2021 Veggie gardens

I think that’s a GREAT idea! Some cherry tomatoes in a hanging basket with drip irrigation. I am LOVING Maglia Rosa for this, although not in a hanging basket.

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They do calm the mind and soothe the spirit.

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As I’m giving this more thought we did plant late this year due to my re-landscaping the back yard. Last fall I bought a shed and I placed it on top the location of our previous garden. So after 20± years of fertilizing and enriching the soil this year I just planted in new top soil.
I more than doubled the sq ft in the new location my garden is now 16x16 vs 10x8-ish previously. The landscaping took longer than expected so in my rush to get it finished and planted (in early June) I neglected to add any supplements to the soil.

I’ve normally shied away from using any spray fertilizer/supplements like miracle grow. Maybe I should this year? What are your guys thoughts on those products?

FYI as you can tell I / we (it’s really my wife’s thing she finds it therapeutic and well I just like food lol) are not serious gardeners. Lol Your advice and help are truly appreciated.

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As YOU can tell, my pleasure !

Depends on who you ask, and some say in ground vs containers. I am almost exclusively in containers, and almost exclusively granulated organics, which some say can’t work without soil microbes. Lately I supplement with liquid when I get clues and time.

Fox Farm

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Looks like your corn is sending up pollen flower stalks, the “tassel”. The female “silks” will appear as threadlike growths where a leaf and the stem meet.

If you didn’t add soil amendments, the plants will likely benefit from “side dressing”, applying a small amount of fertilizer on top of the soil, near the root zone. Watering will wash nutrients down. It’s your choice of if you want organic or not. I only use organics in water vegetables like Water Chestnuts and Chinese Water potato, because I don’t want to kill tadpoles and salamanders living in these shallow pools. Organic fertilizer applied to soil generally results in raccoons or opossums digging up the plants here.

The plants don’t really care, nutrients are nutrients. Foliar feeding is a good idea. A seaweed extract sprayed on foliage every other week can help a lot. Alternate with another liquid feed, like Miracle Gro, Peter’s, etc. Stay away from fish emulsion if you have the aforementioned pests. Fish emulsion may attract cats and vultures, as well. When using organics, it’s best to apply those into the soil ahead of planting, so critter digging isn’t an issue.

As for tomatoes, there is variation in heat tolerances. Most tomatoes suffer when the day/night temperatures are at or over 79F/68F, (26C/20C) (Lohar and Peat, 1998). This is not to say they’ll stop production altogether, but heat stress will reduce fruit set and quality during this period. Many modern types have been selected, indirectly or directly, to have more heat tolerance, but there are limits. Nearly all vegetable plants, and plants in general, can go pollen-sterile if it gets hot enough; reason to be very concerned with global warming in many regions.

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Just saying thank you to you @bogman and everyone who has offered advice and support!

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We live in the county just north of Skagit, and I’ve never heard nor seen these potatoes. I’ll have to start looking around, as I love yellow potatoes.

Sasha, I’m not sure if the Skagit Valley Gold potatoes are being sold commercially as food; maybe smaller farms sell them. Their production, pounds/acre are below other types, but a gourmet market could up their market value. I got “seed” potatoes from Cultivariable. It’s an amazing company, though many of the food plants they offer won’t grow in our hot climate. Their potato selections are remarkable.

That last picture you have looks like cilantro. In addition to the broader parsley like leaves, sometimes cilantro gets these tufted feathery looking leaves like that plant does, or at least when my cilantro plants get very mature, that’s what they look like.

Hmm…I wonder if this is why my tomatoes don’t seem to be ripening on the vine. The first two tomatoes that popped up have grown larger in size and appear to be the size I would expect for a mature fruit, but they are green and solid. In the mean time, the plant has exploded with a lot more growing fruit, so the plant would seem to be doing ok otherwise. We started off the summer with insane 100F heat for several days in the row, and it’s since bounced back between hot and humid (90ish or higher) and then cool, rainy gray days (in the 60s and 70s). It’s certainly trended hotter than cooler, but we also have had crazy rain the last two or so weeks (I’m in MA/Northeast).

Or maybe I’m impatient. It does seem like I’ve been waiting for at least 4 weeks for one to grow and ripen. In that same time, my shishito peppers though have gone from a few buds to flowering a lot and having a handful of peppers that I can pick soon! Has pepper performance just skewed my expectations?

Tomatoes are just slow to ripen. Peppers, especially smaller peppers have a lot of air space in them; they are not filled with juicy, tangy, flavorful, tomatoey pulp. Shishito peppers, on the other hand, are usually picked green and don’t have nearly the weight, (or wait).

Hot weather mostly affects fruit set, pollination. In very hot conditions, flowers can just abort, drop off, producing no fruit.

Celery and Cilantro are closely related, umbellifers. With cutting celery, which lacks the thick, succulent stalks (petioles) the celery flavor is concentrated. However, many of the cutting celery varieties can get awfully bitter in hot climates. Many will return to palatable when fall, cooler weather arrives.

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REALLY hoping this is lacewing, especially since I have been using a bit of spinosad powder, and been worried about beneficials. Bad picture but I am clinging to it.

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This picture is slightly better.

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Yep, those look like classic Lacewing eggs. Little alligator-shaped pest-eaters ought to pop out before long!

According to Oregon State Univ., dried spinosad has little effect on beneficials. That may explain why there are Lacewing eggs there.

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Thanks for the reference.

One of the vines growing this year is from Baker Creek Seeds. They call it “Python Snake Bean”, but it’s really a snake gourd, Trichosanthes cucumeria var. anguina, which makes crazy-long fruits. The “anguina” means resembling snakes. It makes a pretty little flower.

So far, no fruits have formed. I’ll try to update as the plants grow. They’re on a tall trellis.

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@bogman, I love those flowers. Please show us the beans too!

I’m having a lot of radial cracks in my Earthbox tomatoes.

They are on an irrigation reservoir that fills automatically, and there has been no rain, but it’s been very hot, even for us.

Fruit cracking in tomato

I just cut it out, but I’d like to fix it ifI can.

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Shrinkrap, heat is almost certainly the culprit, considering your irrigation system. That’s going to be tricky to mitigate. It might be possible to give the plants some shade and see if that helps. That Surround stuff, a clay coating, is supposed to help with sun scald on peppers, but might work with tomatoes. What I don’t know is if it’s the air temperature or where the sun hits the fruit causes the most damage. If the fruits are well shaded by the foliage, then air temperature is an issue.

The larger, oblate shaped fruits seem the most prone to cracking, although it happens on even long, paste types. Heirloom types often are very prone to cracking.

If the plants are under a Calcium deficiency, that can make cracking and blossom end rot worse. When it’s hot, you have to be really careful with foliar Calcium sprays, like Rot Stop, Calcium Chloride. It would be best to spray that in the evening, after the sun goes down, and maybe at half strength, but more frequently. In very hot weather, I’d treat one or two plants, during the evening, and see if they’re ok the next few days; do a test. Calcium helps tomatoes manage water uptake, among other things.

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Thanks again @bogman ! There is a lot of foliage,and none of what I think of as sunscald. The peppers seem fine, and there hasn’t been much BER on either peppers or tomatoes. The clay idea is interesting; I remember you mentioning it before an saying it was messy. That could be fun!

I will definitely try some shade and some cal-mag. Is it better on 5he foliage or tomatoes or can I add it to the reservoirs? I’ve been using a “fertigator” for supplemental feedings.

31xt-Gea64L.AC
Fertilizer Injector

Organic fertilizers take longer to work but are better off for the soil (and your health) in the long run.

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