As July crawls to a close, the garden is really starting to get fruitful. We now have at least three caulies, a hundred tomatoes, probably a dozen (non-zucchini) squashes, about five zucchini a day!, and the potted cabbage is gonna be a biggie.
We have no sign of shoulders on the carrots, so I don't know yet whether we'll get any real carrots this year. they may be too crowded in the pot. The strawberries never did bear this year, though they seem happy enough. The thyme, basil, and sage are huge and happy, though they're disappearing under the tomato plants. The oregano is all but dead. Yes, I killed an un-killable oregano. *sigh* But Valerie has offered me some more, so I'll try again. (Thanks, Valerie!) Now to do some research and find out what I did wrong.
The tomatoes have gone nuts and have knocked over every last tomato cage and are now crawling all over the place. And that, needless to say, has made the slug population in the garden very happy! because we have so many slugs, I am not entirely sure how good the tomato harvest will be from the plot garden, but even if all we get come from the pot garden, we should be tired of tomatoes by Samhain.
The squashes are fine in the plot garden but in the pots are having problems. They're producing ok, but they get these yellow leaves that then turn black. And the Zukes from those pots also seem to rot easily. (Several have rotted while still infants.)
My guess was "blossom end rot", since it was at the blossom end -- which could come from a) lack of calcium, too little water, or too much water. Great. Well, I tried green sand and egg shells for calcium, and we have tried watering more regularly and that didn't help. So we'll try watering less regularly less often and see if that helps.
For what it's worth, it's not *all* of the zucchini, just one in a while -- but that hasn't happened at all in the plot garden..
Walking
It's been a week and a bit since I got my new shoes and I am back to walking with energy and enthusiasm! I walked four days last week - -the fifth was just too crowded with meetings -- and am pretty sure I can make it five days this week! Especially with Mark joining me to make it more fun and interesting. (Getting out of my chair in the first place is the only hard part these days...thanks, Mark!)
I've read that watering the leaves of squash plants encourages them to rot. I'm not sure if I believe that, since mine get wet all the time. But it seems like one possible idea for what the problem might be. Also, zucchini plants get this one very common disease that makes their leaves get sort of a coating of gray smudges across them, and then eventually the leaves dry up and turn powdery. Though I've also heard that that's just what squash plants *do* after a while, they just wear out.
ReplyDeleteSo those are three different theories about bad things that happen to squash plants. I have no idea if any of them is what's happening here.
-Valerie
That seems like a distinct possibility, Valerie...next year...! ;)
ReplyDelete