Hi greeneyes!
The romaine showed quarter inch long rootlets, so we decided to pot it. I mixed up some potting soil and put it in a pot. We bought another head of nicely trimmed romaine today and decided to see if we could replicate the results. So we put the stump into root hormone dust in a dish of water. So far the celery stump has not responded. Maybe it got shaved too far back.
We harvested my first ever home-grown tomatoes! What is with the stretch marks??? The skin on one of them was splitting open. At any rate, split or no split, what they say is TRUE: homegrown tomatoes really DO taste better!
My squash are not doing well. Good green leaves, good blooming, and the straight neck is forming squash, but they have not been developing. My scallop squash will bloom, but then the end of the vine will wither with the blossom on it. No squash developed at all.
I asked the lady at our local gardening store - not the box store - and in our conversation, we decided that probably I have squash bugs on the yellow squash. She said that several things could account for the problems with the scallop squash. I purchased a soap solution for killing bugs. She suggested I try that on both and see what happens.
Re my legume problems: I had what I thought might be a “Duh” light bulb moment earlier today. I realized I had not obtained any inoculation bacteria. I specifically went to the garden store for it. The lady at the store said that this was the first year that they are not selling it because no one is buying it any more. She said that legumes usually do just fine without it. As far as my problems are concerned, it could be too damp, too dry, micro creatures, fungus, bugs, and disease. *sigh* The advice is to squirt the soap on them as well and see if that helps, as a first measure.
I had some extra dirt, so covered up my sweet potato vine some more. I saw a sweet potato peeking up at me, so with more dirt, here’s hoping that more will form! The vine is very pretty.
I bought some fish emulsion (5-1-1) and some osmocote (14-14-14). They have directions and I’ll see about applying it sometime in next few days. Can anyone tell me why I would use one and not the other? Would I use both on the same plant? Not sure at all what I’m doing here. My Darlin has been urging me to open and use the Miracle Gro blue stuff as well.
My grand experiment is harvesting me so far two tomatoes, an active lifestyle, 4 chigger bites in delicate places, quite a bit of fun, and loads of realization that I know nothing! Nevertheless, my learning curve is trending straight up, and I’m so grateful that we are not dependent on feeding ourselves at this point from our garden! We would surely starve. Maybe I can do better next year, by God’s grace.
Tomatoes like to have consistent watering. When the weather is dry, and then there is a big rain, the tomato will split the skin due to more water than usual.
Squash may need some additional potassium, phosphorous, or trace minerals during the bloom time? I have never heard of squash without squash bugs, so you probably have some.
Fish emulsion is good to add nitrogen to your soil, when you have other nutrients in adequate amounts. For example, you might have grown a bunch of lettuce and depleted the nitrogen quite a bit, but P or K not so much. So you might want to add a little fish emulsion before replanting the second crop in that space.
The 14 14 14 is just a balanced mix, fine for generic soil nutrients. However, plants with blooms like melons, roses, tomatoes etc usually need additional Phosphate(P)especially during the bloom time.
In light of the green beans not doing well, you might want to do a soil test. Even if it’s just one of the at home kits. If your extension office is close, that’s also a good place for info, help, and soil testing usually.
Same problems. I do have some sort of beetles (stink bugs?) and have been spraying eggs, hatchlings, adults every day, but the issue(s) still persist - looks like the blooms are all "boy" blooms, too. My zucchini has had two on it - one turning yellow and still about 5 inches long, the other newest one may grow, but I'm not holding my breath. The straight neck bloomed and no squash, now the newest leaves are wrinkling up funny. If I can find another plant, I'm pulling up the first one & going to start over. Also, TONS of cucumber blooms - I've seen pollinators on them, but very few cukes. Tomatoes are doing very well - thank goodness!
That sounds like what happens when they do not get pollinated. I will break off a male blossom, hold up female blossoms, and shake the pollen from the male into the females.
I thought you might be interested. I had stated earlier that the celery stump did not appear to be responding to the root hormone as the romaine lettuce did.
Just a little while ago, I decided to check it again, and lo and behold, THERE WERE ROOTLETS!!
While the stalks were not growing, as in the romaine experiment, the celery stump leaves had nevertheless remained green, which we had been puzzling about.
I guess we’ll let the rootlets get a little more established, and see what it decides to do. Then maybe we’ll plant it as well. I’m wondering, if we do decide to plant it, we would just bury the whole stump wouldn’t we?
That root hormone is magic!