I am dying to ask the questions on garlic and finally find the forum.
So i had garlic with scapes before, however for the last two years, the garlic I have would be almost dying in mid June or before, with leaves turning yellow and also no scapes. I digged then out last week and most are mini-sized, about the size of 2 or 3 cloves. Last year, since all the garlic leaves were dying, I lost track of where they were, so i didn’t dig them out. Anyone can share some insight as to what is wrong? Did I use bad seed garlic?
The neighborhood rabbits also love my cucumber plants. Lol!
I was so happy to find someone selling seedlings of a sweet pepper variety called “lipstick” this spring. I bought 4, and they are doing really well, but probably going to all get ripe while I’m away! Ahhhhh, I can hope they’ll be more.
Lipstick peppers are small, and ripen to red. Larger than a tube of lipstick but not by much. They are thick walled, full of water and flavor, and very prolific! Usually the sweet peppers take forever, but these are prolific like hot peppers always are.
@SincererLove - I’m not sure about your garlic problems. Not all garlic produces scapes and I’m not sure if it relates to the variety of garlic or some vaguery about the season or the climate. The pros will remove the scapes to make a bigger head form, so no scapes forming should be OK. Generally, the bigger the “seed” clove you plant, the bigger the head will eventually be.
When I grew them in the mid atlantic they were ready by early July. That was late for some of them, and they had started to crack open from heavy rain.
Check out the Netflix documentaries “Rotten”. One of them is about garlic and you will see lots of it growing!
@SincererLove what type of garlic are you planting??? Are you using hardneck? Organicallly grown? You mentioned seed? I wonder if you are talking about the little garlic “bubbles” that can be planted from the small bulb that forms on the scapes.
If you plant just a garlic bubble (like a little pearl) it will only produce a clove NOT a head of garlic. You can take that clove, save it for the next fall and plant it and get heads next year.
You should not be using ordinary grocery store garlic. Go to your local farmers market end of summer and buy some hardneck organic garlic and ask them for any tips on replanting.
In absence of squash (so far) this year, I’ve found sugar snap peas make a nice addition to my morning breakfast saute (potato, peppers, onions, mushrooms, spinach alongside two fried eggs from our chickens). Even when squash come in (assuming we eventually get some!), I’ll probably keep the peas as long as we have some. With the heat wave, I’m pretty much figuring what we have now will be the end. As most of you probably know, peas don’t tolerate heat (sigh).
My hot peppers are coming along really well, but the are growing slowly. I have 25 plants—some of the really hot varieties (ghost pepper and Carolina Reaper) that I started from seed are also doing well. I have been experimenting with hot pepper jelly/jam recipes for a few years and think I have some good combinations. I have been giving these away to friends as gifts. One friend, who really loves it, owns a store and encouraged me to provide him with jars to sell in his shop (think cute New England general store). I have been having fun coming up with a label design, getting a license for a home kitchen, figuring out what size jars, etc. As my H likes to point out—I probably am going to lose money!!
The rabbits are eating my green bean plant leaves . Why do they eat the plants but never the beans? I think my first crop will be radishes. I have little green tomatoes, My cucumber and zucchini plants have no blossoms yet. My peas are also behind. I live in MI and started my garden about two weeks later than usual this year.
The birds poked multiple holes in the green peppers :(. but the cherry tomatoes are going gangbusters. I have one better boy tomato plant and picked the first big tomato today. The top of the plant got to tall and too heavy and broke so the tomatoes there, which are green, had to be picked early. Guess we are looking at fried green tomatoes
Back home from vacation-so many wax beans! No one picked them while I was gone so they were going crazy. I picked about 4-5 gallons of beans this afternoon.
Neighbors picked tomatoes, squash & cukes while I was away, but there were plenty of ripe tomatoes left for me. I had Caprese salad, glass of white wine and some of crusty sourdough for dinner. My favorite summer supper.
Picked 1 Asian eggplant, 6 bell peppers, a huge overripe cuke, beans and several different types of tomatoes (striped cocktail plum tomatoes, gold cherry tomatoes, full size orange tomatoes, red cluster tomatoes that are about the size of golf balls), a couple of zucchini plus some green chiles.
Kale is ready to be picked, and there will be more eggplants soon. Potato tops have all died back so it’s time to dump the grow bags and see what kind of harvest I have this year. Love boiled new potatoes with pesto. No sign that the cauliflower has germinated yet, but it’s only been 2 weeks. I’ll plant collards this weekend. Carrots are looking very promising. Several small cukes that will ready in a few days and the vines are going gangbusters.
The squash has a really bad case of squash bug infestation. Spread diatomaceous earth on them, cut off all leaves with egg cases or significant damage and sprayed underside of leaves with Sevin. If I don’t see some recovery in the next week or so, I’ll pull the plants and just buy zuccs at a local farmer’s market.
We have summer squash, zucchini, pak choi, broccoli, and kale all picked fresh and on our lunch menu with lamb chops today. The broccoli surprised me and we will have to test to be sure it’s not bitter. We usually pick it in May/June or it goes to seed. There were two plants that never headed. Today they looked ready, so I picked them. Time will tell if they’re tasty or not.
We’ll add peppers, onions, and mushrooms to the veggie concoction, but those are from the store at this point. The only peppers we have on our plants are still small.
Beets and beet greens are ready when we want them. Tomatoes are green, but looking nice. Two cherries have already been picked and eaten, but the others are taking their time turning color. We’ve had a couple of cukes, but no more today.
For some strange reason, the cucumbers are just not producing this year. Only 3 small cucumbers have been picked. My zucchini on the other hand has just exploded ! Husband has been taking the zucchinis into work a lot lately ! Discovered a really large, fat Tomato Hornworm on one of my tomato plants this morning- totally disgusting ! Didn’t need any coffee after seeing that ! Just see !
@WayOutWestMom wow, what a feast you are picking! SO many beans!!!
Harvested garlic today. Looks nice and healthy though smaller than the variety I had the last two years. Cukes have been producing but with the extreme heat they are already starting to die out. Bet they will only last another week or so.
Will have to plan for “part B” of summer gardening 2018.
what is the key to zucchini? I’ve tried every year and have only ever gotten ONE zucchini while everyone seems to have way more than they are able to eat. I grow several kinds of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers with no issue, as well as all kinds of herbs, garlic and a few kinds of lettuce, but the zucchini never ever produce. The plant is always healthy but for whatever reason (cross pollination I guess?), I can’t get any zucchini. The one year I got ONE, it was huge. We didn’t plant any this year b/c every time I went to buy some, they didn’t have any in stock.
Zucchini (and all squash plants) have 2 types of flowers–male and female. Male & female flowers usually don’t appear at the same time on the same plant so you need other nearby squash plants for pollination to happen.
You need a pollinators (bees) to move the pollen from the male flower to the female flower-- so if bees are under stress in your area that might be another reason. Or if your plants are covered by row cloth/netting and the pollinators can’t get to them.
If you’re really serious about pollinating, you can pollinate by hand using a Q-tip or a inexpensive paintbrush. Or you can simply break off a male flower and use it to transfer pollen. Zucchini flowers in the cool of the morning so you’ll need to get that done early in the day. If you wait until midday, it’s too hot and the flowers are already wilting/falling off.
P.S. don’t buy zucchini plants. Zucchini are ridiculously easy to grow from seed. You don’t need to start them indoors. Once the last frost of the season is past, loosen the soil where you intend to grow zucchini with a hoe or a hand rake, drop 6-8 seeds in a single spot and cover lightly with soil. (No more than about 3/4-1 inch deep) Water every day or every other day if it doesn’t rain in your locale. Your zucchini will come up in about 2-3 weeks. If you get too many plants in one hill, cull the weakest, leaving 2-4 plants in each hill.
My cucumbers a are coming up. But I made some mistakes yesterday. I tried to attach a new pole to the vines and ended up killing one new sprout. What are the best ways to reattach the vines?
I used organic fertilizer Espoma Plant-Tone for my vegs almost once a week what do you guys use?
@abasket , I read somewhere that you need to space cucumber, meaning you keep planting new seeds to get a steady stream of cucumbers. I have started seeding again.
I also save some cooking water throughout the day and water the plants using pots and pans after 9pm. I know, I should be featured on cheapskate
I’ve used Plant-Tone before. Where I garden we must garden organically. This year I used a Target organic plant food. The horticulturalists where I garden apply any bug preventer stuff like the “di” for all the gardeners - that is very helpful!
We use horse and chicken manure from our farm (applied to the soil in the fall prior to winter) - and other compost from the kitchen and plant debris. It works very well. We have some very “rich” areas in one of our horse pastures that we get seed starting and transplanting soil from.
Then we rotate where we plant things, esp the nitrogen fixers.
so the tomatoes there, which are green, had to be picked early. Guess we are looking at fried green tomatoes