My indoor garden cache of tomatoes and cukes are growing like crazy but probably won't get set out until June 1st.
It’s snowing........
However, I got my asparagus in in NH and am harvesting the last crop from my NY bed.
I did get potatoes and onion sets in and they are safely underground or mulched.
I covered even the lettuce, spinach, and peas. They can take only so much of a freeze and it was pretty borderline here last night and will be for a couple more nights.
In Central Texas, so no snow. Loopers have skeletonized my brassicas, even though I go squish them 3-4 times daily.
Aphids attacked my squash. Bottom of leaves were black with them. In desperation, I grabbed Lemon Crisp Clorox Disinfecting Wipes, and cleaned off the tops, and bottoms of the leaves, and also the stems, in case borer eggs were hiding.
In a few hours, they looked like happy plants. By the next day, they looked like healthy robust plants. I looked up the active ingredient in the wipes, and saw it listed in some plant products.
Anyone else try these for getting rid of aphids, powdery mildew? They are useless on cabbage loopers, BTW, except to wipe them off, doesn’t phase them.
Cold blast tonight - freeze warnings up. Before dawn this morning, it was 33 degrees. I had everything covered in plastic or under a clay pot last night, but tonight is supposed to be between 30-35 degrees. Being rural, we’ll be on the low end, most likely.
Out of 4 tomato plants, I have one barely hanging on. I have some cukes just poking their heads above the dirt, radishes that are growing great guns, the tithonia/sunflower bed is/was doing well, & I have some zinnias that just came up. As I said, all was covered last night. Very chilly today, highs in the 50’s. I’ll check a little later & make sure it’s not getting too hot under the plastic (not quite clear plastic - milky), but it’s a hassle to cover stuff, so I’m not uncovering, then going through the hassle again tonight.
My SIL (next door) is in the same boat. She found a little farmer’s market sort of place out in the country, about 20 minutes away, that has tomatoes, etc. for $1.00 a 4-pack. I’m going to head over there next week (much warmer, garden friendly temps) & see if I can pick up some plants. Fingers crossed my thithonia, sunflowers & zinnias pull through. A lot of the seeds were from last year’s flowers so I don’t have an unlimited supply - I do have some ‘bought’ seeds that I was holding for a later planting, but if the cold gets everything, I might have to use those to replant.
Of course, you know what will happen .... we’ll go from a high of mid-50’s, skip spring & go straight to humidity/90’s. Weather .... anyone who thinks we can “control” it (global warming) is nuts, IMO.
Built a mini greenhouse this week and will be playing around with hydroponic growing. Due to Michigan not being able to make up its mind, all of that will be indoors this week. But still pretty excited to be growing.
My dandelions LIED to me! They said we were don’t with frosts for the season!!!!
I’ve never seen a cold snap happen after the mass dandelion bloom. My absolute indicator is now only a 95% probability indicator.
So, 19 out of every 20 years, the mass dandelion bloom means it’s safe to plant the tomatoes outdoors.
I’m just glad I hadn’t moved the squash plants outdoors yet. There’s over 100 of them!
Anybody ever use a stack of tires to grow potatoes in a small garden?
My neighbor used to set her seed potatoes inside a tire ring, with soil & amendments.
As those plants sprouted, she would add another tire and more soil, etc.
She would end up with about a 6 tire stack, using only a small part of her garden space.
When it was time to harvest, she would carefully remove one tire at a time, getting small, new potatoes at the top and larger potatoes further down the stack.
ALL were delicious.
Last year - put out the tomatoes and peppers 1 May, all was good.
This year - covered them last night and they are looking weak today. And another “freeze” tonight!
I maybe crying in the a.m...
Folks around here told me not to plant until after Mother’s Day...
Win some , lose some...
It’s been cool here in Central Missouri over the past week. Cool enough there was a bit of frost in some of the low-lying areas a couple nights ago. I moved my tomato plants into the potting shed for that.
Planted two varieties of cucumber seed on Friday, and tossed some dill seed on the ground in a corner of the garden. I usually have plenty of volunteer dill, but it invariably comes up in a place that I want to plant something else and winds up getting plowed under.
We pulled the cannas and elephant ears out of storage and have been sticking roots in the ground all over the place. I put ten or a dozen cannas on the pond dam. I want to put some iris out there too, but I need to wait until they’ve finished blooming to move them.
The new rhubarb looks good a week after being shoved into the dirt. I’ve not had good luck getting potted rhubarb to survive, so this time I used some rooting hormone. It’s still too soon to know for sure if it’s going to go, but it looks good so far.
Mrs. Augie and I were supposed to be on the beach in sunny Florida right now, but the covid panic wrecked that, so we’re having a nice stay-cation here instead. We’ve taken the boat out on the Missouri River a couple times, and caught a nice mess of bluegills out of a neighbor’s farm pond. Might go boating again today. Waiting to see if it’s going to warm up enough for it to be comfortable on the water...
Anyone have any thoughts on the concept of cooking pie pumpkins and eating them like squash, rather than making pies out of them?
Probably hopeless, but I’ll ask.
Anybody know of an online source for garden seedlings?
Everywhere I’ve looked online is sold out or worse.
I’m in central MA at 1,110 feet above sea level. April was very cold. Then we had snow last week and a killer frost.
My lettuce and kale plants are doing well, as are my brussel sprout plants and my onions came up. My potates are starting to pop up now as well, although slowly. Those are all in self-wicking buckets made with beer cans, a PVC pipe and holes 1 inch below the height of the cans. This warmer weather will hopefully kick the potatoes into gear so I can fill up the rest of the soil. I planted two containers of indeterminate potatoes so I can keep burying them and one of determinate (yukon gold).
Starting tomorrow Spring actually arrives and temps will be over 40 consistently at night. I have raised beds and containers for everything except the brussel sprouts so my soil temp is higher than average.
I’ll be putting in my peppers and tomatoes tomorrow, some more lettuce plants, and eggplant. Bean seeds haven’t come up yet. If they don’t by this Sunday I’m going to replant. I’m afraid the frosts may have killed the seeds.
-SB
Well, after finally being on time this year, looks like I killed off most of my seedlings with a bit too much water a few days ago. They went yellow and never recovered.
sigh
I thought they were OK. It was about my usual routine. Oops. The seedlings were about 1 inch to 1-1/2 inches in length. Pretty tightly packed (I usually drop several seeds). Things were going so well the past 7 weeks or so, too.
I have a few seedlings still going but these were some pepper and looks like my tomato seeds (from store bought) are gone.
I still have some sweet pepper and some sort of other pepper seedlings. But now it’s late in the year. Maybe, maybe 5 months of growing. 6 if the unusually-low temps go away. They came early last year.
So I bought some 50-day tomato plants at WalMart today. I had bought sweet basil (x2) and a Rosemary yesterday.
Still my green onion roots are going (5). I have 5 more int he fridge. I’ll put them in some starters maybe tonight. Big roots on them.
So much for my hopeful big stock of tomatoes. And maybe not as many green peppers.
Most Farmers in the Great Plains Don’t Grow Fruits and Vegetables. The Pandemic is Changing That.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3845267/posts
I am not sure if I have a problem or not it’s something very strange has happened.
I transplanted about 10 cucmber starts into my planting bed. I transplanted them about 5 days ago.
At 4:00 p.m. today they looked perfect I went inside and ate dinner and relaxed a bit and I came back out and at 8:00 p.m. every one of them look like they have been spray painted white.
I know what powdery mildew looks like this looks like an animal peed on them or sprayed them or somebody came by with a spray paint can and sprayed them it’s very strange.
And I have a ton of tomatoes on either side of them and pepper and eggplant starts in the same raised to bed and none of them show any signs of any of this period I also have a bowl in the raised bed with some water in it to bring the birds around I wonder if some birds were sprang and for some reason it almost looks like bird poop but it’s such an even coating.
I am going to take a picture and put it up on my Instagram page anybody U sends me up pm I won’t give you my Instagram page and you can look at it or I can text them if you trust me with your phone number but I need some assistance to see what the heck is going on.
This entire posting was done by voice detecting so any strange words that’s why.
there was a post about spreading wild vegetable seeds over fallow land for people pick or upick. Can you point me to that link?