PNW July 2014

I don't know about you Marc but over here on the Oregon Coast we've been experiencing a lack of pollinators this year.  Even planting lavendar and Petunias inside the greenhouse I've been unable to coax the bumble bees inside to pollinate.  So I spent June and the first half of July with my trusty find hair brush pollinating everything  It worked and I have an abundance of squash, pumpkins and tomatoes about to ripen.  But I've noticed, like you, not many fruit setting on the top growth of the tomatoes.  

Perhaps a gentle shake even now and again while watering will help your tomatoes to set fruit?

Because we've had off shore winds Sanderson, we've not experienced any smoke from the Washington fires.  Hopefully the bit of rain we got a couple days ago has helped them.  

Happy Gardening!

Glad to hear you got it working for you. I've taken to planting plenty of flowers -- this year veronica, petunias, pansies, lobelias, marigolds, and flowering herbs like sage and oregano have helped a bunch, and other flowering mints will pitch in later -- and also laying out bowls of water for bees, which seem to love them and hang all over them. So if I keep that up, I don't think lack of pollinators will be a problem. My peas got pollinated just fine earlier in the season, when it was cooler.

I've tried the shaking thing, but no luck with that so far. I may try hormone spray, though it doesn't lead to the best fruit. I think the fact that our days can get too hot for blossoms to set and our nights can get too cold for them to set, all in the same day quite often, may be the problem. The pollen dries up really fast in the morning heat. In another area I garden in, at a neighbor's place, pollination is not a problem even though they have far fewer bees over there. It's just a little cooler there.

I had this same problem last year during the hottest part of the summer. Even my most productive tomatoes took some time off.

back to being hot, hot, hot out in the familygardens   we did have a tad bit of rain last week, but it was not enough as though we thought we could take a day off from watering the pots and containers until I noticed a cucumber & tomato plant that looked so sad from being really dry.....  I guess three cucumber plants in one container can really soak up the water!

this week we were able to sow some fall harvest veggies in 2 of our 3x5 beds in the back garden....we amended the beds with our own homemade compost....first time we were able to use all of our OWN   this will be a good test to see how it measures up to the mushroom compost we normally get that I know our plants LOVE....

lets see we planted in our back garden 3x5 beds

1st bed:

  3 SQ's   white beets
12 SQ's   carrots

2nd bed:

3 SQ's   green onions
3 SQ's   Turnips
3 SQ's   Leeks
3 SQ's   Rutabagas
3 SQ's   Golden Beets

3rd Bed....we still need to plant this weekend

3 SQ's  green onions
3 SQ's  carrots
3 SQ's  carrots
3 SQ's  carrots
3 SQ's  green onions

waiting to be transplanted in our 6x6-4x8-4x10 beds is our cole crops seedlings that are doing well in a shady area, and it looks like we are going to have to do a lot of thinning....I believe all the seeds sprouted   

Broc,
cauli,
cabbage,
bok choi, 
B. sprouts,
Kohlrabi 
collard greens

also going to transplant some seedlings of
mustard green
Kale
swiss chard


we want to direct sow in any extra SQ's in those beds and 6 empty SQ's in our SFG area some:

spinach
radishes
lettuce
mache


happy gardening
rose.... who was given a tiny gift last night from one of her girls...update in *who has chickens* thread  

sanderson wrote:Anyone being impacted by the fire in Washington?

not us.....thanks for checking on us!!

hugs
rose

Marc.... Glad to hear you are enjoying some harvesting! We are Amazed at the Dino Kale too....and wait until you taste it after your first frost!!....we love it!

funny how volunteer plants do so well in the compost pile!!....keep us posted on how your squash does   

hope your tomatoes set some fruit for you....and the brown spores sound interesting!....can you take a pic and show us   

Rillgardens....happy to hear you are also getting fruits....hope you have a wonderful harvest of veggies soon!!

happy gardening
rose

FG - that is a lot of planting you did or will do shortly.  21 squares of carrots.  Somebody in the family must like carrots.

And beets! That's one heck of a lot of carrots and beets.

More of my bush beans are flowering, but no beans on them yet. Some of the flowers are just dropping off. I guess they may not like all the heat either.

But some more of my direct-sown beans are germinating. Some are in poor soil, and not as many are germinating there by far. Maybe too many disease organisms killing them off right away. Some others back at the house are doing much better, but germination on these "Speedy" beans from Territorial is a bit spotty in four different beds now, each with different soil in them. It's too early to tell if buying them is something I'll never do again, but usually beans have a higher germination rate for me. My other beans -- Dragon Tongue and Red Burgundy -- both had a near 100% germination rate. Then again, I suppose I can't have perfection as a standard. My yellow was beans, two types, aren't germinating as reliably either.

Maybe I'm just so anxious to get a tomato at last that I'm too nervous about the other things I'm growing, too.

I am having the same problem with germination of my edamame.  100% germination in the spring and about 10% germination now.  I had to resort to germinating in a damp paper towel in a zip lock bag in my kitchen.  Got 95% germination using that method.  Here is an article about soil temps and effect on germination.  At the bottom of the article is a link to the index.  Click on that and you will see lots of links to some great articles.


http://tomclothier.hort.net/page11.html

Here are a couple thoughts about your germination problems.  For smaller seeds, it is commmmon for ants to carry off your seeds.  I'm thinking carrots, lettuce and broccoli.  For beans, mice and birds will dig them up and steal them.   Also, maybe try making a larger hole and filling with vermiculite then adding the bean.  The vermiculite will hold the moisture and give the bean that added wetness to sprout. Especially in the really hot weather.  
I use this vermiculite method with my carrots and usually get 95% germination.  Carrots take so long to sprout.  Inside the greenhouse it is common for me to have to water them twice a day but using the vermiculite method I only have to water once a day.

Thanks folks.

Lynn, that vermiculite idea is one I never would have thought of. Thanks for the suggestion.

Yolos, the chart on the first page you linked to snows germination at only 39% at 95 degrees and at zero at 104 degrees. Even temps of 86 degrees get less than 50% germination, and with rare exception we've been higher than that for more than a month. We've had plenty of above-100 temps for a month solid, and those days that haven't had them are typically in the mid to high 90's. No wonder the bean germination has been spotty.

I guess that serves even more so as a testament to the ruggedness of the Dragon Tongue and the Royal Burgundy seeds, as they germinated regardless.

Marc - those temps in the chart are soil temps.  I am on my way outside and will stick my compost thermometer in the soil and see how the temps read in the top few inches.

The soil temps are:
90* in beds that have not been watered in 2 days
85* in beds watered last night
80* in beds I just watered.

Hi everyone!  I have not been posting but I do read the forum daily on my tablet. I am very impressed by everyones gardens this year.
I wanted to post that my garden is doing well this year.  It seems to be a great cucumber year and I have canned 5 pints of green beans so far.  I have eaten 2 Early Girl tomatoes and about 9 Sungolds, it will still be awhile before I get any more tomatoes as they are still growing.  Zucchini are abundant also.  
I have a 2'x8' (from peas) that is empty and I am still deciding what to plant.  If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.  Happy Gardening!

Marc Iverson wrote:. . . . . 

Funny thing though -- both at home and in the school garden, I've found at the base of a couple plants what looks like a bowlful of brown pudding close to the base of some plants.  Pouring water on it, the top half inch of it it explodes into very fine brown dust, which I assume is spores.  At first I thought Oh no!, if this is bad I just made it far worse!  But so far, whatever this thing is looks harmless.  The plants don't seem affected even when the spores get right on their stems.  

We get so many mushrooms and lichen around here, different ones every year it seems.  This thing may be a mold rather than a mushroom, I don't know.  Molds can be deadly if inhaled, but so far, no harm no foul.  They regrow their top surface every few days, but I've decided not to worry about them.

marc, I think that is something called Dog Vomit and is a slime mold. I have it this year for the first time and due I think to using wood chips. Not nice, but I don't think it does much harm. I am hoping it will get less as the wood chips turn to soil.

Happycamper so good to hear from you!! (((hugs))) I have to agree this is a good year for us too with the cucumbers, we haven't canned any yet but are eating the fresh daily off the vines.....I even have to sneak them from my son who LOVES them so  :oops:our one plant Zucchini has given us LOT of fruit and it continues as there are lots of babies still....thank goodness our family loves Zucchini bread! as far as your peas squares being empty.....you could replant peas again   we love sugar snap peas so in the spring we plant a pole type and then replant a bush type for fall   

yes we are sowing LOTs of carrots but that doesn't mean we get many....that's the reason for planting so much this fall....we always have problems with carrots....but we have been working on some beds to see if we can grow better carrots.....its not just one problem....its germination, watering, soil compaction, pest....and so on....

we are not sure we are going to like beets....but are willing to try some fresh from the garden....but....chickens will benefit from the tops this fall and winter.....so in our planning the gardens we are including the chickens as well   

happy gardening
rose

Kelejan wrote:
marc, I think that is something called Dog Vomit and is a slime mold. I have it this year for the first time and due I think to using wood chips. Not nice, but I don't think it does much harm. I am hoping it will get less as the wood chips turn to soil.

We had the dog vomit in another location last year, but it was bright yellow. This just looked like a tan, smooth surface. And it has lasted for a couple of weeks. The dog vomit was gone in a day or two. I suppose it could have been the dog vomit mold in another stage. At any rate it seems harmless, as it's right by the base of a plant and doesn't seem to have done anything bad, even when the spores got all over the plant.

My compost pile hosts so many mushrooms that come and go, really weird looking things, like ones that are fat hollow tubes that look like sea anenomes, and other odd looking things. It gets me curious, and I wash my hands if any of the pile ever gets on me, but it's all been harmless so far.

Hi happycamper. Agree with familygardens that you can never have too many peas! Our master gardening hand-outs down here in Southern Oregon notes that peas are dicey in this area for fall, as they do tend to like the sun to produce a good harvest, and a cool fall or early snows can sometimes lead to a disappointing crop. I was very tempted to plant more peas myself, but already had peas fail last fall, so I reluctantly skipped it.

I did plant a bunch of broccoli raab today, maybe a dozen square feet. The packet says 45 days, so if I can get them to germinate, I should have time for a crop. I'm thinking I might shade that area to cool it down so as to encourage germination. Maybe you'd like to try some sort of broccoli, broccoli raab, or sprouting broccoli?

I'm also going to plant some more daikon radishes this fall. I really love them, but haven't successfully grown anything but their pods yet (early heat this year made them bolt before forming a decent root). If you've never tried them, they're a very mild radish, but huge, so they're very efficient on the space usage. And if they do bolt, their pods are quite tasty and numerous.

Have you ever had baby bok choi? They're delicate and delicious, and can grow to maturity in as little as a month. Again, mine bolted this year due to that quick blast of 95 degree heat we had in early spring, but I'm trying them again this fall. They grow quick and are so small they don't take a lot of room.

Another day of 100+, and I had to spend plenty of hours out working in it. Whew! Glad that's over.

Finished my last garden projects of real size or importance for this year:

-- Mixed up a couple of wheelbarrows full of Mel's Mix, enough to use up all my partially-empty bags I've had sitting around for a while.
-- Filled a bunch of buckets with it for transplants of some very late tomatoes that had overgrown small pots, some more malabar spinach seedlings, and a few basil plants. Took them down to a neighbor's garden, where he's letting me use his sun and water on a bucket army that's probably something like 14 buckets by now.
-- Cleaned up a section of the yard where all those bags and buckets becoming messy and scattered.
-- Got three hanging planters attached to the crossbars of the chainlink fence around the back yard, rough rectangles 42 inches long each by 18 inches from the top of one side down to the bottom and up to the top of the other side. Planted with a scattering of lettuce seedlings, and seeds of multi-color trailing lobelia, Red Giant mustard, and red perilla(shiso) greens. I think once everything germinates, it will look very pretty.

I've spent a lot of hours in the blazing sun this summer, and am glad that tomorrow is supposedly the last 100 degree day of the season.

Most of my many different plantings of beans have sprouted, and I've finally found the first pod on one, a dragon tongue bean. Woo hoo! I'm wondering how I'm going to maintain these guys, because even though they're bush beans, a few amongst them are getting very tall, maybe even four feet tall and real viney, and look like they'll need a support infrastructure that I have in no way planned for or considered previously. This is my first year growing bush beans, and I thought they were self-supporting rather than just .... shorter than full-size vines. Nothing's tipping over yet, but it seems inevitable once the pods really start coming in and growing.

marc,  we have had several 97F days and there is another week of it forecast.
It is a hard job keeping up with the watering, as I am also looking after a neighbour's pot plants while she is away so I do a twenty minute walk each day as I really want her to have her beloved plants there for her on her return. I find pot plants are really hard to keep from drying out.
Today I moved four blueberry plants into their final place.  I bought them as soon as they came into our local garden centre and up-potted them straight away while I prepared their final home.  Their final home is where I had my eight large birch trees felled; the area had to be dug out of roots, compost put down etc. I have been doing it a few square feet at a time and today I almost  made it. The bushes are still in their pots, but sunk into the ground, and tomorrow morning they will be removed from the pots and finally touch base with Mother Earth and then mulched with pine needles and the remaining woodchips. That will have to do until I finally get more woodchips.
A very satisfying day.  Tomorrow, I will take it easy.

Went to do volunteer hours at the Plant Clinic today. Some interesting questions, and I learned that yellow spots on tomatoes tend to be a sign of stink bugs, which are becoming a big problem here in the PNW lately -- brown marmorated stink bugs especially. It was fun working with the other volunteers to puzzle things out and vet with each other our answers to phone and walk-in questions.

Went outside and it was 105 degrees. Sheesh. Time to go home and water all my probably suffering plants ... but after sitting in the car that had been out in that heat all day, I don't wanna. So, so far I haven't. I want it to cool down a bit first.

Got some more seeds -- a terrible addiction of mine, this time for wildflower mixes, kale, and buckwheat, which I'll show as a cover crop in some of my neighbor's beds. They can supposedly be turned in within a month of planting. The package also says their flowers make great late-season bee food, but I'm not sure if I want them to flower if they're just intended as a cover crop. Then again, I was thinking of planting more than one cycle of them in the same beds, so ... I dunno.

Also got some spinach mustard seeds from Cape Coddess. She had good words about them, so I'll find some space for them too. Supposedly they're very heat and drought tolerant, which is pretty good all by itself.

kelejan, someone I know here says they grow the most expensive blueberries in the world. They have a nice walk-in enclosure with bird netting on every side and making up a roof for the enclosure, too. Good solid wire lower down, attached to solid wood posts ... but what else can they do if they don't want to simply lose to the critters every berry they get. I love the idea of growing blueberries, it seems to take quite a commitment.

sanderson, given that my beans are already planted, do you have any suggestions as to what to do to support them? They're pretty tightly together, and I have beans in just about every stage of germination and height/width at this point, each in their different sections.

sanderson wrote:Marc,  I fashioned wire coat hangers as pickets around the DT beans one time, but not everyone can find wire hangers.  Strong twigs in 4 corners with string wrapped around and around, using Camp's fancy little stay-in-place knots.  Single half-hitches??

I'm no knotsman, I can tell you that. This is going to be a knotty problem, though.

I've got some growing in square bags, some in round pots, most in raised or ground-level beds. The wire hangers idea is an interesting one, but I wonder how much weight they could take (if I could even find them). Using string to work up a web of some sort sounds decent too, but I'm trying to picture a way I could get in there to the beans once I've set it all up. This is hard to picture a way out of. I had really just assumed they were self-supporting, like (more or less) peppers are, and like some other bush beans I've seen are.

Oh well ... maybe that means that not all of my bush beans will be floppy. I did plant three different kinds, plus two different kinds of yellow wax bean.

I found it hard to bend over the on-ground box trying to find the beans.  I'm hoping the DTs in the TT will be so much easier to search through.

I found that to be the case with my peas, too, and I'm sure it will be at least as bad with the beans. TT's seem to be the way to go for almost everything, for so many reasons!

... I wonder if I could anchor some kind of PVC frame in the ground ... some kinda boxy business ... and then run strings across that? Maybe even tier it -- one level at a foot or a bit less, another at two feet ... couldn't make it too elaborate or high, though, or I could never get inside it!

Marc, I thought the temps were supposed to drop in your area??

Me too! Yesterday and today were supposed to be the last 100+ days for the season. Supposed to be 103 and 101 respective, then revised as 101 and 101 ... but instead it went to 108 and 105. I came back home at the end of the day to find my plants in 5-gallon buckets looking miserable, and my pineapple tomatillo looking like it might have been killed off in in a single day. I think most of my just-transplanted lettuce seedlings bit the dust.

Boy, when you come outside and sit in a black car that's been out all day in the sun in that kind of heat ...