New England ~ May 2014

Two things.

One is that I've been watering the past few days now. Esp. with today's heat and no rain in the forecast till maybe Thursday. It's a pain, but the seeds need water to sprout...

The other thing is that Ruth Stout had a method of planting potatoes that I read - she would just throw a whole potato and cover it with hay. She said that's all you need to do. So since I had some leftover seed potatoes (I bought beautiful looking seed potatoes from Fedco) I placed them around the interior of my garden fence right on the woodchips, and threw piles of hay on them. Now I have a bunch of little hay piles around part of my fence. So we'll see what happens.

This is a reminder that this is the New England Regional Forum. Please be cognizant of that fact and keep comments pertinent New England Gardening information.

Thermometer reads 92° here in good old western Massachusetts. I've had to water like crazy the past few days. The garden looks good except for the bok choy. I think it's really stressed from the heat. I made a little shade for it and have my fingers crossed. 

I also made the mistake of over seeding the lawn, not realizing it would get so hot this soon, so I've had to water that twice a day for the past 3 days. There goes the water bill already. 

The lettuce I seeded in the garden came up in three days. I was really surprised to see the sprouts this morning.

My lettuce seed never sprouted (at least not yet), which is super annoying. But I had also indoor seeded lettuce, and transplanted that out there, and it looks great.

I planted 8 squares of spinach and that is coming up - YAY. Spinach is so healthy and it also freezes well, so I'm hoping to get a lot of it this summer.

My lettuce also no germination, seed is too old is my guess will get more tomorrow at Horse and Buggy.

Oh, by the way. I've been seeing this large white moth flittering around. Is it looking for squash plants, or broccoli? My squash has not sprouted outside yet (I have a few backups in the house) so I'm glad about that. I think I heard that if you do start your squashes late, you might escape the SVB just because the moths will not be around any longer to lay eggs. But I guess you might run the risk of running out of season that way too.

I have hoop material and agrabon but haven't gotten around to that yet, don't know if I will this season... I've been enlarging the growing area, putting down chips (that I scrounge from our pile of old logs, so they're really premium hand picked chips - haha) (in other words, this will take a lifetime), and planting new trees, you can't get to everything...

I'm sorry you're having trouble with the lettuce seeds, I've had trouble with several packages of seeds I bought this year. But I was really excited about the lettuce because I saved the seeds from last year's plants. I noticed an unusually low germination rate from package seeds this year.

Well, mine were the lettuce seeds I've used in the past. The ones I seeded indoors did fine; the ones I seeded outdoors may have even been the same kind, I'm not sure.

Wow, for saving lettuce seeds. I don't think I've even seen a lettuce seed - I guess when they bolt you take the seed things off?

By the way, I was so glad my 2 Ace Peppers were looking so large, and I planted them with the small peppers in the pepper bed, and then I thought - wait a minute. Those look suspiciously like tomatoes... got that mixed up somehow...

camprn wrote:My lettuce also no germination, seed is too old is my guess will get more tomorrow at Horse and Buggy.

My lettuce is bolting.

NHGardener wrote:Well, mine were the lettuce seeds I've used in the past. The ones I seeded indoors did fine; the ones I seeded outdoors may have even been the same kind, I'm not sure.

Wow, for saving lettuce seeds. I don't think I've even seen a lettuce seed - I guess when they bolt you take the seed things off?

By the way, I was so glad my 2 Ace Peppers were looking so large, and I planted them with the small peppers in the pepper bed, and then I thought - wait a minute. Those look suspiciously like tomatoes... got that mixed up somehow...

I love romaine and I grew a lot of it last year. Some I took a few leaves at a time and at the end of the season I let 2 of those go to seed. It was cool to watch them go. They got really tall, I just let them go until they started to dry up. Got TONS of seeds.

yolos wrote:

camprn wrote:My lettuce also no germination, seed is too old is my guess will get more tomorrow at Horse and Buggy.

My lettuce is bolting.

You don't live in New England so that is no comparison.


I'm sorry your lettuce is bolting.

NHGardener wrote:Oh, by the way. I've been seeing this large white moth flittering around. Is it looking for squash plants, or broccoli? My squash has not sprouted outside yet (I have a few backups in the house) so I'm glad about that. I think I heard that if you do start your squashes late, you might escape the SVB just because the moths will not be around any longer to lay eggs. But I guess you might run the risk of running out of season that way too.

I have hoop material and agrabon but haven't gotten around to that yet, don't know if I will this season... I've been enlarging the growing area, putting down chips (that I scrounge from our pile of old logs, so they're really premium hand picked chips - haha) (in other words, this will take a lifetime), and planting new trees, you can't get to everything...

SVB moth


Cabbage worm moth

Aha. So that thing is after my tiny broccoli, kale & kohlrabi sprouts. I'll be eyeing those real closely now.  

NHGardener.....Some lightweight insect barrier laid over your brassicas will help a lot in preventing those cabbage worms and the flea beetles as well.

When my son and his wife came home from their weekend away, they brought home something for Mother's Day I really love, besides the chocolates and the roses.....a tool holder for the workshop.  I can get all my rakes, hoes and such upright in the holes and on the side are pockets for trowels, hand rakes, weeders and other small tools.  I love it. Now everything I need is in one place and not scattered hither and yon around the shop.   They know how to please a mamma gardener.

Temps reached 81 and sunny by the time I got back from having my winter tires off so I didn't work outdoors.  I can't handle the heat.  So I up-potted my peppers and several tomato plants instead.  Tomorrow will be back to the 50sF so a great day for gardening outdoors again.

I've got my brassicas and greens in and some flower seeds sown in the raised beds.  I have netting to put up, and lettuce seeds to sow as well as transplanting some lettuces into pots outside my kitchen door along with some herbs.  The warm-weather seedlings have to wait til after the 15th to be sure no frost sneaks in during the night.  Its dropping to the low 40s lately. 

I'm so thrilled that spring has finely sprung in southern Maine.  I hear Colorado got ten inches of new snow on Sunday.  Ugh!

Good idea QB, I forgot that instead of waiting for the whole hoop setup, I can just lay agrabon over the seedlings...

It was a taste of summer yesterday! Probably gave the soil a nice warm-up zap. Now with rain coming this weekend, it should soak all the new seeds and plants, so it would probably be a good idea to have everything in and ready to go by the time that wonderful rain hits and does its thing.

I went to bed last night and then the winds started howling. I was so tired, but I thought - uh oh. The seedlings are out on the deck. (These are a bunch of leftover but large tomato plants, the vines, some asparagus seed I started just for fun and transplant.) So I dragged myself out there and brought them all inside. People who can just go to the grocery store and be happy to buy their produce have it lucky.  

Yeah, NHG, but they're also ingesting a bunch of chemicals & who knows what else...

Yah, and the flavor ain't half as good with store-bought.

Speaking about SVB, here's an article that talks about emergence based on growing degree days (GDD), and here's a GDD calculator I found online.

By my reckoning, if you put your zip in and use Jan 1st as a start date, and then keep putting different early-summer dates in for the end date, you can get a rough idea of when they're most likely to emerge. 

In my garden, that's late July, which might explain why I've actually never had SVB, at least not in the past 2 years of veggie gardening.  My first frost date is start of Sept, so between emergence & first frost, the little pesties are cutting it pretty close to complete their life cycle. 

I'm not holding my breath, though...I'm still keeping a wary eye out for the little critters.  It may just be that they've never found my garden, and this will be the year that they do.

Molly you are a   !!

camprn wrote:Molly you are a   !!

I give
      
  

It's hard to find GDD info as it relates to specific plants and their relationships to pests.  Thanks    

Just be sure you're using 50° as your baseline.  I've been using that link for a while, and 50 isn't always the default.

Well, according to that calculator, it doesn't look like I'll have to worry about the svb until about July 10. So would that mean I don't have to worry about covering my vine plants until then? If I could leave them uncovered all of June, I think that would be helpful for them.

I just learned that the squash bug and squash vine borer are 2 different things. Somehow I had them all connected into the same bug. So you have to watch for both bugs with your vine crops.

NHGardener wrote:Well, according to that calculator, it doesn't look like I'll have to worry about the svb until about July 10. So would that mean I don't have to worry about covering my vine plants until then? If I could leave them uncovered all of June, I think that would be helpful for them.

YUp, you got it!!!

Knowing dates is really helpful. Once you have all your dates in your mind - indoor seeding, outdoor seeding, transplanting, what bugs to watch out for when - it must get so much easier. That's why those old farmers had a wealth in their info, which we have to relearn.

NHGardener wrote:Knowing dates is really helpful. Once you have all your dates in your mind - indoor seeding, outdoor seeding, transplanting, what bugs to watch out for when - it must get so much easier. That's why those old farmers had a wealth in their info, which we have to relearn.

ahyup...

mollyhespra wrote:Speaking about SVB, here's an article that talks about emergence based on growing degree days (GDD), and here's a GDD calculator I found online.

By my reckoning, if you put your zip in and use Jan 1st as a start date, and then keep putting different early-summer dates in for the end date, you can get a rough idea of when they're most likely to emerge. 

    Do we want the answer in the 1st box (so 7/24) to show 1000 for emergence or the 2nd box(7/29)?  Sure seems like he was flittin' around earlier last year...