Weekly Garden Thread May 9-15, 2020

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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.

Ours is not a “Northern climate”, but we are zone 7 with 1st frost around Oct. 25, so obviously tomato plants do not survive the winter outside! The best I’ve ever done was one warm fall and with lots of covering @ night - some plants survived and produced outdoors until Thanksgiving. However, I’ve found that bringing a potted plant or two in before cool weather weakens them is best. They usually don’t produce anything in the winter, but, I have a “mature” plant or two ready to go “out” in mid May. Potted grape or cherry varieties seem to work best. Usually the plant has to be trimmed back of course, to move it in, and that’s also best done a little ahead of time. Not all plants “make it” — how much of that is a function of variety and how much is inadequate care / conditions I don’t know yet. This one plant this year looks good & has actually survived two winters. But I failed to write down the exact variety the 1st year & have forgotten what it was! (#2 this year is definitely a volunteer from last spring.) Some careful gardener I am — usually in too much of a dang rush — because I’ve been on here too much, probably? (Wry smile...)

Yes, I’ve managed to keep tomato plants through the winter, most successfully the two plants this last winter. But that is a separate issue from the seedlings, except that I used the same light, which seemed to be ok for the overwintered plants, but appears to be not sufficient for the seedlings. Ours is not a “Northern climate”, but we are zone 7 with 1st frost around Oct. 25, so obviously tomato plants do not survive the winter outside! The best I’ve ever done was one warm fall and with lots of covering @ night - some plants survived and produced outdoors until Thanksgiving. However, I’ve found that bringing a potted plant or two in before cool weather weakens them is best. They usually don’t produce anything in the winter, but, I have a “mature” plant or two ready to go “out” in mid May.

Well then I think you win the award for long-living tomato plants, by the grace of God. But here is a 3-year old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHBtmWnYMBs Then their is 1,355 Tomatoes Grown on 1 Tomato Plant is New World Record ...

Hi, Ellendra! Unrelated question:

Our local Rural King has two bins of “White Leghorn” chicks. The larger ones are pure white, the smaller ones (maybe a week - 10 days younger, I’d say) have some yellowish coloration. I almost thought they were Amberlinks, but the guy who supposedly runs that show said they were White Leghorns. The bin itself was unlabeled (as most of them were = grrr…). I tried searching online and the pics I found for White Leghorn chicks do look yellowish, so, I guess the guy is right?

Drat. While I’d like to have 2-3 more W. Leghorns, I want 3-4 Amberlinks too, for the brown eggs [for selling] and friendly personalities [for my daughter!].

(The biggest problem we’ve had with Amberlinks are that the roo’s beat them up a bit if we get low on hens* (easiest to catch?) and predators seem to get them 1st, too, possibly for the same reason.)

*That’s the current problem, plus the last hatch from a broody hen was all roos. 3 of the 4 became soup.** Hate to kill #4 as he looks like a hawk: Egger - Amberlink mix. Seems to help keep small raptors and a troublesome stray cat at bay. More hens needed, tho’.

**Other than that (becoming soup), roos seem to hatch / survive better for some reason. Long term, I’d say the survival rate (outside of the case of the broody hen who left the Black Maran eggs I’d bought!) from embryo clearly detectable to “healthy month old” is at least 2:1 roosters. Born to fight? (Rhetorical question - my real q was about the chick’s coloration.) :-)

Rural Kings says they get chicks in Wed. - Fri. — I will give them a call in a bit - maybe will get lucky on what came in...

Now if my wife would just get those opo seeds from her friend!!!

Hi, Ellendra,

I think I need some more advice:

After having no problems raising chicks in the past, my attempts this year to build our flock back up to about 10 hens per rooster have been disastrous. First was “missing” twice on getting Buckeyes, then there were the failures with the Black Copper Maran eggs (two destroyed by a rooster, then our broody hen left the rest, and the attempt to incubate them failed), then “mutt” eggs we had put in a little incubator also all failed to hatch. We had another hen go broody and so left her 8 eggs to try to hatch: To were broken, one hatched and is ok so far, and the other 5 have not hatched and at this point I’d say they won’t. (One is cracked but I think the chick inside is dead - will check again shortly.) I went to Rural King a few days ago and got a mix of 8 chicks, and that’s where my new need for advice comes in.

The mix was 1 Black Sex-link, 1 Asian Black, 2 ISA Brown, 1 Black Australorp, 2 White Leghorns, and 1 Rhode Island Red.

Though we’ve had no problem with buying & raising mixes in the past — never lost a chick — this time, 3 died. One ISA Brown died the morning after the evening I brought them home, another a couple days later, and now (another couple days later) the RI Red last night. Temperature in the brooder is good: About 93 deg. F this 1st week, with cooler spots ~ 85 deg. F at the far end. Behaviors seemed fairly normal all around until I would discover a chick dead (the two Browns) or nearly so (the Red). Chicks were (and the remaining are) fairly active, feeding and drinking, and not all bunched up at one end or the other.

The two “oddities” were that @ purchase the Leghorns were only slightly larger than the other birds, with the Asian Black, the 2 Browns, and the RI Red the smallest - I’d guess 3-4 days younger based on size alone, but, the Leghorns immediately spurted in growth. I’d guess their weight more than doubled in 4-5 days. The rest grew more slowly, and the Browns hardly at all - granted they didn’t live long enough to notice much increase. :-(

We have had much larger size disparities @ startup previously, with no problems

The other thing I noticed is that the Leghorns from the start seemed out unusually inclined to climb on top of the other chicks, often jamming the smallest, against the feeder, etc. I would not be at all surprised if the deceased simply died from smothering and / or internal injuries.

In the past we only had one White Leghorn at a time, and had no such problems - at last not that we noticed or that seemed unusual. I also don’t recall a Leghorn “outgrowing” the others so quickly.

Size? Heck, one time we had a couple tiny bantam chicks in the brooder with a mix that included a couple Red Rangers - no problem. (Granted that the bantams were really active and quick - I don’t recall seeing them scrunched by other chicks. The little Asian Black seems similar in this regard. In fact, a couple times I’ve seen her climb & stay on top of a resting Leghorn, much the way chicks with a mother hen will climb on the hen.

As it stands now, the Asian Black seems feisty & active enough to avoid getting hurt, the Black Sex Link is big enough now to be ok, and I’m a bit worried about the Black Australorp as it’s 2nd smallest and least active of all the remaining chicks, but, so far it seems ok.

My best guess, probably a lousy one, is that having two slightly larger (and now much larger) very active chicks (the Leghorns) in with the passive Browns and the Red, was a mistake, as the Leghorns unwittingly(?) just beat the crap out of the Browns and the Red.

My FIRST guess was that there was something wrong with the ISA Browns from the get go (too young, trauma in shipping, etc.), but with Red dying too, it seems there must be something else going on.

Maybe I’m just too sentimental (chicks are such sweet little creatures!) but on top of all the other crap going on (virus / income destroyed causing great stress on the family front, riots everywhere, yada-yada) I’m really discouraged at this point. Losing what should be two really top notch efficient egg layers has me particularly groused. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by not losing purchased chicks in the past!

Anyway, “rant off”. Thoughts on the notion that some chick mixes are a bad idea even when they are just chicks???

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