I’ve had that experience too w/the 1st few hot peppers. Not sure what causes it but I’ve heard of others experiencing that. Then they heat up.
Phosphates are needed for growth and transport (high brix) but I think that a diverse microbial population is needed for making the phosphates (and other minerals) available to the plants.
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Great collection! 
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Can I get a consensus about seed starting for the autumn garden? I want to know if anyone is good at it. I know how to do it, but every year its the same. I get about 50% of what I plant to grow (brassicas and lettuce). It doesn’t matter if I direct sow them or start them in containers to transplant later and what’s more is it seems to be a variety of problems. Some just don’t germinate, some wilt on the first hot day, some get eaten by slugs, some get eaten by other insects, and some mysteriously disappear.
Is anyone planting a fall garden and if so do you have better luck than me?
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I do plant a fall garden. But like you I’m not all that successful with it. This year looks promising though, because of cooler than normal temps and a lot of rain lately. Normally everything g gets toast in the heat. Very little comes up and thrives.
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I do one every year. To me it’s much more enjoyable, albeit slower, than the summer garden b/c I don’t do heat well.
Sowing should be done inside b/c winter plants’ germination rates are higher in cooler soils - something July and August does not afford me. For spinach I’ve even used the frig, but for brassicas and lettuce, the AC vent is fine. When you seed inside, start treating for slugs outside (pellets). I sow in small cups then prick out to a larger flat to grow on to a large healthy plant. By then there is room in the garden. Surround the planting area w/ 1" chicken wire and have ready some kind of netting (bird or insect) to put over top of that. Brassicas need spraying every 10 days with Bt and Spinosad (even whilst in the flats). After a few good freezes you can stop spraying which is usually in December for me.
As cold weather approaches, prepare your hoops and poly - make sure to vent. In fact for brassicas I leave the vent open most of the time until the temps go below 20.
I was thinking this would be a good thread to start sometime.
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It’s not good unless your eyes and and nose run! If your upper sweats you have reached nirvana.
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I put my fall plantings in a couple of weeks ago, with the July heat wave fading. I started the plants inside a month before that, except for peas and spinach, that I direct sow. Everything is covered now, because of rabbits and other pests
I’ve had mixed success with the fall garden. Peas in particular are usually a problem, but this year’s seedlings look great, so I’m encouraged.
Weather makes all the difference, and we can’t control that.
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Hey JustAnne, thanks for the thorough description of how you start your fall veggies. I don’t start them inside because I would rather not run the grow lights again. I do use Sluggo, and cover the lettuce with row cover.
What size flats do you put the seedlings in? How long do you aim to keep the plants in the flats before transplanting?
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Hey Jim, I don’t use grow lights except in Jan-Mar. True that lights are needed to ‘grow’, but temp is more important in germination which I understood was a problem. Soil in small cells and even flats heats up quickly to 85-90 deg outside here. Brassicas don’t like that so much. I use heat mats in winter and AC vents or frig in summer for germination purposes primarily. Here aluminum pans are cooled to 60-70 deg by the AC vent (we keep the house at ~82 deg). I put 2 small pots to show what I use for germination. So summer ops look like this
Once enough of the seeds have germinated, you can transition them into natural light. Are you familiar with germination rates vs. temp for seeds? I can post a pic for reference if you like.
At some point I prick out the seedlings out of the small germination pots into flats to grow on. The size of the flat is defined by what I can lift. These got hit with a gulley washer last night but are moving right along.
They can grow quite large in this if I need to wait until there is room. The bigger they are the better their survival rate.
@scottfsmith Can you please move this winter gardening discussion to a new thread? Not sure how to.
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Cool beans! You have quite the system. I am familiar with the germination rates vs temps. This year I started broccoli, cauliflower, kholrabi, and cabbage in cells. I did keep the cells out of the sunlight until they germinated, then moved them into full sun. I have been moving them in and out of the shed every night to avoid bug and slug damage. This is a daunting task when added to the already endless chore list.
I have directly sown lettuce, mustards, rabe, turnips, and asian greens into the garden where the garlic, zucchini, summer squash and some spring lettuces were. I made sure to add an inch of compost before planting. It has been cool in PA so that has helped, but about half of the lettuce did not germinate. Weirdly, it seems to not germinate in bunches, like a foot of seeds in a row won’t sprout but the ones around them will. I went back and replanted.
I will be sowing spinach, mache, claytonia, more lettuce, radishes, arugula, and some herbs in the coming weeks.
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Nice Jim. Please keep us updated. Would love to see photos.
Tender seedlings are toast when direct sown in my garden. When they are small, one bite and they are all gone. Putting out larger plants ensures you get to see if they are being eaten before they disappear.
Some of your lettuce that is missing may have actually germinated and been eaten. This happened to my carrots in early summer…then I saw the small stems that were left. Winter lulls us into forgetfulness about how bad insect pressures are in summer.
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OK, some garden pics from our various plots.
Corn patch, with Honey Select in foreground. Each stalk has a couple ears growing.
Me standing in among the HS for perspective. I’m 6’, and the tassels are a foot above me.
Some HS silk on the ears, almost purple-ish. Ears are nicely sized, some almost a foot long by now.
Some of the tassels on the Silver Queen, I think it looks nice. I like how the pollen dusts off of it with just a small rattle of the stalk.
Some SQ ears and silk, just starting to form. Looks like two ears per stalk as well.
Three rows of beans on right side of corn. Two left rows are mostly white and striped half-runners and row on right are Rattlesnake pole beans. We ran wire lines between 5ft T-posts for vining, but they were put up too late. Next year we’ll use welded wire fencing that we use around the fruit trees for trellising.
Bean vining up a pop-corn stalk. These have 4 ears per stalk, but they are a lot smaller than the other sweet corn we’re growing.
Close up of Rattlesnake bean blooms, with a little bean sprout next to them
Small mess of the Rattlesnake beans. We had them for supper last night. Pretty good flavor cooked, but they are one of the few beans that I could eat straight off the vine. Very sweet, not real fibrous-y. Not as prolific as the half runners, but the taste means we’ll grow them again next year.
Overall, we’re pretty happy with the progress of the beans and corn. We’ve already canned 7qt of half runners, and hope to do many more. Keeping our fingers crossed re the corn, hoping we can harvest some before varmits discover them. We’ve never harvested a decent sized crop of corn over the last three growing seasons.
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Lovely,
I tried to grow a three sister garden this year because I have three little girls. If anyone doesn’t know, you plant corn, then when the corn is about a foot high plant beans to grow up the corn. You also plant squash between the corn to crowd out the weeds. Apparently this is what the Native Americans did.
It did not work great and I won’t do it again.
I had never grown corn before and I have probably harvested 50 ears, which were very good. The beans are just now starting to flower on the corn stalks. I think the corn got too big and shaded the squash. Both pumpkins were doomed. Two of the spaghetti squash found their way out and are growing through the yard. There may be a butternut squash in there somewhere. The whole thing is a weedy mess and I won’t be doing it again. It was fun for the kids though.
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The 3 sisters garden was meant to be dry corn for grinding and dry beans - whole thing to harvest in fall
It doesn’t seem to work for sweet corn and green beans
It worked great for the corn and seems like I’ll get a lot of beans. If I get 8 squash I’ll be lucky.
Thanks. My wife claims they do the two sisters thing here. That is, plant corn, then later, sow the beans. We did that the first season here, and we had some limited success. But to me it was just a big mess. We harvested lots of beans that year, canned quite a few quarts. We didn’t get any real harvest of corn, maybe froze a few ears, but didn’t can any.
Last year, she wanted to do it again in another plot. But the corn never really took off because of a late freeze, and then deer and or coons. Beans did poorly as well, and then it became a big weedy mess, so a lost year there.
I didn’t want to try it again this year, the corn seems to keep the weeds at bay when they get bigger, and she’s kept the bean lanes cleaned out. We should have got our bean support wires up sooner as a lot of the vines are down on the ground, getting muddy, not good. But they still seem to be producing well.
She planted some pie pumpkins out by the barn, and they have taken off like crazy. Leaves bigger than a catcher’s mitt. But, haven’t seen any pumpkins yet. They were planted in rich soil where a horse spent a lot of time so lots of “nutrients” there. Oddly, the deer have left the leaves alone.
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My tomatoes get a lot of stink bug damage here… various types, I believe. I end up with a slight white corkiness/mealiness under the skin. What do folks do to combat this? I don’t spray anything. I still eat them, but they are less enjoyable… still great in cooking :-).
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