Vegetable Gardening

[arielmoon]

Just frustrating cause I want it all organic but I cant find anything that works. My co-worker uses a water/Murphy's Oil Soap/ Cayenne pepper mixture that I may have to try.

So far the peppers are hanging in there. The squash refuses to grow anything- just maybe doesnt like containers but I was trying it out.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Froze about 5 lbs of green beans today.

Did you blanch them first? Good harvest!

The squash refuses to grow anything- just maybe doesnt like containers but I was trying it out.

I don't know myself, but do squash maybe need more than one plant to pollinate each other's flowers?

[OakLeaf]

Insecticidal soap will kill any and all adult insects - including the beneficials, but I've been known to "nuke" plants that are seriously infested. A tablespoon of Dr. Bronner's in a quart of water.

Bt (Thuricide) is considered organic caterpillar control. Hand picking is best, although I know how hard it is to see the hornworms when they're small (sometimes even when they're big!).

Have you got female blossoms on your squash? If you don't have a lot of bees you may need to pollinate them by hand. Easy enough with a small kid's paintbrush.

Yep, blanched my beans.

[smilingcat]

I love Lisa's garden. You so lucky. Everything is so green. Around here its brown borwn brown.

Spokewench, your place looks like its up in the mountains with all those pine trees. Lovely place. Its just matter of water... Oh do keep the pine needles away from the garden. I was told that pine trees release an herbicide of sorts. And that is why ground underneath the pine tree is barren. Its their way of survival of the fittest keep the competition down.

Oh we ended up pulling one of our tomato plants out. Second one will be yanked this weekend. We've been battling with aphid problem. All thanks to the june gloom fog during the last month. We've also had some 2 legged varieties, who are helping themselves to not quite ripe tomatoes. We had to install a pad lock to our gate!! And we are installing a green colored chicken wire mesh around some plants.

I HATE CALIFORNIA!!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

I love Lisa's garden. You so lucky. Everything is so green. Around here its brown borwn brown....
Oh we ended up pulling one of our tomato plants out. Second one will be yanked this weekend. We've been battling with aphid problem. All thanks to the june gloom fog during the last month. We've also had some 2 legged varieties, who are helping themselves to not quite ripe tomatoes. We had to install a pad lock to our gate!! And we are installing a green colored chicken wire mesh around some plants.

I HATE CALIFORNIA!!

Wow, I never heard of anyone who hated living in California before!
I've never been on the west coast, so what do i know.
Brown brown brown...are you being prohibited from watering plants because of drought conditions there?
2 legged?- you mean people are going into your garden and taking tomatoes??
Maybe it's kids- I actually did that once with a kid pal when we didn't think very logically about 'private property'. We were so ashamed and mortified when the grownups called us on it!

We've had the weirdest summer....SO SO much rain and of course that means way less heat and sun. That meant (aside from way less bicycling ) a great lettuce crop, but not so great for tomatoes. A lot of people are now having mildew/mold blight problems in their veggie plants around here.
Though my lettuce is still going great, I can see lots of it is starting to want to bolt, which means many of the larger lettuce plants will soon need to be pulled and composted. Bolted lettuce can look pretty and lush, but often tastes bitter. We are due for some hot dry weather soon, and my lettuce will definitely hate that, along with my spinach seedlings. I'll just keep planting a little lettuce and spinach seed every week or so in the new garden, so that when things start to cool down at the end of summer the babies will be ready to quickly spring into action.

Our giant garden fence is DONE...next comes the finishing phase of filling in all the garden paths and the perimeter with mulch and cleaning up and reseeding the lawn that was torn up with all the work going on.
I'll try to take some pix of the fence later today. It's quite impressive!

[arielmoon]

I don't know myself, but do squash maybe need more than one plant to pollinate each other's flowers?

Oh interesting, I figured I barely had enough room for one plant in the pot, let alone 2... however there have been two itty bitty growths that just never developed into anything. They got about 3 inches long before shriveling up. So maybe I have some bees!

[OakLeaf]

A squash plant can pollinate its own flowers. But they're definitely pollinated by bees and not by wind. Next female flower you get, take a little paintbrush, grab some pollen off the anther of a male flower, and gently brush it onto the stigma of the female flower.

If you plan to save seeds, then you need to isolate the female flower before it opens, with a little cheesecloth or screen or whatever; and hand pollinate it from the same species of squash with a clean brush.

[arielmoon]

omg! performing sex acts on my plants! LOL

ok next silly question... how do I know if the flower is male or female?

[GLC1968]

If you plan to save seeds, then you need to isolate the female flower before it opens, with a little cheesecloth or screen or whatever; and hand pollinate it from the same species of squash with a clean brush.

I just read somewhere that if you get to the flowers first thing in the morning (before even the Mason bees are active), hand pollinate them, and then use a piece of string or yarn to tie the flower shut, you can get pure seeds. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to eventually!