official veggie gardener's thread

[txrandom]

I finally got around to building my indoor gardening set up. The potting soil was a breeding ground for fungus gnats or some other type of insect. I've killed a lot of them with a bowl full of soap, water and vinegar but waiting for some BT to arrive to kill them for good.

How long does basil take to sprout? Should I be watering and leaving the light on a lot before it has even seeded?

 

[spidey07]

ive got one plant with just some yellowing leaves. the others that im seeing ave been mid plat, yellowing, black spots, shriveling stems...

Ugg, I'm no expert on blight but that sounds like tell tale signs.

You can take your soil to your local ag extension and they can test. You can also call them and send pictures and they'll tell you what's up.

 

[meltdown75]

some of my green peppers have brownish red rotting patches on them

HALP

 

[spidey07]

some of my green peppers have brownish red rotting patches on them

HALP

If it's on the end it's blossom end rot. Need more calcium.

 

[HydroSqueegee]

Ugg, I'm no expert on blight but that sounds like tell tale signs.

You can take your soil to your local ag extension and they can test. You can also call them and send pictures and they'll tell you what's up.

after the devastation blight brought last year to my tomatoes, im well familiar with it. just got to keep it under control through august, by then i'll be sick of tomatoes.

 

[meltdown75]

If it's on the end it's blossom end rot. Need more calcium.

come fix my garden for me. i'll provide the beers

 

[slag]

After about a month or so of green tomaters on my vines, this week brought several days of mid 90's heat and the 'maters have started ripening full steam. I pulled 2 off on Monday, 3 off yesterday morning, 5 off last night, and it rained all day today. I have 5 or 6 vines, about 8 feet tall, one of which is cherry tomatoes, some beefsteak, a roma, and i forget the rest...

Got 5 ears of corn off our stalks already and the potatoes plants are starting to die.

 

[slag]

come fix my garden for me. i'll provide the beers

4 gallons of whole milk or 5 gallons of calcium fortified orange juice should do the trick.

 

[slag]

That second picture looks like Early Girl? Start taking off the suckers, they are reaching for the sky.

I always ignore the suckers... Makes for more places for blossoms to grow and with the heat we have in Kansas, I've never had it affect fruit size or number. My neighbor always pulls his off though but has never given me a good reason. Why do people do this??

 

[spidey07]

4 gallons of whole milk or 5 gallons of calcium fortified orange juice should do the trick.

Or watering with 1 gallon and 1/4 cup of hydrated lime one time. Meltdown, this is why for peppers, tomatoes and may other plants it's a good idea to add dolomitic lime to the soil. This adds Mg, Ca and other elements critical to calcium uptake (Mg being the BIG one that helps Ca uptake). Dolomitic lime will not affect your soil pH like normal Hydrated Lime will. Almost any blossom end rot is due to not enough calcium and sometimes not enough Mg or both.

-edit-
Also careful with hydrated lime, it can burn plants. Dolomitic lime is much better, you can find it at home depot in the grass seed section. The power kind is what I always have on hand, it mixes with soil really well and water. Since I've been adding the dolomite every year I don't have to worry about BER anymore. Just do more googling on "blossom end rot" and you'll find all you need to know.

 

[meltdown75]

fuck. thanks man.

well is it too late to fix them or what... the jaleps and sweet banana peps don't seem to have been affected.

 

[spidey07]

Blossom end rot can be fixed, it's just a lack of calcium. And if you google around watering or periods of heavy drought/wet and types of fertilizer as well. Google it. Normally the first fruit will show it and you can save the rest if you do something about it. You can also pull the fruit early and just cut away the blossom rot. It will eventually rot out 1/2 - 3/4 of the fruit if you let it go however.

I've never had BER on my jalapenos or other chili peppers, but I have on bell peppers. Normally it's just the first couple of fruit and if I see it I hit them with some dolomite or lime. I think I already said be very careful with the lime.

But for me, BER has ALWAYS been cured by more calcium and Mg. It's a very common problem with nightshades.

 

[meltdown75]

cool. i have some plant food in the garage that contains calcium / lime. maybe i'll just throw some in there near the bell peppers. thanks again

 

[spidey07]

I always ignore the suckers... Makes for more places for blossoms to grow and with the heat we have in Kansas, I've never had it affect fruit size or number. My neighbor always pulls his off though but has never given me a good reason. Why do people do this??

It's somewhat personal preference but there is some fact to the pruning them produces better fruit set and larger fruit (you're forcing the plant to put it's energy into making fruit rather than making foliage). It also encourages a few main larger/strong vines instead of a bunch of smaller ones. Helps get more water to the fruit. On my paste tomatoes I just let them go, but on the beefstake/slicer variety I prune. My brandywines are bigger than a softball now, easily 2 pounds.

There is much disagreement on it however.

 

[BoomerD]

My wife persuaded me to put in one cucumber plant this year. I don't really have room to let one sprawl over the ground, so I decided to try one on a trellis. I have this large "wall of green" growing up the trellis next to my fence, and it's been covered in blossoms, but I never noticed any "fruit" growing on it anywhere...Tonight I went and took a good look, just to see what's up...and lo and behold, buried under the mass of green foilage, there are cucumbers....some are still tiny, 2-3 inches, but there are a couple that are 6"+.

Even on the trellis, it's a PITA to keep the cucumber "in control." I have to fight it all the time to keep new branches growing up instead of out.

 

[spidey07]

There's an old saying that cukes and zuchini are in a race once they take off. Seems boomer has found this out.

 

[BoomerD]

The cuke was planted way late in the season. Took over a month before it actually started growing...

I have 3 pumpkins in a pot that she insisted we HAVE to grow...I'm gonna transplant them into part of the garden in the next couple of days...I suspect they'll try to overgrow everything as well.

 

[BoomerD]

We've had tomatoes coming out our ears...picked over 100 in the past week...so, rather than let them go to waste, we fired up the canning process.

Earlier in the week, I made 1/2 gallon of salsa, with a dozen jalapenos, 6 serranos, and a couple of the unidentified peppers I wrote about earlier. Not bad...not hot enough for my taste, but almost too hot for my wife's liking.

Yesterday, we canned 3 quarts of chopped tomatoes and herbs, and 3 quarts of pasta sauce.

Since none of the tomatoes are Romas, the sauce is a bit sweeter and thinner than we'd like, but the flavor is good. (the sunsugar tomatoes are...sugar sweet...who'd have thunk it? )

We went through most of the ripe tomatoes on the plants...but there's at least another dozen that will be ripe in the next few days.

I'm trying to convince her to make a few jars of jalapeno jelly with the plethora of peppers we have...and she's thinking about it. :biggrin:

 

[TraumaRN]

Well after almost 4 inches of rain in the last 3 days, my garden went complete ape shit. My one tomato is now as tall as my 8 foot privacy fence. Yet only has like 3 tomatos on it and picking the suckers does nothing, the thing is just going nuts.

I've got multiple(6+) grapefruit/softball sized cantaloupe all safely secured with old nylon pantyhose slings so they don't break the vine since they are growing up a fence.

I've got enough cucumbers now that I'm going to make but hot and cold style pickles tomorrow.

And finally going to be able to pick some Anaheim peppers this week

 

[DrPizza]

Yellow tomatoes are DELICIOUS! Discovered that one of my 6-packs of Roma tomatoes were actually some other variety. Have had a few tomatoes to snack on so far, but the plants are absolutely loaded; 100's of tomatoes out there. My cantaloupes and watermelons surprised me - I gave a couple of them up for dead; suddenly they started growing incredibly vigorously. Almost overnight, I have softball sized fruit growing. Cukes are doing good, picked some zucchini already. Peas didn't do shit - grew, then stopped. Too hot/dry for them for a couple weeks. Plenty of rain lately with nice warm temperatures, so I should be getting more and more food soon.

 

[BoomerD]

Doc, we were awash in yellow maters last year. The dammed plant grew as tall as my 6' privacy fence, about 10 feet long, and at least 4 feet deep...I probably picked 300 baseball-sized maters from that one.

I picked my first cucumbers this morning. A bit small, (~8") but my wife said she couldn't wait. not sure what she wants them for... ()

Finally got the three pumpkin plants transplanted. I did NOT want pumkins...but my wife wanted 3 for the grandkids...so, like it or not, I have pumpkins in the garden.

 

[DrPizza]

Two types of cukes in our garden - apparently the pickling cukes are supposed to be picked smaller. The regular cukes are awesome though. Not sure if I'm going to make any pickles or not though. I've never been much of a pickle fan.

 

[Ms. DICKINSON]

I'm growing bhut jolokia, the world's hottest pepper. A few plants failed but 6 still holding on. One seems to be thriving and flowering now. (Pic by request.)

 

[DrPizza]

Where would one get seeds for bhut jolokia?

 

[HydroSqueegee]

Where would one get seeds for bhut jolokia?

x2. id be real interested in these.