Posted on 07/05/2013 1:06:42 PM PDT by greeneyes
Absolutely. I had so much good produce the first and second year, then whammoo. Last year was the pits. Made me know that I was doing the right thing by continuing to practice.
I admire your gumption.
Yes, I spray the tops and bottoms. The best thing for the ground as well as your plants, is to make sure you have good soil with nutrients.
Healthy plants don’t happen with out great soil-Compost, nutrients, and roatation planting help to achieve this.
Reading my first organic gardening book, I remember the author talking about when he first started out gardening. He noticed that the plants that were in an overlap area were under performers. This made him a believer in rotation planting.
Hubby has used burning, solarization under black plastic, and fungicides on one of his gardens, but so far, I have not had to do anything drastic with mine.
Thanks, We have a great bunch of contributors - they get the credit for making the thread successful and interesting. I just ping the list - they do the rest.
Please tell us more tomorrow on the new thresd. Maybe some bullet points? Thanks.
Glad you came through ok, with not much damage to the garden etc.
It was a case of The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly with the snap peas. It took a couple of days for some of the damage to become apparent, though still not too bad.
The Good: undamaged ones, got sold or traded—31 pounds, so far;
The Bad: slightly damaged or oversized (from not being able to pick in the mud) went to us;
The Ugly: dinged up or very over-aged, and the hulls of the ones we shelled, went to the chickens.
We finished ‘clean picking’ today, so the vines can get a fresh start.
All in all a pretty good outcome it sounds like. I’m heading to bed now. Catch you tomorrow afternoon.
We are learning the same types of lessons, it appears. I did try to start mine (’maters) from seed in February, but with the extra cold and wet spring, I could never get them outside, and for some reason they became unhappy in their little starter cups and eventually expired one by one. That info about the good soil is something I’ve learned as well this season. Sounds like we are on a similar learning trajectory!
Thanks for your insight!
LOL! Thanks for the encouragement! and thanks to this thread, my learning is accelerating!
Yes, I spray the tops and bottoms. The best thing for the ground as well as your plants, is to make sure you have good soil with nutrients.Thank you for your response. It looks as though my three squash plants are not doing so great (I never got around to spraying them with your concoction, as they turned for the worse right after you sent it.) I used a razor blade looking for squash borer yesterday, but the stem "seemed" to be healthy. Have you been successful with winter (butternut) squash?
I have really never tried it. I have grown acorn squash, zuchinni, and summer squash. I like the acorn squash, because it tastes kinda like sweet potatoes.
The other two are kinda bland, so they make a good filler with other stuff, I guess, but the texture is not to my likeing either.
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