Garden time...Oh boy!

jinman · May 8, 2006

( I get squash bugs every year that kill the plants 
For years I did also to the point I quit them. Then last year I decided to try again. I had always planted crook neck from packaged seed from a box store. Last year I went to the farm store and got straight neck. Also I had read that certain plants help repel bugs naturally. So I planted the straight neck. Nearby I planted some marigolds. I saw only a few squash bugs and those never seemed to have harmed the plants at all. Also never saw any tomato hornworms on the tomatoes. Don't know whether it the different variety or if the marigolds really worked. This year I planted more marigolds along with various herbs such as mint, basil, parsley, etc that are also supposed to repel bugs. )

Bill and Bill, thanks for the heads-up on the squash bugs. So far there has not even been a single bite on any squash plant. My peas, beans, peppers, and okra show signs of being chewed, but nothing else. To be on the safe side I dusted with Sevin 5% dust yesterday afternoon. Luckily we didn't have any rain last night and the dust stayed put. Lately everytime I dust it gets washed off by rain during the night or the next day. I have plenty of room for some marigolds, so I may just have to get some and get them planted. I'd rather do that than dust and take a chance on killing honeybees.

Bird · May 8, 2006

Jim, my Dad and my Granddad used that Sevin dust and I guess it's a good idea. But just to see if I could, I never used any insecticide at all; just planted enough for both me and the bugs. And from the looks of your garden, you have, too. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

jinman · May 11, 2006

Tiller - $1495
Seed - $50
Fertilizer - $30
Radishes from seed to hand in 4-1/2 weeks - PRICELESS! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

BB_TX · May 11, 2006

Looks like a new daddy, grinning like a possum eating persimmons. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Can't wait to see you doing cartwheels thru the corn patch. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

gsganzer · May 11, 2006

I picked a few yellow squash and zucchini last night. They'll start rolling in by the bushels now.

randot · May 15, 2006

( Corn rows...
We planted about 4 varieties of corn and all the plants are growing at different rates. The two rows on the left are non-hybrid yellow dent corn. The others are all various hybrid varieties. )

Everything looks great. How do you keep the weeds down? I have not been so fortunate, I tilled everything under, planted at the first part of April and you can see what I have going, the grass is growing better in the garden than the vegetables are.

randot · May 15, 2006

( Corn rows...
We planted about 4 varieties of corn and all the plants are growing at different rates. The two rows on the left are non-hybrid yellow dent corn. The others are all various hybrid varieties. )

Everything looks great. How do you keep the weeds down? I have not been so fortunate, I tilled everything under, planted at the first part of April and you can see what I have going, the grass is growing better in the garden than the vegetables are.

DUMBDOG · May 15, 2006

Cultivate, cultivate and cultivate. Also weed by hand.

DUMBDOG · May 15, 2006

Cultivate, cultivate and cultivate. Also weed by hand.

jinman · May 15, 2006

( How do you keep the weeds down? I have not been so fortunate, I tilled everything under, planted at the first part of April and you can see what I have going, the grass is growing better in the garden than the vegetables are.
)

Randy, I do have a few weeds that try to pop up, but so far, they have not been all that hard to control. I have a "secret weapon" to help me with the weeds. I try to share that secret in some pictures to show how I do it, but Dave (Dumbdog) really has the idea. I allmost tilled the life out of this plot before I planted. I first used a 2-bottom plow andd then let that sit two weeks. Then I tilled as deep as I could go making three passes over the entire garden. I added some sand on one part and tilled that the 4th time to mix the sand.

The watering so far has been from soaker hoses only where I want it and finally some rain. Early on, the ground was dry and I think the roots to grass and a lot of weeds died before the rain came. If the ground had stayed wet, I might be fighting more weed problems.

I need to get a few more pictures posted. This weekend I finished my inner dog-fence to keep the dogs out of the garden and turned in the dogs to this area. They had so much new area to explore that they didn't even look at the garden. Most of the time they spent laying in a damp spot in the shade. I also put out liquid fertilizer in some areas that looked like it was needed and then put my "secret weapon" to work. It's a little two-cycle hand tiller that I jokingly call my gas-a-hoe. I bought this thing over ten years ago and used it primarily for flower beds until this year. Now I use it to till my garden. I'll try to get some pictures tonight to show what a great job this tiller does. My garden looks far better this week than it did last week since I've tilled everything with the gas-a-hoe (aka Ryobi tiller). /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

EDIT: I found a picture of the tiller. It's attached. I was shocked at what they want for these things now. I paid about $165 for it and now they want around $300. Wow! That's one heck of a mark-up. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif