful flowers, though.

 

[Moonbear]

another one of my more favorites is the surprise lily (it has a whole bunch of other names) and I think I planted about 400 here and there--but only about 20% bloom----it may be that I need to dig and reset them, nutrients, or something--but there's still quite a few that do come up---they're about 2 weeks late this year

Those are really pretty flowers. A nifty addition to the garden.

Are they SUPPOSED to all bloom every year? Maybe there are years they don't flower to use the energy to propagate additional bulbs rather than flowering for seeds? And, have you looked to see if the bulbs are still there? I've had bulbs that just rotted when the soil got too moist for too long, or that were dug up and eaten by squirrels, and things like that. For bulbs, I usually fertilize in both fall and spring. Fall provides any nutrients they need to get through winter (for the varieties that are winter hardy) and Spring gives them the nutrients for sprouting leaves/flowering.

 

[wolram]

Is it a bad idea to throw out scrap food onto the garden rather than bin it, i mean things like Irish stew, chili.

 

[turbo]

You should never compost meat, fat, bones, etc, Woolie, and certainly you shouldn't put it on your garden. Compost vegetable scraps, eggshells, paper, grass clippings, weeds etc. If you compost the materials in a bin or slatted container so air can get through the pile, it will rot down nicely and you can put the finished compost on the garden in a few months.