<p>Scary, Kathiep!</p>
<p>Scary is an understatement. Lungworts, squaskins, interbreeding cukes making pukes…backyard gardening is not for the timid.</p>
<p>I’m posting in this thread on behalf of my dad, who I am hoping to help out this year.</p>
<p>My dad used to have a garden every year until the woodchuck population exploded. Recently, the only thing he’s been able to grow successfully are tomatoes because the local fauna don’t seem too interested. </p>
<p>Last year, my uncle gave my dad a pumpkin seedling and the thing absolutely took off - it took over half the yard. My dad was thrilled but unfortunately the squirrels decided to take bites from the baby pumpkins when they were about acorn sized. Only one pumpkin survived this onslaught, which got HUGE, but my dad was pretty disappointed that he only had one. </p>
<p>Last year, he reserved some of the seeds from the one pumpkin and then planted them earlier this summer. So far, he has won two harrowing battles: one against the neighbor’s mangy cats who were determined to dig up the seedlings and use the patch as a litterbox, and another against the woodchucks who were steadily eating the leaves. Now, he is on the way to turning the backyard of my parents’ house into a veritable pumpkin patch, but now we are worried about the squirrels. There are a bunch of little budding pumpkins, so is there anything we can do to prevent the squirrels from attempting to munch on them? I tried to Google a solution but all of the suggestions were for Halloween Jack-o-lanterns.</p>
<p>Yay! FInally got enough green pole beans to have them for dinner. Have also gotten some zucchini, asian eggplants. Cukes have set and I’m just waiting for them to get big enough to pick.</p>
<p>The brown thrashers have been destroying my tomatoes since May by snapping off the new growth–which often means all the blossoms. (They also stripped all the leaves off of the peppers and killed them, ate all my lettuce and pulled up my first planting of green beans as soon as they sprouted.) I’d wrapped chicken wire around the tomato cages, but took it off recently because I was hoping the plants were big enough to survive the bird depredations. Bad idea. The birds ate all of my almost ripe cherry tomatoes and pecked big holes into the green full-sized tomatoes. Needless to say I am quite unhappy. Just bought cherry tree netting, have strung a line between two tomato support posts and covered the plants with mesh netting. Maybe this will discourage the suckers.</p>
<p>I mean eating your almost ripe tomatoes…that’s inexcusable!</p>
<p>Been away from this thread for awhile so I apologize if this has already been discussed.</p>
<p>My hanging baskets look pathetic. The deluges of rain, days without sun, followed by extreme heat and humidity has them looking scraggly and without many blooms. I had been feeding them with a plant spike or two once a month or so - was that too often? Any recommendations to revive them?? I usually throw in some fresh soil on top when I notice that they are drying out too fast (more roots, less dirt seems to make the water flow right out of them and then they dry out too fast). Should I give them a haircut to encourage growth (the scraggly hanging stuff)??? The ones with geraniums have some buds coming so when they open that will help, but right now they look PATHETIC!!!</p>
<p>I just got back from the garden and noticed that I have those little wee pumpkins and they look like they are a few weeks from being mature! I hope I am mistaken as it is way too early for pumpkins!</p>
<p>Heat wave here in the northeast is wilting my cucumber plants. Watered them twice yesterday after work, at 7PM and at 10PM. Plan to do the same tonight because the cucumber vine leaves were still droopy this morning when I moderately wet them again.</p>
<p>I thought the eggplants might not blossom because of the heat, but yea, a few more flowers appeared. Meanwhile, the heat appears to have no effect on the straightneck squash nor the tomatoes. Hoping for a break from the mid-90s soon. It’s not even August yet.</p>
<p>90 degrees fried most hydrangea flowers yesterday…</p>
<p>The weather abasket describes is what we’ve seen here in CT as well. I’m so disappointed with my tomatoes, which, at this point have not much fruit, and what they do have is the size of a small marble. Hard to believe that I’ll have many tomatoes given that its so “late” in the season.</p>
<p>Also I’ve been working 14 hour days for the past couple of weeks and now the garden’s overrun with weeds. Luckily I had July 4th off and was at least able to weed in the immediate area aroud the plants. Just the dead space is infeststed.</p>
<p>Oh, and my grand plans of keeping up with deadheading the Stella D’oro’s??? Maybe next year… :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Question of the day, WHY doesn’t my hydrangea ever bloom? Only in the last 2 years has it had ANY blooms. Last year and this year it had ONE. And on that ONE bloom, there was ONE flower that actually opened. One, little, tiny, flower…</p>
<p>Harvested my first tomato today. How fortuitous that I happened to have basil growing and just bought mozarella!! A little balsamic vinegar and we are all set!</p>
<p>And the begonias at our front door are looking remarkably great! The leave and flowers are huge!</p>
<p>justamom</p>
<p>what kind of hydrangea?..don’t cut back after mid Aug and certainly not in the spring.<br>
Not enough sun is another possibility? Do the stems survive the Winter or is growth just from the base in the Spring? Might be too cold of a spot if growth from previous year dies back over the winter…the flower buds for the following year are formed the PREVIOUS year on most varieties.</p>
<p>
I thought they were pumash</p>
<p>My tomato patch exploded while I was on vacation. My total greed in planting too many plants too close together is so very visible. Oh well… I added about 8 stakes to try to keep everyone from keeling over onto their neighbor and have picked almost a dozen tomatoes, some of them huge! </p>
<p>Please pick your tomatoes BEFORE they are ripe! Your life will be much easier and they’ll be sitting on a plate in your kitchen all ready to be eaten when you need them. They just need a bare blush of color and will ripen indoors easily, with or without a sunny window. The only trouble is that the really huge ones may bruise themselves with their own weight so you should flip them over occasionally. That’s a lot easier than going outside and finding someone else has eaten your almost-ripe tomato. Some birds are attracted to the color red. </p>
<p>If even the green ones are being eaten try swathing the plant in plastic bird netting.</p>
<p>Wish I had heeded your advice last year, greenwitch. Unwittingly fed way to many birds last year.
Last year I had sweet 100’s cherry tomatoes and had a gazillion tomatoes. This year I have patio tomatoes (couldnt find the sweet 100s) and while the fruit are bigger, there are way fewer of them. I have only 4 plants this year (had about 8 last year) and only have maybe a dozen tomatoes growing at present, though there are several yellow flowers. The basil is growing like crazy again, but the arugula got drowned by all the rain.</p>
<p>Just checked when I watered the plants. We really only have about 6 or 7 tomatoes at present. Quite a change form the copious amounts of cherry tomatoes we had last year. The one I ate was very yummy, but would like to have a bigger yield. Added some plant food the other day. Any other ideas?</p>
<p>“what kind of hydrangea?..don’t cut back after mid Aug and certainly not in the spring.
Not enough sun is another possibility?”</p>
<p>It really depends on the type of hydrangea. I have hydrangea that bloom on new growth so I cut them way down in the spring. </p>
<p>[How</a> to Prune Hydrangeas - GardenLady.com](<a href=“http://www.gardenlady.com/pruning_hydrangeas.html]How”>http://www.gardenlady.com/pruning_hydrangeas.html)</p>
<p>Most hydrangeas also do best in shade.</p>
<p>jym- make sure your plant food has a good amount of phosphorus (the middle number). It leads to more flowering which will lead to more tomatoes. </p>
<p>For squirrel problems, sometimes you need total encapsulation. I’ve found that they bite our pumpkins (on the porch, not in the field) when there is a drought in the fall. I wonder if leaving out water would help? If not, you might go so far as to put something like a laundry basket over each pumpkin and anchor it down with big “earth staples” so they can’t get under. They might chew through it though so look for something like a round metal basket - big enough to cover the pumpkin and with small enough openings that they can’t get through them. You could fashion something with a roll of strong wire mesh. It would be a PITA but should foil those beasties!</p>
<p>I think farmers have less problems with squirrels than backyard gardeners do because they have acres and acres of treeless fields so the squirrel nests are only on the periphery.</p>
<p>jym - also, I am mostly an organic gardener but I make a few exceptions. One is for a chemical fertilizer called “flower magic” that is made to be used on plumeria/frangipani. If you want it to bloom in a non-tropical climate you need something like that. </p>
<p>I think the numbers are something like 0 - 20 - 0 so it is very high in phosphorus. If growing conditions are right, you should have enough tomato blossoms, but if they are not, a concentrated fertilizer like flower magic will help. It’s something you put a few drops of in a bottle and spray on the leaves. Make sure you don’t get it on anything you don’t want to flower, like basil or onions or garlic. </p>
<p>Also, the smaller varieties of tomatoes and peppers are always the most prolific and easy-care. I think it has something to do with them being closer to their wild ancestors.</p>
<p>The apex and top leaves of one of the cucumber vines is still droopy. The tendrils at the top are all limp and seem to have lost their desire to wrap themselves around my trellis. Would it make any sense to just snip off the top? Would the top regenerate and eventually produce fruit?</p>
<p>These are Lemon Cucumber vines.</p>