Posted on 05/29/2009 5:08:50 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning Freeper gardeners. This weekend marks the end of May and I hope everyone’s gardens are doing well. I know some have had to delay planting due to weather and we all hope conditions have improved for you.
So far this weekend is looking like a good one, weather wise, all across the Nation except for some lingering rain in the extreme NE. Lets get gardening!
Looks like I am on the western edge of the front, but it is predicted to get down to 36F here for the low Tuesday. Last week they projected a low of 39F and actual was 31F. Guess I will be getting out something to cover plants I have in the ground. Glad I delayed planting half of the plants I started indoors!
“18-18-21”
You’ll have really terrific looking tomato plants, LOL! There are a hundred variables in growing tomatoes. Soil. Weather. Actual RAIN, versus water from the hose. Tomato variety. The alignment of the stars, LOL!
I plant a lot of tomato plants and just let it go at that. If some fail, get diseased or are eaten by a groundhog, I’ll still have plenty.
Just buy a 20-20-20 fertilizer for half the price and get on with your life.
I feed my tomatoes Kelp or Compost Tea. They do just fine. Besides, a plant does not know the chemical make-up of what you’re feeding it. Artificial or organic is no matter to a ‘mater. ;)
Cyborg and I are using three 32 gal. garbage pails to collect rainwater from the gutters, and I'm keen to add two more. If I have my way, not a drop of water from the mains will be used in our gardens.
I'm as green as a very green thing!
The Weather Channel says we’re headed for 34F, but WeatherUnderground says 32F, and I’m a born pessimist.
Wisteria, unless you’re in the deep south, is very hard to get to bloom in the north. It’s got to be the late and/or early freezes, and sometimes both, messing with the bud set for the next season.
But, you’ll always hear the story of, “My neighbor...my sister...my cousin...has one that blooms every year and they never do anything to it...blah, blah, blah.”
The right plant for the right place. If a non-blooming wisteria is making shade for you and looking beautiful and green and leafy and healthy otherwise, I’d enjoy it for what it is; a non-blooming, shady-producing, sturdy, green vine. :)
I don’t know what it is, but rain makes such a huge difference. Electrolites? All the trapped atmospheric pollution that’s actually GOOD for us? Who knows, LOL!
Rinse your hair with rainwater; you’ll feel the difference.
We have a nice, deep well, so along with the rain barrels, we have a good second source of superb water with no additives, save a little iron.
City Folk can always use City Water, but let it sit in containers for a day or so to percolate some of the cr@p out of it. Do that for houseplants too, and you won’t have any white ‘crust’ on the top of the dirt in your houseplants’ pots. (Calcium, usually.)
I just don’t like the idea of that little disk in the water meter spinning round and round, so I can pay for chlorinated water for my veg patch and pay again on the sewerage bill for water that was never handled by the treatment facility.
Where are you located Petronski? I’m in Indiana County. I’m trying to decide if I should cover my tomatoes.
I’m a pessimist, and even down their, I’d think about covering them if it’s not too hard. Check your FRmail.
Frost advisory for New England tonight...June frickin’ 1st! Four ninety-plus days in May; now this.
Down “their?”
Good grief.
Thanks but, unless I do DNA testing, there’s no way to tell what kind they are until they bear fruit. I’ve got 7 plants, 4 open tomato seed packets, no labels, and no memory. They could all be the same or all different. I think one was a cutting.
I’ve got them growing in a homemade earthbox, and this house has high ceilings. I just need to get them to bloom.
Have to take my timer back though, it doesn’t work.
Ah...the “wisteria” problem. LOL Yours is a common lament. This is going to be a long reply, but before ripping them out, try one more thing that may work.
Wisterias are pretty lazy plants. They’ll do the easy part (lush foliage) without blooming and won’t do the hard part (blooming) until forced to. Literally.
First off, deprive that lousy plant of nitrogen. That’ll teach her! But here’s the second part (and YES I do know it sounds insane). This is the proper time of year to do it, as it should have bloomed. I want you to whack the woody part of the plant with a baseball bat. (Now, make sure you take something like a washcloth and rubber band it around the thick part that is striking the plant.) The goal is NOT to damage the cambium layer, it’s to put stress on the plant. I want you to do this every day for 3 weeks to a month. About 4 whacks each day, all at once. After a month, stop. If your wisteria doesn’t bloom next spring after this treatment, you have my permission to pull that ornery plant out.
Why it can work? It “resets” the plant into a more normal cycle. Plants are at their most tempting in the nursury when they are in full bloom. But...in order to get them that way, they are usually grown in a climate foreign to your own. They can often seem to never get their act together, bloomwise. The “stress whacks” I mention simulate the plant being attacked by a dear or beaver, perhaps enough to kill the plant. Under those circumstances, a healthy plant will (at the proper time) release plant hormones that will enable it to survive...via SEED. Translation=no flower, no seed. heh The timing is designed to coincide with the normal time that they would do this in your area (i.e. as your neighbors’ wisterias are fading and going to seed). This exact same method can be used on recalcitrant lilacs purchased years earlier (lots of time for Mother’s Day) which never bloom again.
My son’s teacher was desperate for her obnoxious wisteria to bloom in time for her wedding, exactly 12 months away, as the reception was going to be at her home. I gave her the exact same advice I gave you. The following year, at the end of the year field trip, I was in the lot to pick up my son. His teacher (from the previous year) ran across the parking lot to thank me. It worked! She walked me over to her car to see her wedding album which she had been showing everyone, and lo and behold, that wisteria was in full bloom!
Sometimes, we just gotta show these plants who is the boss around here! ;)
Good luck!
Nascar took it's toll on gardening today and yes I cut Church to watch. It is supposed to rain tomorrow but it will just be a nuisance...
If your greenhouse gets warm enough, by all means put your little tomato in there! My friends in the NW often mention the same problem as you have. The more sun and heat the better. Just remember to keep it around 86 or so degrees. If the plant is isolated, without any pollinators, you may need to take a Q-tip and kinda pollinate them by hand. Or bring a companion tomato plant in there and leave the door open part of the day so your winged friends can get in and do their thing. Don’t water them every day. Water them when they start to wilt. Tomatoes benefit from a bit of water stress. Low nitrogen (or you’ll get all vine) and high phosphorous fertilizer.
Hope that helps!
Good article tubebender it echos what gardengirl and Diana have been saying about their business.
In my flower garden I have tulips, some perennials, dahlias, salvia (sp), cosmos and assylium (sp), a baby scotch pine, and a small maple tree.
Hubby stuck 3’ height stakes all around it, and draped an old tarp over it all. It was still open a bit at the bottom, but it seemed to work.
;-)
We got a heavy frost last night. I’ll be going out in a few minutes to see how everything fared.
Good article. and that’s exactly what’s happening around here, too. the last time we’ve been THIS busy at the garden center was in Y2K.
Today I work a late shift, but when I go in I will be ordering more small fruits and fruit trees. I still have customers looking for strawberries, potatoes and onions, all I have left are onions, and our seed wall has been stripped bare each and every week since January.
Simply amazing.
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