Imafan's 2022 Garden

[imafan26]

Beets planted 3/31/22 in organic pot, and Tokyo Bekana planted tower garden 4/4/22 are sprouting. The tomatoes I transplanted out on 3/31/22 are all alive and growing slowly. Even the one that was damaged is still hanging in there. The secondary crops, koba onions, daikon and buttercrunch lettuce have all come up.

The okra is unhappy. I think the problem is with the marigolds. I thought the marigolds would be good companions but maybe not. I will transplant out the marigolds so the okra can have the pot to itself unless I can find a better companion.

Most of the cucumbers have fruit now. I think the organic pot has thrips the leaves are all spotted starting at the bottom and the spots are moving up. I don't see anything under the leaves and the fruit don't have damage, so I sprayed the undersides of the leaves with water to see if I can knock anything off.

The cilantro in the front yard is looking good. Too bad it can't be eaten, but it is a spot where even the nasturtiums managed to last the whole year. Maybe the cilantro will reseed there as well. In a few weeks the blossoms will come out then the insects will be even happier.

Today I cut back the kra prao thai basil. I did leave a third of it for the bees. The bees have a lot of food now with the Tokyo bekana and cucumbers blooming, so it was a good time to cut back the monster bush.

Dunja zucchini has two baby female flowers that have not bloomed yet. I have been spraying them with Bt at the same time as I spray the cucumber blossoms to control the pickleworms. It has actually decreased the butterflies around the cabbages too, Unfortunately, the birds have taken up the slack and are going after the beans and kale again. Now, I understand why nobody really wants to grow regular green beans that much.

The cilantro in the back yard is starting to bolt. I may get another week out of it. I have to figure out how to use it. I have a few cucumbers that I can pick and more should be ready next week. The oldest Soarer is showing its' age. It is starting to show powdery mildew and the leaves are yellowing. It is still putting out fruit but the fruit are curling and small. I may just take it down since the others are producing and redo the pot again.

My niece brought be some styrofoam coolers. They will make good planter containers. I might make one into a self watering container. I am considering growing ung choy (kangkong). It is very easy to grow, but like NZ spinach it can be hard to keep up with. I have to decide how much I like it and if I could use it often enough.

I planted more seeds today. Shiso, Wailua chili (jalapeno), Satsuma Long green eggplant ( I hope it will be soft), Curly Vates kale, Charleston Bell pepper (nematode resistant, but not bacterial spot resistant), and perpetual spinach. Some of the peppers in four inch pots want to flower so I have to up pot them soon. Today, it is very windy and it is raining lightly, but very annoying since the rain is being driven by the wind. The papaya leaves are also starting to yellow, so they need to go in the ground or into bigger pots.

I found one snail in the green onions. They like the green onions, I have found them there before. I am finding significantly fewer of them lately, I guess that fat toad is doing a good job. I haven't had to put out a lot of bait.

I have a couple of wild pea tomatoes and wild bitter melon. They are weeds. I don't mind the tomatoes, but the bitter melon climbs all over the fence and everything else.

The Thai basil is showing signs of basil downy mildew. I may have to pull them out.

[imafan26]

I've been contemplating what to cycle into the garden next especially as the weather should be getting warmer (not yet it was 71 degrees last night), and the humidity starts rising.

I always thought things like zucchini, beans, tomatoes, peppers, were summer plants. Apparently, not in my tropical climate. They will do best before the temperature hits 80. Zucchini, I know will get mildew in high humidity and it does not tolerate the heat. I have to get disease resistart parthenocarpic zucchini because of that since it will stop producing female flowers in the heat. I have always grown disease resistant tomatoes, but before TYLCV came along, I could also grow heat resistant tomatoes as well. The TYLCV resistant varieties have more BER and will not set flowers when it is hot, although the plants will survive until the weather improves. Hot peppers are no problem, but the bell peppers do a little better in the cooler weather, they are still small, but I have to get disease resistant varieties or they will never survive the rainy season.

The cucumbers I grow, can grow year round but I do switch from Soarer to Suyo in the hottest months. Forget about growing lettuce and cilantro after April. Asian greens will last until June. By then, I only harvest out the garden and all that will remain will be the perennial plants (kale, Swiss chard, perpetual spinach, basil, Italian parsley, perennial herbs) July and August are better for solarizing the garden and water gets expensive then, so it is better to have less to water. Midsummer is my time when there is little growing in the garden except the perennial weeds.

[imafan26]

The first garden cycle is winding down. I cut back the komatsuna and pulled out the older chard and perpetual spinach. I have a gallon of kale in the freezer. The Tokyo bekana has gone to seed. I am going to try to save some of them. I put in a couple of more peppers and the Thai peppers are ripening. The broccoli is still producing side shoots but they are bolting faster so it may be time for that to go as well. I weeded the garden and now I have an open space to replant. I seeded the green garden tower and usually I will have some extra that I can transplant. Some of the seeds in the green tower has already started to sprout. The organic Soarer has a problem with the leaves that will shorten its' life, but it is producing cucumbers. They taste the same as conventional cucumbers. The other organic pots are trying, but that is more a testament to Soarer. The plants are not even two feet tall but they are trying to make cucumbers.

I have been cutting off the flowering spikes of the cilantro, but I can't keep that up for long. The beets have started to sprout, but only a few. The terra cotta tower has beans in it. There are three kinds of beans (provider, greencrop, and maxibel) because I had to reseed it 4 times. The beans are flowering now and I started picking a few beans.

The tomatoes that I started in the modified organic buckets ( a lot less compost). Are all doing o.k. I have underplanted them with a second crop. Sun King is under planted with chives, BHN 589 no. 1 is underplanted with daikon and BJN 589 #2 is underplanted with buttercrunch lettuce.

The papaya and a lot of the peppers need to be up potted again. A few of those are already flowering.

Today, I planted more seeds as it will probably be the last chance to plant the cooler growing crops. Cilantro, Ajvarsky pepper, Joe E. Parker, Majestic bell pepper, shiso, lime basil, Tokyo Bekana, semposai, salad bowl lettuce, perpetual spinach, Curly Vates Kake, Rainbow Chard, and a few other things I can't remember.

Some other things will be direct seeded into the garden.

I did plant the Poamoho beans yesterday in another 20 inch pot. It is actually smaller than the muck bucket I usually use, so the trellis has one leg out of the pot.
I need to underplant it, I just have not figured out what I am going to plant.

I still have another pot to plant with asparagus beans.

Dunja zucchini has 2 small female fruit and one flowered today.

May is traditionally the month when I have the heaviest pest pressure. I have already treated the hibiscus for erineum mites. The roses have some black spot but not too bad, so I have just been picking off the leaves. I did have to pull some of the pepper seedlings because of bacterial spot. The sunflowers also had some fungal damage but they are budding up now after I removed the damaged leaves. The crepe myrtle has powdery mildew for the first time. I have been able to hose that off. The broad mites did appear but it was limited mostly to the basil. I cut the basil back and it seems o.k. now.

[imafan26]

It seems it has been awhile since I posted some pictures of the garden. There is a lot to harvest and some of the garden is going to seed. The first cycle is ending and I have some plants started for the next cycle. Pests are coming back. I have some broad mites, and thrips, Something is on the cucumbers, I don't know exactly what it is. The cucumber fruit look o.k. but the leaves are progressively becoming severely spotted then finally wilting. It will probably shorten the production of this plant. Bt and sulfur has controlled the pickle worms and I am seeing fewer butterflies in the garden. There are a lot of bees in the front and in the main garden because the Tokyo bekana , zucchini, bush beans, peppers, and cucumbers are blooming.

The bees are also working in the insectary garden along with the hover flies. I set the methyl eugenol trap and I am catching oriental fruit flies. There is some damage on the citrus, that is mostly from white flies. They need to be fed and weeded. The citrus is also blooming and fruiting.

[TomatoNut95]

Oh wow!! Looking good!

[imafan26]

The organic cucumber has spots all over the leaves. It is only affecting cucumbers. The lettuce and citrus, marigold, and cabbages around them are not being bothered at all. I don't know what this is. It is the first time this has happened. It started to show up on another cucumber 10 ft away. Skipping over a few other families of plants. I picked off the leaf and I started spraying with 3 in 1 spray. I am hoping it will be enough to protect the unaffected leaves. Does anyone recognize this? It showed up a couple of weeks ago and is progressively moving up the cucumber. The fruit are not affected.

[applestar]

Love the photos from your garden @imafan


… regarding your cucumbers, you have much more warm (not freezing) winter and tropical issues than my garden, so not sure if there is a crossover, but you reminded me of the time I had an unknown problem with my cucumbers.

Do you think yours are showing similar damage to this one?



If you so, check out this thread with more description and possible culprit —

What is this on the bean leaves? - HelpfulGardener.com
viewtopic.php?t=58918

[TomatoNut95]

I've had cuke plants do that to. Are you sure its not mosaic virus? Or a bug perhaps like the flea beetle? They're hard to see. Or the cucumber beetle?

[imafan26]

The leaf spots on the cucumber leaf above looks more like angular leaf spot. the margins of the water mold are bordered by the cell walls. The holes where the center drops out of the necrotic leaf is also very typical of angular leaf spot.
https://ag.umass.edu/vegetable/fact-she ... leaf-spots

The link to the other post, does look more like what is happening. Someone suggested it might be a tiny beetle causing all this damage. It is not a virus. I did not see anything on the undersides of the leaf and the spots spread really fast covering the leaf in a week. The spots are irregular but not angular they are more evenly distributed. The leaves yellow, dry and die, but they don't become necrotic in the center of the spots. The sulfur and pyrethrin does seem to be slowing it down, but not stopping it. It is a very specific problem since only the leaves are affected and not the fruit, or any other plants nearby. Only the organic cucumbers are getting these spots and I have conventional fertilizer cucumber pots between the organic ones and they are not affected at all and they are the same variety of cucumber from the same seed batch.

I did see a beetle on a stem the other day that I did not recognize and tried to catch it. I also cannot explain why it is only happening to the organic cucumbers. The only thing is that the organic cucumbers are weaker than the conventional cucumbers overall.

This is strange. I am having other pest issues in the yard, but those are not uncommon for this time of the year. May is normally, the peak bug month. It has been overcast with occasional sprinkles and that is bringing on powdery mildew on the crepe myrtle and egg plant. The tomatoes and cucumbers are resistant so they don't show much disease yet. The pickle worms were controlled with Bt, but they are back, so I guess I need to keep spraying. The Bt worked for about 2 weeks. The butterflies came back too, so I have to spray the crown flower as well as the zucchini. I am starting to have broad mite problems and bacterial spot on some of the peppers, so I have topped some of them. The roses have black spot, but it is not that bad and has not reached a stage where it needs to be treated yet. There are a few ants around, so I need to put out some fresh ant bait. I got just one large African snail today. I put out bait a few days ago. I have already treated the hibiscus for erineum mites. I should do preventive fungicide on the roses, orchids, eggplant and peppers, especially when we have this intermittent damp weather. Actually, I could probably fungicide some other things. The only ones I don't need to worry much about are the ones that I have chosen specifically for their resistance to disease like the cucumbers,and tomatoes. It would not hurt to fungicide them as well. I would normally use sulfur, but I have to find my wettable sulfur. I don't want to use the 3 in 1 as a blanket fungicide because I don't need the pyrethrin. I can use the mycobutanil on the ornamentals. I could use it on the vegetables, but I prefer not to use a systemic on them. I can use vinegar or baking soda on the vegetables as a preventive instead. It would have to be applied more often. I need to clean out my fruit fly bottles and put out the fresh cue lure. I have already replaced the methyl eugenol lure. I probably should feed everything in pots now that are not organic. The fastest way to do that is to use miracle grow. For some of the orchids it is the only practical way to feed them.

It is a blustery day with winds at 10 mph. Humidity is not bad at 60%. It is 75 degrees now, but feels cooler. The night temperatures are still around 66 and the day max is around 78.

[imafan26]

Two days ago, I found more ground mealy bugs in the pots. This time they were in the galangal. I threw out the soil and saved only the ginger and washed it well. Sprayed it with alcohol and dusted it with diatomaceous earth and left it over night. I replanted it yesterday. I will see in a couple of months if it survives and if the root mealybugs are gone.

The native gardenia I treated with hot water, all died. I am averaging about 50% saves with hot water treatments but the plants that do survive look bad for a long time.

I am able to treat and control light infestations with alcohol without harming the plants.

For the most part now, unless it is a plant I have a hard time replacing, it is is just better to get rid of the plant and soil and try to limit the spread.

Ground mealy bugs are sneaky because it take a while for the plants to become compromised. They are hidden in the soil so the plant just gets weaker slowly and that is the only hint that there is any problem at all.

I am finding fewer pots infested, but it still is an ongoing battle.

I researched and the other options would be imidicloprid, which I have used on the ornamentals and that actually did solve the problem. I did prep the spot with lots of boiling hot water first, but I put down imidicloprid and the plants that I put in afterward have been good for a year.

Imidicloprid though cannot be used in the back yard where I have the vegetables.

Malathion can work and is o.k. for the vegetables I have, but I would rather not use malathion and kill off all of the beneficials I have cultivated over the years. It needs to be used repeatedly for control.

I can spot treat some of the bare ground sites with hot water. It will kill off some of them but not all.

I just ordered some spinosad. Spinosad is supposed to be effective on root mealybugs and I can use it as a dip for the pots. It cannot be used long term or it will lose its' effectiveness.

In the meantime all I can do is keep checking the root balls in the pots and getting rid of the ones that are contaminated and replaceable.

I have been adding diatomaceous earth to the potting soil. I don't know if it is helping or not.

[imafan26]

I cut back the tea in the front yard and filled my green can. I fertilized the pots and in ground plants that I could. I skipped the organic pots since they are fed weekly.

The beans are finally coming up. It took 7 days for them to germinate. The lettuce in the organic tomato pot needs to be thinned. I will transplant as many as I can into the other organic pots, and some into the non-organic pots and in the garden as well. This will probably be the last lettuce I will be able to get a decent harvest from until the fall.

The cilantro is bolting, so that is fine. The flowers will be good for the beneficial insects. The bees and I are both enjoying the lemon queen sunflowers.

I pruned the ajaka basil yesterday because the broad mites were attacking them. I was going to spray them with 3 in 1, but the hover flies were out, so I changed my mind. I just used water and I will manage them with pruning for now. I just resprayed the cucumber and zucchini with Bt. I will start to put stockings on the cucumbers to help keep them from being stung. I still have one more green can left so I can cut the ti from the back yard as they are hosts for fruit flies. I have about a dozen cucumbers, about 6 of them are pollinated and should be ready within a week. The bean tower is also now in full production so I should be able to get a larger harvest this week.

The seeds I planted have sprouted for the most part. The papaya are still lagging.
I have started transplanting them. into 3 and 4 inch pots. I am running out of space for them. I have separated the organic seedlings from the conventional. I will fertilize the conventional seedlings after I get a few more of the compots separated. I potted up more peppers as well. I need to find other spots for them too.

I only have a limited amount of organic peat moss left, so I am potting up more of the conventional plants since I do have potting soil for that.

I have to weed whack the front yard. The grass is starting to get drier since it has not rained much. It rained the last two days, but the rain was light. It has been a dry winter. It is a La Nina year. It is getting a bit warmer and with the longer days, things are starting to grow much faster, so I have to water more. I am going to try to pot up some of the plants since they stress because they are under potted. I want to get at least one more rose in the ground. I think I can squeeze once in where I had the hibiscus before. That depends on if I can dig a hole in that ground. One of the roses I took out is actually growing back. I still think it is rootstock. Maybe I will try my luck at grafting onto it. My success rate is 100% failure, so I can only get better. If it doesn't work, I can always try again, the root stock is very strong.

[imafan26]

The Poamoho beans finally came up. It seemed like forever. Actually it was about a week, it just seemed longer. Not everything germinated so I put in more beans today. The birds like to fish in the pots for seeds. I bought some plastic poultry fencing today and some stakes. I will have to try to build another barrier around the pole beans.

I transplanted some of the Buttercrunch lettuce from the tomato pot. I had about 30 seedlings. I put them in 6 other pots. I got tired after that and still had some plants left, so I had some of the thinning for lunch. There is a couple of other places I can plant more lettuce, and I have a lot of thinning left to do.

I pulled more weeds out of the garden and took off the bacterial spotted leaves off the chard. One of the cabbages had bad galling on the leaves so I chopped those off too. I pulled out two of the three broccoli plants. Now, I have lots of space in the garden. I also took off the lower leaves from the toscano ,Curly vates, and Raggedy Jack kale. It have a sad bell pepper with two bell peppers in the garden. I still have not figured out how to grow bell pepper. I have lots of space in the garden now. I also have a lot of seeds started in the compots, so it won't be long before I am out of space again.

I pulled out the older Soarer cucumber. I had some seeds of Soarer already started in a community pot, so I transplanted them after I cleaned out the roots and refertilized the pot. All of the organic soarer plants are trying to make cucumbers, but their leaves are either compromised fro whatever is causing these spots or the plants are stunted and the leaves are small, so I don't know if they will be able to catch up. I am starting new seeds anyway. I am going to change to an beit alpha variety that is more heat tolerant than Soarer. I just have to scrape up enough organic soil for the pots.

I must have a lot of worms in my worm bin. They made short work of the bean plants I pulled out. The only thing left in the bin are the hard stems. They also consumed most of the carbon, so I added a couple of more egg boxes and brown paper packing. In a couple of weeks they will get more beans. For this week. I should have saved more of the kale leaves, they had holes in them but no disease, so it would have been ok for them to get that. Now, I will have to find something else for them to eat. I'm sure there is wild bitter melon somewhere in this yard. I must have left some worms in the vermicast when I put it in the pots. I am finding a few red wrigglers in the pots. I have had to rescue a few and put them back into the worm bin.

These are the last few days of my Spring planting season. I will need to transition to warm season crops only. I am going to have to switch varieties of cucumbers and beans to more heat tolerant ones. The eggplant and some peppers have already been started and some are potted up and have flowers. It is still too cold for the super hots, but it should be warm enough next month. I am still waiting on the sweet potato slips to get a little larger before I plant them in the pot. The pot has been ready for over a month. I am planning out what varieties I am going to plant in the summer garden.

[imafan26]

It has been raining almost every day since Easter. I spent the morning looking for copper sulfate. I have to spray the susceptible plants cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, roses every few days. I have been using sulfur, but sulfur will not be good enough for bacterial spot on the Swiss chard and peppers. I ordered dithane from amazon. It is supposed to come tomorrow? I will be surprised if that really happens.

Although it rains and it is breezy, the sun has actually made an appearance today. It has been overcast on most days. Unfortunately I only have about a three day window to try to get ahead of the mildew. One of the cucumbers (it is older) has some powdery mildew. The cucumber has mildew resistance, but the older and weaker plants will still get it. It may be time to pull that one out. The soil in that pot is very wet so it contributed to the plant being stressed. There are also peas in the same pot, they have mildew too, but they are making peas, so I will wait to harvest a few more since it will be all the snow peas I will get until next year. The roses look good, but I did treat some of them earlier and they have been pruned. I am waiting to deadhead them, since I don't want to do that if it is going to rain again.

I was going to make a bordeaux mix, but I can't find the hydrated lime. Instead, I am going to try the hydrogen peroxide and baking soda sprays. At least those things I have in the house and are more benign. I have daconyl, immunox, and tebuconazole as well as the 3 in 1 spray (sulfur + pyrethrins). The systemic fungicides I can use on the ornamentals. It is the sanest way to treat them. I do have resistant cultivars of cucumber and tomatoes, but some of the peppers, (most are not resistant to bacterial spot), which is why I need the copper sulfate. Sulfur can help prevent the powdery mildew, but not the bacterial spot. I don't want to use systemics on the vegetables.

[imafan26]

It rained again last night. It is 73 degrees with a high expected around 77. The winds are still brisk. The sky has cleared a bit, I can see some blue between the clouds. I checked out the garden. A few peppers do have bacterial spot. The cucumber I treated for powdery mildew looks better. The okra is toast. The marigolds are taking over the pot. It is a little cold for the okra so I may try them again later. The snow peas do have mildew, I am spraying them with copper sulfate. I am getting peas, so hopefully they will muddle along for a while longer. Some of the roses have black spot, but they do have some resistance. They need pruning and since the blackspot is not bad, I will manage them with pruning. The crepe myrtle has powdery mildew. It has been controlled so far. It is a nuisance more than a problem I have to deal with. The plant is healthy and putting out new leaves, so I think for now it will be o.k.

The lettuce I transplanted in the pots that are in partial shade did o.k. but the ones that went into the pot that gets full sun, has only a couple of survivors. I still have a lot more lettuce (Buttercrunch) to thin, but they are so big that I think I will just harvest them as baby greens instead. The ones I ate were tender and sweet.

The papaya are still not up. Not surprising, they don't like cold. The shiso did come up. They are very tiny, but at least they are coming up. Hopefully, nothing happens to them. They are another one that does not like cold or being started in pots. The tomatoes are looking good. They do have disease resistance so they are not showing signs of mildew, even the one I nearly decapitated is making a comeback.
I did treat them with copper sulfate yesterday anyway. The thing with fungal disease is that prevention works better than cure. I have a lot of seeds coming up. Some will be ready to pot up soon. I need to make more space.

I have room in the main garden since I pulled out the weeds, broccoli and cut back some of the plants. I will see how many of the seedlings go at the club sale in a couple of weeks. Some of the leftovers can go into the garden. I will have to make space for more pots for the others. Some of the herbs and basil, I can take to the herb row or put them in the apiary pollinator garden.

The bees were out today working the basil, lemon queen sunflower, alyssum, lavender, and cuphea. The cilantro has just started to bloom. The bees don't see white well unless it is massed, so they probably don't see the one umbrel flower blooming. The bees are also busy visiting the cucumber, beans, peas, citrus, and the flowering brassicas. I even saw a hawk moth, I think. It did not stick around for long.

I have 5 small cucumbers. The organic ones are really trying hard to make cucumbers but the Soarer has so few small leaves from whatever was damaging them. I don't think the plant can get these cucumbers to a good size. Whatever it was, it seems to have left. The newer leaves on other cucumbers are no longer being damaged. I have more cucumber seeds coming up of different varieties I have not tried before Green Dragon, beit alpha, and Diva (these are old seeds I planted. I am not sure they will come up. Diva is a good cucumber. I have planted it before)

One of the organic pots is recovering and is putting out good flowers and good sized leaves. I planted a conventional pot with Soarer. This pot is in partial shade so it may do better as it gets hotter.

The zucchini does ok even though it spends most of the day with wilted leaves. It is still growing. I water it every 7-10 days. This is weird for me. I am not used to it. The soil is reused. I probably needed to add more fresh soil, even though the soil in the pot is only about 100 days old.

[imafan26]

OOPs! I planted too many seeds. Some of the seeds were older and I did not anticipate so many to germinate. I have space for 72 of them. I don't know what I will do with the other 800!?

After all this, my seeds came in the mail. I have to plant the ones for the organic pots. All the ones on this bench are conventional. I forgot, some of them were supposed to be organic like the chard. I will have to plant them again. I will have to find a lot of homes for these. I have three pots on the other bench that are organic as well. They are not as nice. But , that is how it goes, starting seeds in small pots organically. I need to pot those guys up.

[imafan26]

It is a nice sunny day today. It is 78 degrees at 11 a.m. It may actually hit 80 sometime today. It will be 68 again tonight.

I harvested the second week of the provider beans and maxibel beans. I got 757 g provider beans, 230 g baby beans and maxibel. about 244 g of the beans are over mature but still edible. Not fibrous, but a little chewy. I harvested 6 of my 7 cucumbers. One was straight and good size st 13.9 oz, one has a few scars at 7.8 oz, the others are small, curved, and one got pollinated so it has a belly. The total wt of the smaller (3 in total) ones are 9 oz. The one with the belly is 6 oz. They should all taste good otherwise. I might get a few more beans, but I don't know if it is worth keeping them around vs replanting the tower. It all depends on when I get to it.

I am still eating salads from the Buttercrunch lettuce thinnings and the wild currant tomatoes. I finished off a romaine lettuce that was gifted to me yesterday. The last brocoli is started to produce side shoots, so I will have those for a while as well.

I have been spraying the cucumbers with sulfur and bt so I finally have the disease mostly under control. I have to get rid of this organic cucumber. It is struggling and trying to produce fruit, but it only has 5 leaves. Another pot has healthy new growth and yesterday I accidentally broke the tip of the cucumber in the third organic pot. So I will be taking that one out after I harvest the Tokyo Bekana. That will leave me with one organic cucumber pot. The organic pots are causing me more grief than the conventional ones. I usually don't have to work this hard. The varieties I plant are disease resistant. The disease probably came from the organic fertilizer since the most affected pot did not have compost but had a different brand of organic fertilizer. I use the same base peat lite in all my pots, so that was the only difference. It is also the same variety of cucumber in all of the pots and only the organic ones were affected to any degree. It did not affect the lettuce or bekana planted with the cucumber in the organic pots so the disease must be specific to cucurbits.

The next cucumbers I will be planting are dasher and beit alpha. They are heat resistant and have anthrachnose resistance.

[imafan26]

I was looking for some heat and disease tolerant seeds. I know, I wasn't planning to buy too many seeds this year. Many of the seeds are already sold out. I came across this interesting function in the HOSS site. You look up a seed and put in your zip code and it tells you whether you can grow it in your zone. So far, everything comes up as "oh no! It looks like you can't grow this in your zone". Actually, I can, just not easily. It would have to be a heat and disease tolerant variety.

https://hosstools.com/product/cal-wonder-bell-pepper/

[imafan26]

I should have cut the roses yesterday. It is 73 degrees right now. it has been overcast all day with light showers. The humidity is too high to cut the roses.

I did plant more swiss chard. I will put those in the towers after the lettuce and bush beans are done. I need to pot up more plants, but I don't have space.

I have a bell pepper! A small one on Revolution. I take what I can get. Some of the Thai peppers are flowering and have some green peppers as well.

I repotted the thyme bowl. The center had died out. I spent the day cleaning some pots so when I have space, I can pot up more of the seedlings.

I did find one orchid that needed to be potted up now, so I washed a couple of pots and took care of that one. It has been raining too much for the orchids, they are packed tightly on the bench so the ones in the middle don't get to dry out well. They are blooming now. I have a catleya starting to open up. The color is muddy. I don't recognize it. I will see what it looks like in a few days. It looks like it has three buds.

I took cuttings from the crown flower, pitaya, and opuntia "bunny ears". I am calousing them off now so I can plant them on Wednesday.

I sprayed the cucurbits, squash, beans and peppers with hydrogen peroxide as a preventive fungicide because of the weather. A few of the organic cucumber still has some spots so I removed the bad leaves. I pruned the ajaka basil and peppers that are being bothered by broad mites. The green onions have black aphids. I sprayed them with 3 in 1 spray, but I will probably have to cut them back eventually. This is peak bug season. I saw a cabbage butterfly in the garden this morning too. I will need to do some Bt this afternoon. The early zucchini are yellowing. However, it is starting to produce more fruit. Hopefully, some of these will hang on. I sprayed the plant with hydrogen peroxide as a preventive fungicide. Dunja is mildew resistant and does not show any signs of mildew yet.

[imafan26]

It is cloudy and windy. It is 76 degrees and it is raining lightly off and on. I did go out in the garden this morning and fertilize the organic pots with fish emulsion.
I potted up some kabocha pumpkins. I have more to pot up, but I need to make more space or I won't haven anywhere to put them. Some of the eggplant are getting large in the 4 inch pots. I may have to pot them up sooner than later. I am averaging 0.10 inch a day of rain. I pruned the ajaka basil. The broad mites are attacking it again.

[applestar]

You are fully in the late spring/early summer phase. It’s interesting to compare with my own “too late for early spring” panic and too soon for mid-spring warm season planting weather… AND my warm weather solanacea starts that are overgrown — sounds like my eggplants are bigger….

[imafan26]

My temperatures are marginal now. It is 68 degrees at night and this week it is averaging 76-78 during the day because of the cloud cover and rain. Down hill ( about 4 miles away), it is 81 degrees. Most of the cool season crops will do best at temperatures under 75. They will tolerate 80 for a little while, but once the night temperatures start to creep up, they will turn bitter. It is why April is the last month to plant cool fast growing crops, because by June, they will be bitter and bolt.

It is very different from the temperate climate you have. I do not get the extremes of weather you do where it can be snowing one day and the next week be in the 80's. However, most temperate crops are best grown in our cool season from September-May. After that, disease and heat tolerant plants are the ones that can survive. During the summer the temperate beans, peppers, and tomatoes won't set well. If they survive the heat, they will muddle along until it cools and then produce again. The tropical plants will grow through the heat as long as there is enough water, but disease and pests are their main problems. Okra, Shiso, peanuts, long beans, NZ hot weather spinach, Okinawan spinach, sweet potatoes, hot peppers, even the kale will do fine in the summer. The peak temperature is around 92 now. I usually only harvest and maintain the perennial crops July-August and solarize the soil. It is too hot to work in the garden and it takes too much water to keep it going.

[imafan26]

Applestar, your eggplants are probably bigger growing in your hot house. Your temperatures in there are higher than mine. Eggplant is perennial here. I have two. One is Diamond and the other was called Filipino eggplant (probably a pintung long). Eggplant does not like temperatures in the 60's. If it does germinate, it is very slow to grow. Once the night temperatures rise, the eggplant grows faster and they are easy to germinate. Usually, I buy an eggplant start since I don't need twenty of them. At the best of times, they are still relatively slow to grow.

The ones that I planted in April grow faster than the ones I planted in November. I planted the latest ones for a plant sale this week so I pushed them with fertilizer and superthrive. A few of those are ready to move up into larger pots now. This is twice as fast as they would be growing in the cooler months with day temperatures around 70 and night temperatures in the low sixties. I have shade benches but I start seeds on an open bench. I tried to start seeds earlier with a heat mat, but I found that if I started them too early, they still won't do well. So, it is just easier for me to start plants when they want to grow. On the open bench, in full sun, I don't have to harden them off. I have to harden off the plants that are in the shade benches or they will burn.

The last eggplant I had was the start of the Filipino eggplant that I bought, since Diamond is struggling ( I don't know why.) I transplanted the 4 inch start into an 18 gallon tub, so it had plenty of room, but in cooler weather, it took a long time to grow. It produces now but the plant is still only a couple of feet tall and about 20 inches wide. Eventually, in a pot this size the eggplant can get to be 4 ft tall and three feet wide. It can get bigger in the ground. These could go in the ground since they are nematode resistant, but I don't want to use the limited space in the main garden for large long term plants. It is easier not to have to work around them and to put smaller things or things that don't like pots in the main garden instead.

I do have kale, perpetual spinach, ajaka basil, Italian parsley, and Swiss chard in the main garden and I do treat them as a short lived perennials. They just do better in the ground than in pots.

[imafan26]

It is another rainy day. It is 67 degrees now. It is 71 degrees downhill. The shiso started to sprout but with rain everyday and the temperatures dropped a few degrees because of the cloud cover, the shiso has disappeared. I guess I will have to wait a little longer to try to start these again.

Since it is so cloudy, I decided to harden off some of the propagated cuttings before I pot them up. They have been under 50% shade cloth for a long time.

[imafan26]

I had my club sale today. I brought over 7 trays of plants 3 trays of peppers 16 plants, and two trays of vegetable starts, 2 papaya, and one rosemary in gallon pots. I brought back less than one tray of peppers ( 5 plants) and one tray of vegetable starts. Mostly Black Beauty eggplant. I sold all of the long Poamoho dark, and most of the cucumbers and some squash. The eggplant can be potted up for the sale next month. I will try to find homes for some of the squash and cukes, but most will probably end up as worm food. I will recycle the pots and soil. It was still a good day for a 4 hour sale in a small parking lot with very little advertising. A lot of the orchid club members came out to buy plants. I brought vegetables starts but we also had a lot of succulents and donated orchids. We also sold some orchid pots, media that we had in storage. This is the first fundraiser the club has had in 3 years.

I won an orchid at the last club meeting, so I got to pick it up today. I also bought another orchid and a 6 inch succulent pot with three plants in it.

I picked a few more cucumbers today. Total wt about 23 oz., two Meyer lemons, and red Thai chilies. The cucumber was light. It had some hollow heart. It is still edible. It is from the accelerated growth because of the constant rain and probably nutrient issues. Too much nitrogen from the fish emulsion, and maybe some leaching as well of micro nutrients from the excessive rain. It is a growth problem and I will back off on the fish emulsion. I don't have kelp meal but I have some very old sample packets of sea kelp and that might help. I could go to the beach and get kelp, but really that is way too much trouble to wash the salt out of it. It would be easier if these were not the organic cucumbers since I don't have this problem with the conventional pots since the fertilizer there is more complete and has micro nutrients.

Growing organically certainly has its challenges. Especially since it is still really hard to find garden supplies. The stores and and the Ag supplier are all out of some things, especially the soils. This is also a learning curve for me. I know the variety is good since this is the same cucumber I have grown for years in conventional pots. It has been a challenge figuring out what organic components to use. The pots did better without the compost and the organic fertilizer is not complete or available, so supplementing is required. I should probably stop or at least reduce the fish emulsion once the plants start producing. I have looked for kelp meal here and haven't found anything. I may have to go online for that too.

[imafan26]

It was a nice day today. I was too tired from yesterday, so I did not take full advantage of it. I barely made it out to the garden to water. Lowe's had peat moss come in, so I went out early this morning and picked up a couple of bags. That is all I can fit into my trunk anyway. I have a very small car. I have enough mix now to exchange the soil on some of the pots and make a couple of new ones.

Unfortunately because it rained for so long, the grassy weeds need to be weed whacked again.

I harvested some Buttercrunch lettuce leaves from the garden for my home made burger sandwich. The cilantro in the garden is starting to bolt. The ones in the front yard have started to bloom.

[imafan26]

I had edited these photos I sent to my orchid club. These cats are the first ones to bloom this year. Summer is Catleya season. I'll have to separate the orchid after it has bloomed. It actually walked into the phalaenopsis pot and is crowding the phal.

[imafan26]

I missed a picture. I edited more than once. The tag was incomplete when I researched the name.

[applestar]

Those plant sales must keep you busy!

I was thinking about your compost problem in the containers — maybe you can compensate by infusing the more porous aggregates with compost tea or other beneficial microbe-rich liquid (like bokashi juice, worm composted drippings, or Ehime II, etc.).

In addition to making them from recipes, I’ve started making “casual” ones — eat an apple or banana, put peel in recycled juice jug with yogurt whey, a little yeast, a little natto powder, a spoonful of raw sugar, a bit of kelp meal, fill with de-chlorinated water, add a dropper of recipe-made culture, and let sit overnight. I know it’s working when fine bubbles start and sometimes it fizzes a bit …and smells good. (I also add a few grains of calcium nitrate for nitrogen-heavy fertilizer — I know not organic, but I bought some as tomato BER remedy so I guess I will use in bits here and there). I’ve been watering my seedlings with this diluted and they have responded pretty well.

Porous ingredients might be pumice gravel, biochar, or perlite, for example.

Love seeing pics of your orchids.

[imafan26]

I have a chronic problem with compost in pots. I tried a recipe which was 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 perlite. I kinda thought that was too much wet ingredients, but I tried it. It is also why I do 50/50 peatlite. In the rainy season it would be too wet if it had more peat moss and algae will grow on it.

I redid some of the pots before I planted them so I put the compost media in a bag. It does o.k. if I use 1/4 of the compost mix at the bottom of the pot and put 3/4 peat lite on top.

Now, 4 months later, the original pots with the heavy compost mix and all the disease problems have gotten better. I guess aging was required. I will just use a handful of vermicast instead. That has never been an issue. I will leave the aerated compost out of the mix instead. I could do more compost tea. The fermented yogurt did not harm anything except it did clog my watering can. I don't eat a lot of bananas, not allowed on this diet, but I can save up peels for the few I do eat. Usually, I just put this in the worm bin. It might be better to make compost tea out of the vermicast. I have done that before to make the vermicast go farther. Yogurt cannot go in the worm bin.

[imafan26]

Yesterday, I found one of the tomatoes dry and limp along with all the lettuce in the pot despite the fact that I had watered it in the morning. I am growing it in a 20 inch plastic pot I got from home depot. I have 5 of these pots and they have built in saucers. I watered the other tomato only to discover it was flooding over the top of the pot but no water was really coming out of the bottom. I noticed that the zucchini in this same pot style was also very wet. I thought it was because of the plastic mulch. I water the zucchini on average once a week because it is so wet.

The wilted tomato and lettuce recovered this morning. One of the tomato leaves failed to revive, but the rest of the plant did. I have tipped out the water from the pots. I did that yesterday and again today. The pots have trellises on them which makes it hard to remove the saucers. I may need to get some help to do this. Alternatively, I can drill a drain hole 2 inches up from the bottom of the pots to keep the water from rising all the way to the top. That would probably be an easier option. Usually I ditch the saucers from the pots, but I thought the saucers would overflow if the water level was higher. I did not expect this. I guess, I need to keep ditching the saucers and adding more holes to the pots.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Belle-20-in ... ds#overlay

[applestar]

Yeah, those “attached” saucers often use tabs or posts that are inserted into what you and I might think are drain holes and plug up the 3 or 4 holes that might have made the pot *sufficiently* well draining.

[imafan26]

I fertilized the conventional containers. Just in time. I decided to rain after that.
I harvested eggplant and cilantro from the garden. The cilantro was starting to bolt and the eggplant is a little hard. Happens with purple eggplant. I am trying a new recipe for dinner. Lime cilantro rice and baked fajita vegetables.

I tossed a can of drained and rinsed black beans, can of diced tomatoes (I don't buy rotel. It would have been better for this recipe), a can of corn, one red and one yellow bell pepper, All the eggplant I had in the yard that was still good, a handful of white mushrooms, one onion sliced.

I used about tablespoons of my homemade fajita seasoning (salt free), and a tablespoon of avocado oil. Tossed it all in the pan and baked it for 30 minutes at 400 degrees.

I accompanied that with lime cilantro rice. I had some long grain rice and I washed and soaked it for about 4 hours with 1-1/2 tsp. salt. It wasn't called for in the recipe, but long grain rice needs help. I sauteed 8 cloves of minced garlic in butter and added it to the rice cooker. I also added about 1/4 cup of unsalted butter. When it was done, just before serving, I added chopped fresh cilantro and lime juice. I skipped the zest. It is very good especially with some chili pepper water or pickled onion.

[imafan26]

It rained most of the day yesterday. I got out this morning and drilled holes into the bottom of the pots with the saucers. Two of the pots were gushing out the water. Hopefully, the plants have not been submerged too long and can recover. They do have some yellow leaves. It was 65 degrees last night and it is 75 degrees now and still overcast. The pots are not going to dry out very fast at this rate.

Since is has only intermittently been lightly drizzling, I was able to pull a few weeds and pot up African nunum basil, and a lot of Carolina bells into gallon containers. I have to scrounge for pots in the yard. I have a lot of them. I just have to find and clean them.

I planted the diva cucumber seedling in with Soarer in one of the conventional pots. I think there was phythophtora in the pot, so I excavated out the soil and put new soil where I planted Diva. Hopefully, this will be enough and they will survive.

The Buttercrunch lettuce I transplanted out of the tomato pot to the tower and in a couple of other pots are almost filled out and ready to harvest. Only lettuce that were not planted in full sun survived. Except one lettuce did survive in the bean pot that is in full sun.

Half of my green onions died. Some are being attacked by black aphids. I will replant those if I can find the Shimonita leeks. I don't have to replant all of them since I still have over a dozen pots that I had in a separate place that are still doing o.k. Most of the onions are over three years old, so it may be time to replace them anyway.

I found some new homes for some of the seedlings. I will have more space on the bench to spread things out in a little while. I am sure, that space will refill quick enough.

The red currant is getting wilder. It is now going under the jasmine and trying to go through the fence into the neighbor's yard. I also have to pull the dragon fruit back as well.

I did weed whack the front yard the other day when it was still dry. I finally cut back the roses and fed them. I pulled out the dying sunflowers and cosmos. Just in time, it started raining again that night.

I pulled out all the beans from the tower. I have to refurbish it and plant it again. I will probably plant it with chard. I converted both my towers to organic, so I can't plant most of the extra seedlings in it. I can plant a few in the main garden. I also can harvest the semposai in the pot and a few smaller plants can go in that 48 quart container.

[imafan26]

The sun came out for a couple of days and the tradewinds are back. I started preventive fungicides yesterday. I have a few more plants I still have to fungicide today. The pots I drilled the holes in are looking better.

The orchid bench is in full bloom.

I will have to do this in a divided post. This is my fourth attempt, I get an error message if I try to add some of the pictures.

[imafan26]

More pictures if I can get them right side up.

[imafan26]

More pictures

[imafan26]

It was sunny yesterday and around 80 degrees. I did go out and finish the preventive fungicides. I will have to take off some of the rose leaves that have black spot and the crepe myrtle has powdery mildew. I may have to go with a systemic on that one since it is getting worse. I did not get around to fertilizing the orchids. It has been so wet, so I'll let things dry out a couple of days first. I have been underfertilizing the orchids too much. I also have to spend more time in the yard. I need to put up the shade structure for the oncidiums for summer. It will keep the leaves from burning. I am running out of space in my orchid bench. I need to clean out the weeds and dead plants. I have cuttings occupying the other orchid shade bench. I need to probably put up another bench at some point. Especially if I cannot put the orchids back on the plumeria trees.

Time is running out for the lettuce. They are starting to get tipburn.

[imafan26]

I got up at 3 a.m. last night, so I haven't wanted to do much today. I did finally harvest the semposai and I am making cabbage rolls with them. I am using ground turkey and ground pork, with onions, celery, rice, worcestershire sauce, pepper, salt substitute, other seasonings ( garlic, smoked paprika), low sugar and low sodium ketchup. I am using a can of tomato soup for the sauce. The soup is regular so it has salt and sugar.

I am getting rid of the extra seedlings I can't find homes for. This will make room for me to plant the green onions I do have to replace.

The organic cucumbers are trying, thanks mostly to the fact that the cucumbers are Soarer. But the soil issues keep challenging them. The newest one is now the last productive pot is showing chlorosis. I had to order kelp meal twice on amazon. The first order was cancelled because the supplier would not ship it here. I had to order again from a different company on amazon, that one has arrived, so I can mix it in with the next batch of organic soil I make. I sometimes wonder if this is worth all the trouble.

On the plus side, the holes I drilled in the sides of the other pots are working and the plants are no longer drowning. Since, those are tomatoes and not cucumbers, I don't have the organic soil issues in those pots. Even the zucchini is happier in the front. The pot is drying faster and the plant is growing more leaves and putting out more fruit.

[imafan26]

The roses are off schedule since I did not prune them in time because of the rain. I will have to get that back on track slowly. I got a few more flowers to put into the front pollinator garden. I got another angelonia and verbena. I have some seeds that the garden was giving away as well. I will direct seed the zinnia, cosmos and more sunflowers.

I took off the black spotted leaves from the roses and the vegetables except for the organic cucumbers look o.k. The crepe myrtle still has powdery mildew. It washes off with water, but I may have to do more for it. The crepe myrtle is starting to bloom now.

Of course more weeds always show up after rain. I need to weed the main garden again. It is more of a chore because of the fence. But it is keeping the snails out. Something is eating the eggplant. Probably a snail. I will have to bait around that one.

The red currant tomato is sprawling. I have to keep reigning it in.

[imafan26]

The lettuce is bolting, but the salad bowl is not bitter, so I am harvesting what I can. The Buttercrunch is getting tipburn. It is a little bitter, but not too bad. I eat it with a soy/mayo/sesame/truvia dressing. It is sweet so it covers up any bitterness from the lettuce. The only thing is that this dressing is high in calories so it really is not diet food. The other dressings I have that are lower in calories, have more vinegar which amplifies the bitterness.

I finally got around to planting the tower and one of the cucumber pots yesterday. I was hard to find the organic peat moss and potting soil. I removed half the soil from the cucumber pot and hot water treated it before adding the new soil. This pot was the least affected by the cucumber disease. I did finally get the kelp meal, so I use 3 cups of plant tone, a tablespoon of langbenite, and about a cup of kelp meal. I also added more fresh vermicast. I planted Summer Cross cucumbers, and Swiss chard in the pot. In the tower garden. I planted Big Kahuna bush beans and more chard. It is supposed to be a heat tolerant bush bean. I will also try tendergreen or contender in another container, they are also heat tolerant, but I usually don't try to grow them in July. The poamoho beans in the front yard has already topped the tower.

My new conventional Soarer cucumbers are flowering. I will need to take out the rest of the organic Soarer. They are trying to produce fruit, but the vines are too damaged by disease and the newer one is chloritic, so it has a nutritional deficiency as well. I'll replace them with Beit Alpha and Dasher II. They have better heat resistance and a stronger disease resistance package including resistance to anthrachnose. I will need to move the soil to other parts of the garden. Other plants are not showing any signs of disease. Tomatoes and eggplant growing in the same pot are unaffected. The problem is specific to cucurbits.

I have been trying to figure out what is causing the spots on the cucumber and I accidentally found something that looks very much like it. I found it looking for information on how much kelp meal to use in my container. Kelp meal should add potassium and other micro nutrients. Apparently cucumbers are more sensitive than other plants to potassium and micro nutrient deficiencies and the organic fertilizers are not complete and have very low amounts. I did give extra potassium to the organic pots, and to the conventional pots as well. The soil mix is the same except for the organic components.

https://www.e-gro.org/pdf/E613.pdf