What Are Some Tips for Successful Gardening?

[Evo]

Update.

Some of my regular tomatoes have gotten their first blush.

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/8813/tomatoesripeningtn5.jpg

This jalapeno bush's fruit are longer and thinner than the other bush. This one has 19 so far, not including blooms.

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/9358/jalapeno19en0.jpg

 

[Moonbear]

I decided to pick my zucchini today. I couldn't wait any longer and didn't want to give some other critter a chance to get to it before me (the crickets have started appearing, and a hungry looking baby bunny is running around the area too). I forgot how much flavor a zucchini can have! YUMMY!

I'm struggling to get my tomatoes to stand up today. We had a storm go through yesterday, and the wind just before the rest of the storm blew them all over (it just got windy suddenly...I barely got outside in time to keep the patio umbrella from blowing away since I had it open). Once the wind and rain started, there was nothing I could do with them, so just left them lying on their sides until the storm passed. When I tried to stand them all back up, half of them seem to have shifted the positions of the branches and keep wanting to fall back over. Of course they're all the ones with the most and best looking tomatoes.

 

[turbo]

Moonie, do you have a garden shop nearby? Often they have slim bamboo stalks that you can put in the pots around the perimeter of each pot. I'd use maybe 5-6 bamboo sticks per pot. You'll want to stop at a hardware store and buy a roll of surveyor's flagging tape, too. With the bamboo sticks and the flagging tape, you can cage up your tomato plants and contain them until they regain strength. I do this to tomato plants on the elevated back deck. They are exposed to the prevailing wind and are more easily damaged than the plants in the garden.

 

[Moonbear]

I already have sticks and long twist ties making a cage, but the weight still seems to be off-center now. They aren't lacking strength...well, one or two small stems broke, but there's nothing to do for that, and they aren't the pots that are listing anyway...just lost the centered balance they had. I'm working on trying to get the sticks repositioned, but it's tedious since the branches have now all tangled together around sticks, ties, each other, neighboring pots... I turned them all now so the side they're leaning toward is more away from the sun (facing the house)...hoping they'll grow toward the sun and rebalance on their own.

 

[Evo]

I'm struggling to get my tomatoes to stand up today. We had a storm go through yesterday, and the wind just before the rest of the storm blew them all over (it just got windy suddenly...I barely got outside in time to keep the patio umbrella from blowing away since I had it open). Once the wind and rain started, there was nothing I could do with them, so just left them lying on their sides until the storm passed. When I tried to stand them all back up, half of them seem to have shifted the positions of the branches and keep wanting to fall back over. Of course they're all the ones with the most and best looking tomatoes.

Moonbear that happened to my squash, twice!. I gave up and am letting them grow toppled over.

I am so sorry to hear about your tomatoes, is there anyone that can help support them while you get the container upright? I'd hate to have any branches break. Once you get the soil adjusted the plants should lean less. I got my squash upright and the dirt situated so the planter sits upright, but the plants are still spilled over to one side and I've let them trail on the ground. I had a tomatilo knocked over, but luckily got it re-situated.

Goood luck, the most imporatnt thing is not to let the stems break.

 

[turbo]

Ah, I see. Dislodged and lost branches = off-balance. The bamboo rods are very durable and I re-use them year after year. Flagging tape is dirt cheap and it is wide enough and flexible enough so that it doesn't damage the stems like smaller-diameter cordage, ties, etc can.

We had a heavy rain and wind during last night, and one of our giant sunflower plants was laying on the ground this morning. I tried straightening it, but it wanted to keep sagging, indicating possible root damage. A single bamboo stick and some flagging tape is holding it straight until it can repair the roots. My cousin uses poles cut from small saplings, and strips of bedsheet material, but I have concerns about insects laying eggs in protected (cloth-covered) areas in contact with my plants.

 

[Moonbear]

Moonbear that happened to my squash, twice!. I gave up and am letting them grow toppled over.

I am so sorry to hear about your tomatoes, is there anyone that can help support them while you get the container upright? I'd hate to have any branches break. Once you get the soil adjusted the plants should lean less. I got my squash upright and the dirt situated so the planter sits upright, but the plants are still spilled over to one side and I've let them trail on the ground. I had a tomatilo knocked over, but luckily got it re-situated.

Goood luck, the most imporatnt thing is not to let the stems break.

That's my biggest problem, lack of an extra pair of hands. Trying to stabilize the pot while rearranging stems and then catching the one next to it that wants to topple again because I've bumped a stem interwoven into it (some of this happened during the toppling, some during the growing) is just feeling quite futile. If I fuss with a couple each day after work, by the weekend I might have them all back upright again.

If not, now that I'm thinking more about it, I can try a different approach of getting sturdier posts/stakes to run along the side of the deck staked into ground rather than the planters that I can then string line across and tie the plants or pots to that. A few 1X2s should suffice for that if I can get them deep enough into the soil.

 

[Moonbear]

My cousin uses poles cut from small saplings, and strips of bedsheet material, but I have concerns about insects laying eggs in protected (cloth-covered) areas in contact with my plants.

We never had problems with bugs in cloth-covered areas. My grandmother was a seamstress and would bring home all sorts of fabric scraps and ribbon remnants that we'd use for ties to stakes. My grandparents used these and so did my parents. Then again, my parents would send my sister and me into the garden as bug control...for some reason, it was important to learn the difference between a potato bug and a Japanese beetle, even though the treatment was the same...pluck them off and squash them. I don't remember them hiding under ties though.

 

[turbo]

That's my biggest problem, lack of an extra pair of hands. Trying to stabilize the pot while rearranging stems and then catching the one next to it that wants to topple again because I've bumped a stem interwoven into it (some of this happened during the toppling, some during the growing) is just feeling quite futile.

I feel your pain! I generally tie up the plants, train the vines to fences, etc by myself, but I know that by late afternoon, my wife will be home to lend a hand so I can get the tough ones that need more manipulation.

Ask a grad student to come over for pizza and beer and put them to work for a little while. It shouldn't take long with two people at it. It's frustrating as hell to try to do stuff like this alone when the plants are intertwined. Last year, I tried to train my tomatoes in the garden to a fence, and planted them a little more closely than I should have. They came in thicker than normal and were choking each other out. I needed my wife's help to separate and re-tie the plants to the fence with more spacing to promote drying and suppress mold.

 

[Moonbear]

Ask a grad student to come over for pizza and beer and put them to work for a little while.

Ooh, I should ask our technician over. She's going to house and cat sit for me next month when I go on vacation, and by then, there should be tons of tomatoes for her to enjoy while staying here. She would have a vested interest in keeping them healthy (she was the one who watered them when they were still babies in May and I had to go to a conference, so I think she's already hoping for some tomatoes).

 

[turbo]

Ooh, I should ask our technician over. She's going to house and cat sit for me next month when I go on vacation, and by then, there should be tons of tomatoes for her to enjoy while staying here. She would have a vested interest in keeping them healthy (she was the one who watered them when they were still babies in May and I had to go to a conference, so I think she's already hoping for some tomatoes).

There you go! You get a vacation and she gets to eat nice fresh tomatoes. What a nice bribe! She gets to eat all the tomatoes that ripen while you're gone. Mmmm! I LOVE sandwiches of fresh tomatoes, fresh cucumbers, Cain's mayo, and fresh leaf lettuce on rye bread. I can't wait!

 

[turbo]

Garden update. The humid heat has jump-started much of the garden, and luckily, the rain has been light and intermittent this week. The bell peppers are setting on fruit and are continuing to bud.

The Hungarian wax peppers continue to grow and the plants are setting on more buds - should be a good crop.

The jalapenos were stalled for quite a while, but they're looking better, too.

The buttercup squash vines are so thick and lush that it's hard to get between the rows. Luckily, with the fence on the sunnier side of the row, the vines are training themselves to it pretty well. We're getting lots of blossoms, and I notice that the bumblebees are hanging out more.

Last but certainly not least, the tomatoes. I shot a couple of the sparser (leaf-wise) plants to show the fruit better. Some of the lusher plants have more tomatoes, but it's hard to see them.

 

[Evo]

Turbo, I am so jealous! Those look great! I hope I might be able to have a real garden again someday.

Look, I got my first bee this morning! Of course all of the open blooms were male.

I hope he comes back! I'm thinking of going to a nearby field and digging a plug of clover to plant to entice him.

 

[turbo]

Turbo, I am so jealous! Those look great! I hope I might be able to have a real garden again someday.

Thanks, Evo! I was getting pretty worried for a while. The garden was looking very crappy, and we rely on it for a lot of staple foods.

Cool weather and a couple of weeks of daily downpours forced me to replant beans, cucumbers, squash, etc. Luckily, I had a few extra seeds and was able to scrounge up some extras from a local greenhouse that buys in bulk.

The habanero plants have not yet begun blossoming - they were small to start with (greenhouse started them too late) and the cold wet weather didn't allow them to grow much, if at all. Those are the latest chilies to ripen, so I hope that I have enough hot weather to get at least some ripe ones. Red habanero relish is precious, and I'm almost out.

 

[turbo]

About the bees - consider planting bee-balm (and clover like you suggested) and some stuff that flowers before your vegetable plants, so the bumblebees will establish a habit of visiting you. I let flowering weeds like milkweed grow to maturity, too because bumblebees like them. Bumblebees are buzz pollinators, and they are very effective with large blossoms like squash. We never get honeybees around here, so we have to rely on the tiny bees like the solitary mason bees for the small blossoms and bumblebees for the bigger ones. I made a nesting post for mason bees (lots of holes drilled in a non-pressure treated 4x4) and screwed an old brass sundial on the top to provide rain protection. Quite a few of the holes were plugged this year, so they are being nested in.

 

[turbo]

Here is my nesting post for solitary mason bees. It's in a sunny spot near the corner of the garden. A few of the holes have remained plugged, so I'm assuming that some of the larvae did not survive the winter. We had very deep snow, and it's possible that water leaked into some of the lower nesting chambers during the spring melt.

 

[rewebster]

My tomatoes are looking worse even after two sprayings. I'm going to try a spray followed by a dry powder Sevin dusting with a sprayer.

I did pick a couple peppers for a snack tonight.

 

[Moonbear]

I got my tomatoes straightened out (after they toppled again last night with another storm). One sustained a lot of damaged branches, but the rest seem okay breakage-wise. But now I have bugs on them (some sort of mite or aphid thing). And a bird pecked open the one tomato already ripening. I spritzed all the plants with my alcohol and detergent solution (I wouldn't dare spray an insecticide on now since they're all flowering and fruiting). Not surprising that a few nights of lying on the ground gave them a chance to pick up bugs. They were doing so well until this week too. Hopefully I'll get the bugs under control with the simple remedy, and give the poor plants a chance to recover from all the insults (some of the lower leaves are yellowing...maybe the bugs, but I suspect too much moisture from the excessive rain and the plants lying on wet ground).

 

[turbo]

Sorry to hear about the misfortunes of your patio garden, Moonie. If you have lower leaves that are yellowing, I recommend nipping them off close to the main stalk so that the plants can concentrate on new growth. Use an anvil-and-blade style pruner to pinch the stems to minimize the loss of fluids and nutrients. I have an old pair of Snap-Cut pruning shears with a blued steel blade pinching against a brass anvil, and they are so small that you can toss them in a back pocket and grab them quickly when you see a plant that needs help. Yellow=no chlorophyll=net energy loss for the plant to try to support the leaves. Good luck!

 

[Moonbear]

Thanks for more tips, turbo. I'll be pruning back those bad leaves in a day or two (today's chore was just getting them all propped back upright again and killing bugs). I want to remove them anyway, just so they don't attract mold or more bugs to further infest the plant. I have the type of pruners you're talking about, so will find them and use them rather than just snapping by hand.

So, who has green tomato recipes for the ones on the broken branches that I don't think have enough attachment to the main plant to survive? One branch that snapped was close enough to the base that it actually has little rootlets on it. Maybe it'll survive if it can root itself (I'm giving it a chance to do that since it's such a large branch, but not holding out a lot of hope just yet).

 

[Evo]

Oh No Moonbear! That's so sad, but on the bright side, the tomato plants will come back bushier and you might end up with even more tomatoes in the long run.

My grape tomato plant was so top heavy that it snapped, but was not broken off, I immediately taped the break to a stick and then moved the entire plant to a trellis and tied it to the trellis. Although it has a nasty open gash in the stem now from the break, it healed enough to get water and nutrients through. I saved about 100 baby grape tomatoes, I'll show you a picture tomorrow, so do whatever you can. you might be surpised. The healing properties of plants is amazing.

 

[turbo]

Moonie, if you have vegetative tomato branches that have broken off, plant them deeply in a separate pot and water the living hell out of them. Keep a LOT of stem underground and water them heavily until they can develop enough root structure to start supporting themselves with more normal watering. You may salvage some of these, yet. If some of the damaged branches have tomatoes on them, I suggest removing those so that your attempt to re-root the branches will have a better chance of success. BTW, Fried Green Tomatoes is not the only use for those little critters. You can use small green tomatoes instead of tomatillos, and process them with jalapeno, onion, garlic, cilantro, etc, and make some wonderful fresh green salsas.

If you have broken tomato branches, use your anvil-and-blade pruners to pinch them off close to the trunk of the plant. Torn and/or broken tomato branches can severely diminish the transport of nutrients to the remaining healthy branches because they rob the plant of hydraulic capacity until the damage is sealed. You've got to pinch off the damaged stems in order to give the plant a chance to heal them off and concentrate nutrients on the healthier growth. Pinching damaged stems off with a blade-and-anvil pruner is far better for the plant than cutting off the stem with a knife or snapping it off by hand.

 

[turbo]

Bad news on the garden. I just got back from filling the bird feeders, and on my way out there, I startled a very large, fat groundhog that was hiding under my smoker eating a branch from one of my wife's ornamental shrubs. This is not a good development.

 

[Evo]

Oh no, are you going to trap and relocate them?

 

[turbo]

Oh no, are you going to trap and relocate them?

If I get the chance, it may succumb to lead poisoning. I have a live trap, but it would be a tight squeeze for that lard-butt. It's better suited to squirrels.

 

[rewebster]

If I get the chance, it may succumb to lead poisoning. I have a live trap, but it would be a tight squeeze for that lard-butt. It's better suited to squirrels.

back in the 60's, the one county that I knew about gave a 25 cent bounty on the ears

 

[turbo]

For those that are wondering when to harvest peppers, here is a guide that seems pretty useful and accurate.

http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/pepper/2002072024032752.html

They recommend using shears or a knife to harvest peppers, since the stems can be brittle. I recommend using blade-on-anvil pruning shears if at all possible. Get a small light-weight pair so you won't mind slipping them into your back pocket when gardening. These are pretty cheap-looking, but as long as you are not pruning woody growth from fruit trees, for instance, they will last a LONG time in a home garden.
http://www.terratech.net/product.asp?specific=jqesfrj0

 

[turbo]

back in the 60's, the one county that I knew about gave a 25 cent bounty on the ears

Back then, trappers were getting lots of money for fisher pelts, so the over-trapped them, and the porcupines, free of the only predator that could easily kill and eat them, reproduced and spread prolifically. We could get 25 cents for bringing in all 4 feet of a porcupine. My friend got the smart idea to find out where the guy who paid the bounties disposed of the feet, collect the feet and bring them back for more bounty-money. He was soon busted, though - that old fella was no dummy, and had probably seen that trick before.

 

[Moonbear]

Bad news on the garden. I just got back from filling the bird feeders, and on my way out there, I startled a very large, fat groundhog that was hiding under my smoker eating a branch from one of my wife's ornamental shrubs. This is not a good development.

Uh oh! Poor groundhog thought he was the envy of all his friends with such a lush backyard to enjoy. Little did he know that he'd get the death penalty for poaching turbo's veggies!

 

[turbo]

Uh oh! Poor groundhog thought he was the envy of all his friends with such a lush backyard to enjoy. Little did he know that he'd get the death penalty for poaching turbo's veggies!

Groundhogs are cute, but they are incredibly destructive to vegetable gardens. The one living here is about the size of this one, and I don't want him roaming around, taking little bites of this and that. I wouldn't mind so much if they would eat one item, finish it, and move on, but groundhogs don't do that.

 

[rewebster]

Two of my grandfather's ponds were severly damaged due to them burrowing into the levees, and most of the water drained out when water when through the burrows instead of over the spillway when the water rose to the level of the burrows after rains filled the ponds. I've seen ponds that did completely drain.

Funny, I just remembered, one made its home in my backyard for about a month when I first move here --and I live almost in the middle (edge) of town. It really liked the mulberries (that I have since cut down).

 

[turbo]

Two of my grandfather's ponds were severly damaged due to them burrowing into the levees, and most of the water drained out when water when through the burrows instead of over the spillway when the water rose to the level of the burrows after rains filled the ponds. I've seen ponds that did completely drain.

Funny, I just remembered, one made its home in my backyard for about a month when I first move here --and I live almost in the middle (edge) of town.

They won't be able to drain my ponds because my ponds are are ground-water level and are not really dependent on rainfall. One or two fat 'hogs like this could decimate my garden, though, so I'm going to treat them with extreme prejudice. We need that food for next year.

 

[rewebster]

let see,... spare ribs, hog shanks, bacon, ham...



they'll almost a cross between that and a rabbit

 

[hypatia]

I used a M-80 to convince my groundhog to move, it didn't kill him, but I noticed he now uses sign language.

He moved to the house behind mine, and won't step foot in my yard.

 

[Evo]

Don't you dare hurt that poor little thing!

Anyway, here is the picture of where my grape tomato snapped over, completley doubled over, but luckily one side was not broken. Believe it or not, that skinny stem is the main stem and all of the tomatoes were above it. As you can see, the tomatoes and leaves above seem normal and there has been new normal growth and more blooms since the break. I was really afraid of what turbo mentioned about the plant not getting enough water and nutrients above the break, it's one tough little plant.

Has anyone grown grape tomatoes before? Are they supposed to be that spindly? My other tomato plants are all thick and compact, this one is really more like a vine.

the break

growth above break