Vegetable Gardening

I'm pretty sure I read in this thread somewhere about treating mould on the plants? I had forgotten that this happened last year and never got to harvest more than one zucchini. Never clued in that it might be some sort of mould - all white-ish on the leaves and withering the more affected ones. It's now widely affecting my zucchini, snap pea, beans, and some tomatoes.

Could someone who posted a natural remedy for mould post it again, please? I think it's too late for me now, but it would be good to know how to deal with it. thanks!!

We have located a yellow jacket nest underneath one of our organic raised beds. Does anyone know of a natural remedy to kill them? Or, should I use the pesticide and not plant there for a few years? Or, does it not matter because the roots don't go deep enough to matter? I lined the bottom of each bed with chicken wire so chipmunks couldn't burrow into the beds and eat stuff. :) any suggestions would be appreciated.

Its called powdery mildew.

Seriously affected leaves must be cut off and thrown away carefully so that the dust does not go flying around.

If you live in an area where it rains a lot and the soil can tolerate sodium, then you can mix some sodium bicarb out of your kitchen in water then mist the affected area. Better solution is potassium carbonate, (potash).

You can also use sulphur powder on the leaves. Don't buy the sulphur pellets for acidifying the soil. Powdered sulphur will be referred as organic fungacide. Any half way self-respecting gardener would know what it is.

Another thing you need to do is feed the soil with high potassium fertilizer. You could also feed some potash.

Last item, when watering the plants, try avoid getting the leaves wet or watering late in the evening.

hope this helps.

thanks, smilingcat. Two of the things I often do/did was to water at night and get the leaves wet...

I'll try the baking soda route, though I do believe it's too late for my plants. Even with no mildew I think it's getting too cool now. I shall remember for next year and fertilize it properly. They all started out so beautifully, it's such a shame to see them go downhill like that.

The Mildew Cure I posted the link to earlier, works really really well on powdery mildew on squash. It's what I bought it for originally. There's baking soda in it, also garlic and some other things. Squash grow so vigorously that I've never lost a plant that I've treated.

Hoping my plants can hang in there until I get back into town - they needed sprayed before we left on Thursday, but it was pouring down rain -

A GOOD garden day- for dinner we had the very FIRST modest harvest from our big new veggie garden...three different kinds of lettuce for our salad: green and purple romaine, loose leaf, and butterhead. Oh, and also a few lovely young beet leaves. Then from the 'old little garden' (which is losing steam fast now) I got some tomatoes and my very first bunch of scallions I have ever grown. Then I had plenty of fresh alfalfa sprouts on hand that I grew in a jar in my kitchen.

So for dinner we had beautiful big salad platters with lettuces, tomato slices, sprouts, scallions, and some garlic-herb creamy goat cheese (the one thing i bought). It was fabulous and so exciting. :p :p

Not having a garden, I went out and did a little urban foraging the other day. The blackberries here are superb and plentiful this year (I've heard it was a good year for berries in general in the Pacific Northwest). I picked probably 25 or so cups of big, beautiful tasty berries. There are so many that I didn't even have to get all scratched up to get them - I just worked my way around the edge of the bushes and picked only the ones easy to reach - and I could still be choosy about only getting the best berries. I've made a "slump" and some freezer jam so far. I need to use them up though, they'll only last a few days in the fridge.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OakLeaf

The Mildew Cure I posted the link to earlier, works really really well on powdery mildew on squash. It's what I bought it for originally. There's baking soda in it, also garlic and some other things. Squash grow so vigorously that I've never lost a plant that I've treated.

Hoping my plants can hang in there until I get back into town - they needed sprayed before we left on Thursday, but it was pouring down rain -

---

I was referring to that link, and for whatever reason I can't find it (and yeah, a bit too lazy...). Could I bother you to post it again?

thanks muchly!

Right here.

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/catalog/p...ubcategory=319

We've been harvesting zucchini, tomatoes, cukes, plums and apples, like crazy. I've also got some gorgeous watermelons developing and we are picking about a half-quart of strawberries every week still.

Oh, and get this! I just harvested a beautiful acorn squash from our compost heap! We decided to let the plant that grew out of the side of the compost pile keep going. It's now spreading across the lawn and I harvested the first squash off it last night. We will cook it up tonight and see if it's worth waiting for the remaining squash that is developing. Totally free food!

So far, our only disappointment this year has been the beans. The asparagus beans are icky, the two kinds of Kentucky beans didn't do well at all (one bush, one pole). Only the cross breed bean that a guy at work gave me is doing anything at all... Eh...maybe next year.

Lastly, our corn is unbelievable! Some of the varieties are about 8 ft tall! All of the stalks have ears developing nicely, too. Unfortunately, I didn't think about cross-pollination, so I planted 4 types too close together. I may have a ton of dent corn in the making! :eek:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OakLeaf

Right here.

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/catalog/p...ubcategory=319

---

"cannot be shipped to Canada"...

I'll book mark it for next year. My female zucchini buds are turning yellow after about a week (it's green zucchini), and two of the smaller plants are basically dead now, so I'll just have to keep this in mind for next year. Live and learn!

Aw, bummer. Hope you get it under control.

We had our first sweet corn tonight. Mmmmmmmm. I've read that you have a window of about 90 minutes between picking sweet corn and when you have to cook it, before the sugars start turning into starch. All I know is, it sure was sweet.

Last night I went out to cut some parsley for my dinner. I had 4 big healthy plants the other day. It was gone! I was blaming the neighbors but that didn't make sense.

I looked a little closer and found the culprit. There were 4 of these guys chomping away, fat and happy....

After a lot of research online I found out they were parsley worms - and they turn into beautiful swallowtail butterflies.

No more parsley. Sigh.

On Sunday, I went peach picking. I have 30lbs sitting in my fridge, awaiting their jammie fate:D I still have a few zucchini that I'm figuring out what to do with. Went to a friend's last night for dinner and we exchanged goods. I got a bunch of Roma and grape tomatoes from their garden, they got some peaches and eggs from my aunt's chickens. I wish we could go back to the bartering system:rolleyes:

I canned 13 pints of spiced peaches, 6 pints of brandied peaches, and 4 of pears with white wine. I'm about out of pint jars, but have lots of 1/2 pints still. If I could still get some cherries, I'd love to do some cherry preserves.

I just picked a lot of cherry tomatoes, broccoli and green beans from the garden this morning. When picking the green beans, I found bugs everywhere! They're sort of rust colored with black spots, looking somewhat like ladybugs but I caught one eating one of the beans. I also saw some prickly-looking yellow larvae on the leaves--ick! So, I went online to try and find out what these bugs were and found out they are Mexican bean beetles. I sprayed the plants with this hot-pepper concoction that we use to repel bugs from some of the other plants and we'll see if that helps. Maybe I'll go out later with some gloves and a container of soapy water and pick off as many of the bugs as I can find. Here's a link to info about the bugs in case anyone else is dealing with these guys: http://www.uri.edu/ce/factsheets/she...eanbeetle.html

This is what we canned the other night. 6 half pints and one pint of peach jam, 6 pints of spiced peaches (my goodness that syrup was delicious!), and 4 pints of sliced peaches. There are a few more of each coming. I plan on going pear and raspberry picking, and then it's tomato and apple time!:cool:

Canned 20 pints of cut-up tomatoes, and working on sauce.

Need a chest freezer.

Went back to my aunt's last night, as I was told there were blueberries to pick. Took a walk around the garden to see what else I could pick, and was shocked to see the stringbeans were still growing! I'd harvested quite a few about a month back and I thought they were done, but I was happilly mistaken. Also, the zucchini had totally rebounded from whatever was affecting it a few weeks ago, and the leaves looked healthy, flowers were blooming, and we picked four more. Grabbed a few cucumbers, some eggplant, a few peppers, and lots of cherry tomatoes:
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._3774494_n.jpg

Then I took a trip to the blueberry bush. I cannot believe how many blueberries we've picked off this single bush so far, and last night was no exception!
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos...6_156101_n.jpg

Those bowls quickly became these:
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._3841159_n.jpg

This weekend I'm going raspberry and pear picking, and we'll be doing some more canning on Sunday:D

Everyone's harvest is looking great! I went to Utah - Kanab, Bryce Canyon, Escalante, Torrey and then back home through Mexican Hat on the motorcycle this long weekend. It was great fun and absolutely beautiful.

I saw some wonderful gardens up in Utah as well! I was drooling over their corn, squash, dinner plate dahlias, etc., etc.

Well, we drove down from Byrce Canyon to Escalante and I know Escalante to be in a "banana belt" good growing area and thought I would be able to find a peach at a roadside stand. I could not find a roadside stand, but Hubby and I stopped at a little park in town off the main road to rest and have a snack; across the road was another wonderful garden. The owners had a bunch of llamas also. It was a wonderful sight! The owners were out and about in their garden and pretty soon the lady walked across the street with a box she took out of her car. She had just been at the farmers market trying to sell veges and fruits and the box was full of ripe peaches! She gave us some for free and that was my lucky day! What a sweet woman.

was at a local "organic" grocery store of sort. Walked by a refridgerated section and on the shelves were all these sprouts.

a light bulb goes off in my head !!!

Hey, those sprouts... They've sprouted duh!!! and they were cheaper than seed packets and to boot, they've all sprouted duh!! ...

So bought a pkg of sugar snap peas for less than a buck. scattered them peas all over one cleared area and scattered some compost over the top and some uncomposted dead stalks and leaves from my veggie plants for cover.

voila.. Most of them have already shot through the compost cover and I can see all the green shoots poking their head through the ground cover. very very cool!!! If I'm lucky, I'll have a whole lot of sugar snap peas. :D :D :D

Sugar snap pea I think is a nitrogen fixer so it should help the soil too.

oh gotta can more tomatoes... make jalapeno pepper jellies... dry some serrano chilli and grind tem up substitute for cayenne pepper...

soetimes life is good. ;)

It will be frosts in 4 weeks here.

But I've kept up with sprouting alfalfa in jars in my kitchen...every 5 days or so I start another jar going, and I have a continuous supply of nice fresh sprouts for salads and sandwiches... :p Each large jar only needs two tablespoons of seed, costing me maybe 25 cents?
This will be great this winter when the snow is flying... jars full of bright green, sparkling on the windowsill.... :)

Picked the rest of the sweet corn yesterday. I really didn't intend to put any of it by, but wound up planting more than we could eat, so I froze 3-1/2 pints.

I'll do another batch of tomato sauce some time this week. My plants hung in there, barely, from the bacterial speck, but they didn't produce nearly as much as they would've if I'd kept them healthy, and the main crop's just about done. I've still got volunteer tomatoes coming on though.

I'm sure glad that chest freezer fit in the back of my Prius. :D

Nine six-ounce portions of pesto, plus what we ate tonight. I burned out my basil receptors picking, washing and prepping the leaves, and couldn't even taste what I ate tonight. :rolleyes: Oh well.

Even in Florida, the reminder of lush summer will be so welcome come February. There's just nothing like pesto to bring summer into your home!

Here's my blog update on how my garden is coming along:
http://strumelia.blogspot.com/2009/0...f-lettuce.html

veggie-wise, I only got two cherry tomatoes from my garden this weekend, but there's alot of basil still to be picked and a two green tomatoes on the big vine.

But the big news is that I harvested 8 wheelbarrowsful (yes, 8!) of finished, sifted compost from my compost pile today! It was alot of work, but a good workout and well worth the effort.

I put two wheelbarrowsful (from now on referred to as WBF because typing that out is a pain) in my winter collards raised bed, two WBF as mulch in two new flowerbeds on either side of the door to my cottage (I have a small cottage in my backyard that will be my office this time next year, but now it's just used as storage). I planted hollyhocks, shasta daisies, and coreopsis that I have been growing from seed all summer. I have alot more of them too! And the last 4 WBF are in the "finished compost" section of my three-part compost system that I made of shipping pallets. I'll be able to use that as needed.

I have four huge oak trees, so most of that compost comes from last years leaves. Just in time for this year's leaves, which will begin to fall in a few weeks. This year I'm renting a leaf shredder!

Ok all you farmers. :cool: It's hardly a vegetable garden but .... I've found that chard, kale, leafy greens will survive and thrive in planters in my dark, sunless patio.

Yum, kale!

The leaves on my red Russian kale keep getting bigger, but they're still tender and delicious. The one plant that overwintered from last year, and didn't bolt, the leaves are nearly two feet across, and still so tender.

Hope it does as well in containers as it's doing in my garden!

I have very little sun. You see the patio door in the background? On the other side is another group of condos, neighbors walls to either side. So there's sun from maybe oh 10am-2pm :p

Remembering that greens could bolt with a lot of sun I picked up some starts at a local farm market and whadya know. They are surviving if not thriving.

Here's my harvest from last night. Eggplant, bell peppers, cucumbers, zucchini,tomatoes. Can't wait for that Eggplant parmesan this weekend! It is getting cold at night; have to really watch the garden from now on. I will try to get all the green tomatoes off before it freezes!

I don't have any edible vegetables but I have a monster tomato plant that just started growing out of one of my pots. It has now completely overtaken the original pot owner, this Jasmine plant...

I mixed some worm castings into the soil... I think that is the big factor, coz before i did that it was growing pretty slowly. It grew all the bits above the metal stick's hook in just one week.

Also featured are some ginger and tumeric plants i have just potted about 2 weeks ago. seem to have taken root pretty well. turmeric is top right of the aloe and sole ginger shoot is bottom right.

anyone got ideas whats the next step to this tomato plant. does anyone have an idea if it will bear fruit? i mean, do i need to have two plants for pollination or something?



Attachment 10090

Attachment 10091

Attachment 10093

Attachment 10089

Tomatoes are self-pollinating. You're good with one plant. Might want to stake or cage it though, because it'll start falling over when the fruit gets heavy.

I had no idea you could grow ginger in pots! How cool is that.

I made five more pints of tomato sauce last night. How is it that all those tomatoes cook down into such a tiny amount of sauce??

I spent all day yesterday cooking down 25lbs of tomatoes into 8 quarts of sauce. Almost doesn't seem worth the effort, but I'm sure I'll feel otherwise some winter night when I'm exhausted and don't want to cook. Also picked a boatload of massive stringbeans from the garden. The further they're getting from the ground, the larger they're getting. Broccoli is making a tiny comeback, eggplant is just about done, tomatoes are definitely done, still a few zucchini here and there, and the peppers are going strong. Oh, and the blueberry bush is still flourishing:rolleyes:

This week may be the end of the season for us. Looks like it will likely freeze on Wednesday night.

Only 37 tonight and tomorrow.

We have been totally neglecting our garden for the past 3 weeks. We've been watering...but that's about it. So yesterday we had a couple of extra hands, so we had a good harvest... This was what we ended up with (leaving a ton of blackberries & grapes behind!):

http://i631.photobucket.com/albums/u...ieharvest2.jpg

http://i631.photobucket.com/albums/u...ieharvest1.jpg

The massive zucchini's you see are actually going to be goat treats. The acorn squash was our bonus compost plant - so we have no idea if it'll taste ok but we plan to try it tonight!

Great harvest pix, GLC! :p

I just got home from a firend's house where I picked a big batch of her pickling cucumbers and left her a big bag of fresh lettuce and scallions in exchange.
Going to make my first bread and butter pickles this week!

Deeaimond- tomato looks good- loosen those ties around the stalk so the stem can keep growing without getting choked. Looks like it could benifit from a bit more sun if you have it. Worm castings are good for it! :)

I found this recipe for Bloody Mary mix and thought some of you might have surplus tomatoes. I added extra tabasco and horseradish to give it some bite. Haven't had any as a bloody mary, but as just veggie juice it's really tasty!

http://www.recipezaar.com/Aunt-Iones...Canning-187969

Enjoy!

Great harvest GLC - If I did not water for 3 weeks; no way would we have anything of any value! that is the life when you live at 7,000 feet in Arizona!

I'm lucky if things do okay if I don't water for 3 days!

Wow, GLC! Just Wow!

Spoke - water was the one thing we did do! We can't go without watering here in the summer or everything would die in about 3 days, too. Winter it rains, summer...not so much! :)