May 25, 2010
May 25, 2010
Week 6 of Spray-N-Grow and I have to say that my plants are a freak of nature! Yes I have the biggest tomatoe and squash plants in town. I do have a few issues to discuss today concerning my plants. Although my tomatoe plants are huge, there are few blooms and two fruit out of my 5 big boy plants, though my patio cherry tomatoes are doing great since I replanted them. The potting soil I used first was no good, it was heavy, the top of the soil would dry out fast and the bottom of the pot would stay soggy, the plant was dying, not thriving at all, even with all the love and care I could give it, changing the soil did the trick. Back to my tomatoes in the ground, the plants are about 4 and 1/2 feet tall and the cages are hardley able to contain them. Just beautiful, lucious plants. I wasn't too concerned about not having much fruit on the plants until this past week. I read on the discussion board about a lady who last year had big beautiufl tomatoe plants but no fruit and her problem was calcium deficiency. Last summer, we had no fruit on our tomatoe plants, but then again, we summed last years lack of fruit up to the fact that it was over 110 degree's for more than 70 days spring was too short, and no matter how much we watered any of our plants, they all pretty much struggled and did poorly. Well I started thinking about this calcium issue and thought, I might be having a simular problem. I took out the bottle of BIll's Perfect Fertilizer and it has prosperous in it. That's good, also if you read the bottle it tells you how to mix it, how to apply it and when to use it. I had already decieded that I was going to apply the fertilizer to the root of the plants once I saw the phosperous content, the lable does tell you how to mix it for the "drenching" method. So, that's what I did. 4 gallons worth thru out the garden. I set about with my fertilizer by the gallon and a ladel, talking sweetly to my plants while soaking the root area and hoping that this will do the trick. I should see some progress by next week. We have had very little rain and periods of high winds, which dry my plants out pretty quick, but I am keeping up pretty good at keeping the ground properly watered and weeded. We have also been experiencing a lack of sunshine. It has been pretty much partly cloudy everyday and in the 90's during the day and mid 70's at night. I try not to get to concerned about the lack of fruit on my tomatoe plants at this point, but it is nagging at me, because I know that by now there should be more. Hopefully this "drenching" will do the trick. We had some friends Stacy and Travis stop by last week. They have a garden about the size of ours, maybe a little bigger, they have 6 kids and all there friends to feed, so a garden saves on the grocery bill. They commented that our corn is doing better than theirs, they had to re plant, and their tomatoes are doing about the same, of course our plants are all much bigger. Stacy had commented to me that I needed to clip off the top of my onions about an inch and a half to put another layer on the skin. So I did that. We will see if that works too. The day they came over had been a windy one and my corn which is about 3 ft tall right now was laying down as if to take a nap. Travis told my husband that we needed to put some bars up at either side of the row of corn and run some string along it to keep the corn up. Keith had a fishing trip this weekend so he didn't get around to it, but I don't think that he will need to. As soon as I get some good sunshine the corn pops back up. If you have any experience with any of these issues, I would like to hear your feed back on what you have done and what your experience is. Now to the last issues I am having with my plants this week and that would be mold and mites. Our pool is surrounded by Hawthorn and Holly bushes. I noticed that they started to have a stink about them. Upon further investigation I noticed that some of the bushes had a black fungus looking growth as well as the tinest little white bugs. Since we are going organic, and yes I have fleeting moments when I think there is a faster and easier way to fix some of these gardening issues, a little fungicide and dusting would fix this, I remembered something about washing your plants with dish soap. So I took my old trusty sprayer and gave it a good squirt of dish soap and timpid water and set about spraying them down. It actually works pretty good. I also added a dab of cocoa wet to the mix. Clever am I! One of my favorite seed plants to grow are my Zenia's. They have the most beautiful blooms and produce until it gets cold again. They can be problematic as to they are quick to develop what I call powdery mildew, and that is what showed up this week too, so I have treated them as well. If you take the flowers as they die and dry out and sprinkle them back into the earth, you will get more plants that come up and next year they should come back, but I also reserve some of the flowers (because that is where the seeds are) and save them for next year, it seems like the longer I keep a seed of Zenia's planting from year to year, the stronger and more reliziliant the plants are, this is a fresh batch this year from seed, the dogs dug up my flowers before they could produce and I didn't reserve any seed, planted them all. Take note, note to self, this year save seeds, next year don't plant all of them, save a few, just in case.
Now about this past winter. A friend of mine, Lee's mentioned that he had lost some of his plants this last winter due to the cold. I did too Lee. Some of my most babied and prized plants didn't make it, even with the best of efforts and then some I made no effort at all to save, are back boldly. I had Keith dig up my Split leaf and Bird of Paradise, banana's, elephant ears and others and we stored them in our shed out of the weather. Well, it got so cold one morning that I went to check on my plants and they didn't make it, it got so cold in the shelter that a glass of water I had on the shelf froze solid. Guess I should have bought them indoors. Next year, or better yet, Keith build me a green house!
Our plans right now are to keep on a gardening thru the year, rotating our spring crop and trying some new plants. That will be something new for us, but we might as well keep on going. Gardening is quite rewarding. Speaking of rewarding, a long holiday weekend is coming up, we have peppers and squash and of course lots of lecttuce and green beans. So if your coming to my house, be prepared to eat some salad and take some home with you! As for me, today I am having some homemade veggie soup. Till next week Happy Gardening!
Week 6 of Spray-N-Grow and I have to say that my plants are a freak of nature! Yes I have the biggest tomatoe and squash plants in town. I do have a few issues to discuss today concerning my plants. Although my tomatoe plants are huge, there are few blooms and two fruit out of my 5 big boy plants, though my patio cherry tomatoes are doing great since I replanted them. The potting soil I used first was no good, it was heavy, the top of the soil would dry out fast and the bottom of the pot would stay soggy, the plant was dying, not thriving at all, even with all the love and care I could give it, changing the soil did the trick. Back to my tomatoes in the ground, the plants are about 4 and 1/2 feet tall and the cages are hardley able to contain them. Just beautiful, lucious plants. I wasn't too concerned about not having much fruit on the plants until this past week. I read on the discussion board about a lady who last year had big beautiufl tomatoe plants but no fruit and her problem was calcium deficiency. Last summer, we had no fruit on our tomatoe plants, but then again, we summed last years lack of fruit up to the fact that it was over 110 degree's for more than 70 days spring was too short, and no matter how much we watered any of our plants, they all pretty much struggled and did poorly. Well I started thinking about this calcium issue and thought, I might be having a simular problem. I took out the bottle of BIll's Perfect Fertilizer and it has prosperous in it. That's good, also if you read the bottle it tells you how to mix it, how to apply it and when to use it. I had already decieded that I was going to apply the fertilizer to the root of the plants once I saw the phosperous content, the lable does tell you how to mix it for the "drenching" method. So, that's what I did. 4 gallons worth thru out the garden. I set about with my fertilizer by the gallon and a ladel, talking sweetly to my plants while soaking the root area and hoping that this will do the trick. I should see some progress by next week. We have had very little rain and periods of high winds, which dry my plants out pretty quick, but I am keeping up pretty good at keeping the ground properly watered and weeded. We have also been experiencing a lack of sunshine. It has been pretty much partly cloudy everyday and in the 90's during the day and mid 70's at night. I try not to get to concerned about the lack of fruit on my tomatoe plants at this point, but it is nagging at me, because I know that by now there should be more. Hopefully this "drenching" will do the trick. We had some friends Stacy and Travis stop by last week. They have a garden about the size of ours, maybe a little bigger, they have 6 kids and all there friends to feed, so a garden saves on the grocery bill. They commented that our corn is doing better than theirs, they had to re plant, and their tomatoes are doing about the same, of course our plants are all much bigger. Stacy had commented to me that I needed to clip off the top of my onions about an inch and a half to put another layer on the skin. So I did that. We will see if that works too. The day they came over had been a windy one and my corn which is about 3 ft tall right now was laying down as if to take a nap. Travis told my husband that we needed to put some bars up at either side of the row of corn and run some string along it to keep the corn up. Keith had a fishing trip this weekend so he didn't get around to it, but I don't think that he will need to. As soon as I get some good sunshine the corn pops back up. If you have any experience with any of these issues, I would like to hear your feed back on what you have done and what your experience is. Now to the last issues I am having with my plants this week and that would be mold and mites. Our pool is surrounded by Hawthorn and Holly bushes. I noticed that they started to have a stink about them. Upon further investigation I noticed that some of the bushes had a black fungus looking growth as well as the tinest little white bugs. Since we are going organic, and yes I have fleeting moments when I think there is a faster and easier way to fix some of these gardening issues, a little fungicide and dusting would fix this, I remembered something about washing your plants with dish soap. So I took my old trusty sprayer and gave it a good squirt of dish soap and timpid water and set about spraying them down. It actually works pretty good. I also added a dab of cocoa wet to the mix. Clever am I! One of my favorite seed plants to grow are my Zenia's. They have the most beautiful blooms and produce until it gets cold again. They can be problematic as to they are quick to develop what I call powdery mildew, and that is what showed up this week too, so I have treated them as well. If you take the flowers as they die and dry out and sprinkle them back into the earth, you will get more plants that come up and next year they should come back, but I also reserve some of the flowers (because that is where the seeds are) and save them for next year, it seems like the longer I keep a seed of Zenia's planting from year to year, the stronger and more reliziliant the plants are, this is a fresh batch this year from seed, the dogs dug up my flowers before they could produce and I didn't reserve any seed, planted them all. Take note, note to self, this year save seeds, next year don't plant all of them, save a few, just in case.
Now about this past winter. A friend of mine, Lee's mentioned that he had lost some of his plants this last winter due to the cold. I did too Lee. Some of my most babied and prized plants didn't make it, even with the best of efforts and then some I made no effort at all to save, are back boldly. I had Keith dig up my Split leaf and Bird of Paradise, banana's, elephant ears and others and we stored them in our shed out of the weather. Well, it got so cold one morning that I went to check on my plants and they didn't make it, it got so cold in the shelter that a glass of water I had on the shelf froze solid. Guess I should have bought them indoors. Next year, or better yet, Keith build me a green house!
Our plans right now are to keep on a gardening thru the year, rotating our spring crop and trying some new plants. That will be something new for us, but we might as well keep on going. Gardening is quite rewarding. Speaking of rewarding, a long holiday weekend is coming up, we have peppers and squash and of course lots of lecttuce and green beans. So if your coming to my house, be prepared to eat some salad and take some home with you! As for me, today I am having some homemade veggie soup. Till next week Happy Gardening!
Views: 2
Comment
© 2012 Created by Ryan S..
You need to be a member of My Spray-N-Grow Garden to add comments!
Join My Spray-N-Grow Garden