Rainy week and rain all morning and started up again. Plants are growing super fast. Checked on my potatoes, and a bunch of tomatoes have sprouted up, and a melon vine, right along with the potatoes. The weeds didn't even have a chance to get started-LOL.
I am letting one of the giant spinach plants go to seed. It's now 3 feet tall and not a seed in sight yet, nor a flower bud. Hubby got the corn in and the green beans/dry and they are up and doing fine.
We got a few dinky strawberries. Hubby really just let them go at the end of June last year, and didn't even cover them with straw for the winter, so I am surprised that we got anything.
I just went out between showers and picked some spinach to fix for a stir fry or salad for dinner - not sure which yet.
Hope all is going well for you. Have a great weekend. God Bless.
Pinging the List.
I can’t remember if anyone had articles they wanted to ping from last week or not. If so, no need to check with me - just ping them to the thread.
Thanks to everyone for all your helpful contributions to the thread.
I’m thinking of growing rice here in Texas.
Here in Kansas we are trying to get a few more crops and flowers in but it rains on a daily basis. The things we have already planted are going great guns but I suspect even they would appreciate the sun.
All our lack of sunshine and rain in Texas means I’ll be replanting the garden - again. Nothing has sprouted but weeds. But that’s an annual thing.
So it's been slow in the garden but I did dig a majority of my potatoes and I had a very good crop this year.
I also harvested my first tomatoes and today was the first (good) BLT of the year.
The thornless blackberries are producing nicely, about a pint a day off of one plant (nothing ripe on the others yet) and very large and tasty.
Harvested the last of the peaches this week and they were excellent.
Small ears on the corn. Still have my doubts but so far, so good.
And finally I have no idea, maybe it's because of all the rain, but after a nice fruit set and olive sized fruit the Meyer lemon is blooming again. Go figure.
First update this season. Got initial spring crops in mid-April, but they were impacted by a late freeze in late April. Then the warm spell started and I got my tomatoes and peppers in May 3rd, my earliest planting for those ever. And then the dry weather hit and I’ve been fighting that all month. Looks like we’ll get a couple inches of rain in a few days and that should help.
Hello greeneyes and everyone!
I have sought to reconstruct my ping list. If you should be on there, and I have inadvertently left you off, please let me know. If I have placed you on there, and you’d rather not be, please let me know!
Darlin and I have one more week in the Oklahoma Master Gardener class series, which has supplied me with material to share on this thread for the foreseeable future! It is an embarrassment of riches!
Today I thought I would begin typing up my notes on BUGS!
1st Installment of BUGS:
“Who Dunnit? Diagnosing Plant Damage Due to Insects”
Eric J Rebek
Dept of Entomology/Plant Pathology OSU
There is an ID book, Circular E19 “Major Horticultural and Household Insects of Oklahoma” It has beautiful color pictures and costs $17.00.
[TEXOKIE NOTE: Gardeners in surrounding states may wish to contact their Ag University and see if there is a comparable publication in your state. If not, this circular could be a good reference for many of you since a lot of the bugs described are living in many more states than Oklahoma. Darlin and I obtained this and it is an a place where we can grab it easily!]
Class resumes:
If you want to be a bug detective, you need the magnifying glass or hand lens. In order to understand bugs or bug damage, you have to be able to see tiny things. A small leaf can be a place for feeding or could be an egg laying site.
SIGNS VS SYMPTOMS
SIGNS:
*Waste products, honeydew, frass (excrement)
*Webbing (tent caterpillars, spider mites. )
Cool Nugget:
Discussion led to pecan web worms which occur in the fall. You actually DO NOT need to do anything about them because the tree is going dormant, and THEIR ACTIVITY WON’T HARM THE TREE! However, there are other pecan tree pests such as pecan weevils and shuck worms which need prompt action.]
*Cast Skin (exuvium) – the molted exoskeletons, ex: katydid shells
*Insects themselves
SYMPTOMS:
*Discoloration or distortion of leaves, blossoms or twigs
*Chewing damage
*Cracked bark
*Dieback of plant parts
He said, “KNOW THIS!!!” ...
A SYMPTOM is the OUTWARD EXPRESSION of the damage to the plant.
YOU CANNOT RELY ON THE SYMPTON ALONE TO DIAGNOSE INSECT DAMAGE. YOU MUST CONFIRM IT WITH SIGNS. LOOK FOR THE SIGNS!!!
He showed a series of pix depicting frass (bug poop) which in this case were little black dots. Bug Eggs. Webbing. Insects themselves doing the damage or other activity, or being dead.
*Leaf discoloration. It was difficult to tell the difference between frass deposits and a fungal leaf rust. You must look to see if a discoloration has a fruiting body which indicates a fungus.
*When you find a culprit in your garden, you have to decide if the critter is someone we can tolerate in small numbers before we choose a management plan.
*Another symptom:
Small spotty patches of discolored leaf tissue – often in a stippled pattern. This is from piercing-sucking damage. They can get to be so numerous it looks like a disease blotch. LOOK FOR SIGNS to confirm bug? Or not bug?
Patterns - Abiotic or biotic?
Patterns are symptoms we can see. Some patterns indicate biotic damage, and others are non – biotic damage.
Biotic: damage starts in small isolated spots
Abiotic: damage occurs with the whole plant or a major part of the plant affected all at once, such as from nutritional deficiencies, root compaction, water deficiency, chem
*Picture which was actually a trick question as we tried to decide if its pattern indicated damage by biotic or abiotic:
Turns out it was an eonymus variegated variety! You need to know normal plant appearance.
Another series of pix “What caused this discoloration?”
- a large leaf, with intense green at the veins, and the rest of the leaf was quite yellow. In this case the entire plant was affected. Systemic, so abiotic. The plant needed more iron. In heavy clay soils, the iron is bound up – If the pH is less than 7 pH iron is mobile. If greater than 7, it is bound up.
- a plant with a couple of happy leaves at bottom with some very wilted leaves at top. Is this chemical? Herbicide? Viruses? Too much fertilizer? NEED TO LOOK FOR SIGNS. If we were to look close at this plant closely, we would find aphids, casts, and honeydew.
- chewed up cabbage. Symptom is chewing damage. SIGN: the caterpillar itself!
-grape leaf with wilty edges. What SIGNS? No bug signs. Was actually 2.4.D damage. Vinyard was near a sprayed roadway
-plants chewed off into stumps. Symptom was chew damage. SIGN would be footprints, poop, etc, to decide if it is deer, or bunnies, etc.
- denuded bark way up in a tree – Squirrels will often scrape away bark….showed pic of tree with squirrel by the denuded area
- He showed some bark hole patterns. One are some random holes with no pattern. Theses are done by woodborers It has a carpenter ant hole, which shows the tree is already compromised. Other nearby smaller holes are the emergent holes of wood borers. The second picture is of a series of holes in rows and columns. Definite pattern. Yellow Belly Sapsucker, a type of woodpecker made these. Other woodpeckers will drill after insects, but not in this pattern.
- Discoloration of a strip of lawn. If you look close you can see that there is a parallel line a few feet away from it. The pattern indicates TIRE TRACKS!
End Part One BUGS
I got a late start this year—too late for things like potatoes, onions, and such. I finally got some free time, though. Thus far I’ve put in sweet potatoes, purple hull peas, green beans, butter peas, lima beans (two varieties), several varieties of tomatoes, bell peppers, banana peppers, watermelon, cantaloupe, squash, giant sunflower, corn (two varieties), and eggplant. For fun I also planted a peculiar, yellow, ball-shaped cucumber and a yellow, pear-shaped tomato. About the only thing different that I can think of that I haven’t planted that I still intend to plant is pumpkin. Hopefully will do that in the next few days.
Good to see you posting again, Johnny.
Glad you mentioned spinach. Mine is growing well BUT I don’t know what to do with it. (This is one of those ‘might be a dumb question’ thing that you mentioned, LOL!)
The spinach in the stores are tiny little leaves. My biggest ones are getting HUGE. Do I pick them when they are the size of those in the stores from now on or are the big ones edible?
Wacky weather here in soviet RED Hampshire over the past few days...94 degrees Saturday; then the wind swung around so it is coming off the ocean and BAM! 47 degrees right now...it’s pouring, so at least the ‘drought’ is over. :-)