Tamarillo Tree….. Cyphomandra betacea
Tamarillo Tree….. Cyphomandra Betacea
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GROWN YOUR OWN PEANUTS… KIDS FUN and D.I.Y. EASY.
Well folks, I LOVE NUTS…All kinds ..lol
Just bought some 20 Virginia Peanuts seeds the other night on e-bay again..Can’t help my self, but change my whole back yard crops this year.
Something new is always welcome, and like the old saying, VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE …Yup .
Originally I intend to plant them as a bit of a novelty/experiment. I have been told that they thrive with the spuds and sweet potatoes best, so I will just keep replanting the odd nut when I harvested a handful as i go by seasons, and B.T.W., there is no season/s with nuts in my back yard …ha ha ha .
As with the spuds and sweet potato, I just root around for the biggest ones as needed, then replant the runners and the odd seed.
I’m sure that’s not how the pros grow it but it will do the trick and works for me!…Well, so I have been told.
Pretty cool plant! Not a nut at all, it’s a legume and the shells and dried stems/stalk add lots of goodies to the soil.
Well see ?? there you have it….Nuts and more nuts as I go …LOL
Another cool and very versatile plant for the collection!
Till next time I buy something new, HAPPY GARDENING FOLKS.
Saintpaulia – African Violet
DESCRIPTION: These compact, delicate plants are from central Africa. They form clusters of ovate leaves close to the soil. The leaves and stems are dark green on top, greenish-white underneath, succulent and fuzzy. The pretty flowers resemble large Violets in their shape and color, some are blue, purple, white, pink or magenta and they have little yellow centers. They bloom at any time of the year. They are known as African Violets. These are great as greenhouse plants and are very popular houseplants.
POTTING: When planting in a warm greenhouse these plants need a minimum winter temperature of 55-60 degrees. The soil should be a mixture of equal parts of loam, leaf mold and peat moss, with an addition of sand. As house plants they should be provided with good light, but shaded from harsh sunlight and a temperature between 60 and 70 degrees. The soil should be moist and always avoid getting the leaves wet. They should be set away from dry heat such as radiators. The humidity level can be increased for these plants by setting the pots on shallow trays of sand, cinders, gravel or moss that is always kept moist.
PROPAGATION: Mature leaves can be detached with the leafstalks and inserted in a well-drained pan of sand or sand and peat moss, or vermiculite. Water them and place in a propagating case in a warm greenhouse, in a terrarium, or under a bell jar or an inverted Mason jar. Shade them from direct sunshine and keep them moist and closed, only enough ventilation to keep moisture from collecting on the inside of the glass. When they form roots and shoots peek out of the soil, they can be potted in small pots and later, in 4-inch pots. Seeds that are sown in February will produce plants that bloom in late summer.
Sow them in a well-drained pot filled with finely sifted compost. Don’t cover the seeds with soil because they are so small. Just sprinkle with a little bit of sand. Lay a pane of glass over them and place in a warm propagating case that has a temperature of 60-70 degrees. Shade them from direct sunlight.
As soon as they are large enough to handle, transplant them to a pan of finely sifted soil at an inch apart. They need to be watered very carefully to prevent them from damping off (a diseased condition). As soon as they start to get crowded, pot them separately and treat them as advised for those grown from leaf cuttings.
In the spring, these plants can also be divided. Take them out of their pots and pull them apart so each piece has some roots attached and pot them in separate small pots. Water the plants in moderation and when they are established, keep the soil evenly moist and apply a liquid fertilizer weekly until the flowers open. After the flowers have faded, let them rest by keeping the soil a bit drier than usual. Only water when the soil is nearly dry. From spring through early fall, they need shade from bright sunshine. No shading is required the rest of the year.
Wet the greenhouse floor and benches to add humidity, but never the foliage.
VARIETIES: S. ionantha; S. amaniensis; S. diplotricha; S. kewensis; S. grotei; S. magungensis; S. tongwensis; S. pusilla.
How to grow onions in containers
Photo by H. Zell
Intro: The savory onion bulb is a popular vegetable for urban kitchen gardens. The onion plant thrives in the cooler months. Onions can be grown year-round, and some onion varieties are better for different seasons. Choose short day length varieties (about 10 hours of daylight), such as Onion Toughball, Troy or Radar variety for fall plantings. Choose long day length (roughly 15 daylight hours) varieties, Marco, Red Baron or Hyred, to plant in the container garden in the spring. White Lisbon is a good variety for the winter. There are many onion plant varieties – choose a variety that will do well in your area and one you would enjoy eating from the garden. Out of the yellow, white and red onions, yellow has the strongest onion flavor, and red is the sweetest.
Scientific Name: Allium cepa
Plant Type: Biennial plant (often grown as an annual)
Light: Full sun
Water: When it comes to watering the onion plant, keep its potting soil constantly moist but never soggy. You can use mulch in your containers to keep the soil moist.
Zone: Zones 5 to 9
Fertilizer: Before planting your onions, fertilize the potting soil. Then fertilize every two to three weeks with a low-nitrogen all-purpose fertilizer. Too much fertilizer will burn the roots and make the leaves droopy or yellow. Do not provide too much nitrogen, as it will delay maturity.
Pests and Diseases: Onion plants can be affected by fungus, blight, rust, rot, onion fly and several other garden pests.
Propagation: The easiest way to propagate onion plants is from sets (small, immature bulbs that were grown from seed and then dug up). Sets also will produce smaller onions, which are better for growing in plant containers. To grow sets, densely plant seeds so as to stunt bulb growth. These small bulbs can be dug up, stored and then planted in the next gardening season. Growing from seeds takes much longer, but these onions will be larger and easier to cut. While some sources say you cannot grow onions from sprouted onions you buy at the grocery store, this is certainly not the case – it is possible. Onion plants take quite a while to mature to the point where they are ready to be harvested for culinary purposes. They will take five to six months to mature.
Misc. Info: Onion plants do best with potting soil that is a bit alkaline, so if your soil is acidic, add a bit of lime. And because they produce bulbs underground, plant them in a large plant container (more than 1 foot deep) so the bulbs have room to grow.
Harvest your onion plants once the leaves have fallen and dried out. In the morning, pull up the onions and leave them outside to dry for the rest of the day (don’t leave them out if it rains or if they are getting burned by the sun). Then let the onion bulbs dry for two weeks indoors. Store them in a cool, dry place hanging in a stocking until you use them. Fresh onion will have the best taste, but they can last for a year if stored correctly.
See Also ….
Planting Onions Here
Growing Beans – Tips On How To Grow Beans In Pots
Growing Beans – Tips On How To Grow Beans In Pots
Image by Maggie McCain
By Bonnie L. Grant
Beans may be vined or bushy and come in several sizes and colors. They are primarily a warm season vegetable, which is best grown in spring but can also be started for a late summer harvest in some temperate zones. Gardeners with small spaces can learn how to grow beans in pots. Growing beans in containers is also useful for early starting where soil temperatures remain too cool for in-ground potting. These plants will need to be brought indoors at night to protect them from possible freezing temperatures.
Container Size for Growing Beans
The depth of the container size for growing beans varies dependent upon the type of vegetable. Pole beans need 8 to 9 inches of soil, whereas bush beans can do with only 6 to 7 inches.
Ensure that the pot has several unobstructed drainage holes when growing beans in containers. While the appearance of the pot isn’t important, using unglazed pots will help the containers to “breathe” and allow for the evaporation of excess water so the plants don’t drown.
The number of plants you can sow in a container depends on the diameter of the pot. As a rule, plan on nine plants for every 12 inches of surface space.
Use a seed variety that produces well in container gardening such as Kentucky Wonder, Blue Lake pole or Topcrop
How to Grow Beans in Pots
Whenever you are growing beans in containers, the most important components to consider in the successful care for potted bean plants are the soil type, drainage, pot depth and ambient conditions.
Fill your container with the proper potting mix for beans and other vegetables. You can purchase a vegetable start mix or make your own. Use equal parts sphagnum moss or compost with pasteurized soil and vermiculite or perlite.
Incorporate vegetable fertilizer or manure prior to planting. You can also use a soilless medium as a potting mix for beans. Plant the seeds an inch deep and provide even moisture until the seeds germinate. Space the seeds 3 inches apart or plant 2 to 3 seeds around each pole for vining varieties.
Care for Potted Bean Plants
Your bean seeds will germinate in 5 to 8 days. Once they have pushed up, spread mulch lightly over the surface of the soil to help conserve moisture. Bean plants need plenty of water, and this is especially true with the care of potted bean plants. You need to provide irrigation when the top 2 to 3 inches of soil is dry to the touch.
Fertilize once a month with a diluted liquid vegetable fertilizer unless you mixed a time-release food into the soil medium.
Provide pole beans with a long stick or pole to climb up. Alternatively, insert a tomato cage into the container for the vegetables to twine around. Bush beans need no special support.
Watch for insects and other pests and combat with vegetable-friendly products such as horticultural soap or neem oil.
Growing beans in containers should provide you with edible pods in 45 to 65 days when grown in full sun. Harvest the beans when the pods are medium sized with firm pods. Use them fresh for the best taste, or you can freeze or can them to enjoy far past the season.
How To Grow Organic Pumpkins
PUMPKIN FACTS
- If you’re growing pumpkins, you’ll be following the same guidelines as you’d follow for winter squash.
- The most ancient evidence of growing pumpkins dates back to around 7000 B.C. in Mexico.
- Farmers in the U.S. are currently growing pumpkins at around 1.5 billion pounds per year; gardeners add a lot more.
- One of the favorite usages of pumpkins is for the Halloween “holiday” when much of the populace carves goofy faces in their pumpkins and put candles in them. If you really want to know why, Google it.
WHEN TO PLANT
- You’ll need about 80 to 120 frost free days when growing pumpkins to allow them to mature.
- You can begin growing your pumpkins indoors about 4 weeks before your last frost date. The soil should be about 60° to 65°F at 2 inches depth.
- If you use floating row covers, you can transplant pumpkins to your garden a couple weeks before the last anticipated frost.
- If you live in warmer areas you can plant your pumpkin seeds directly after the danger of frost is past, typically around the end of March or mid-April.
- You’ll want to plan to have your pumpkins mature by late summer or early fall. The larger the pumpkin, the more days they take to mature.
WHERE TO PLANT
- Pumpkins require (at the very least) 6 hours of full sunlight daily.
- Growing pumpkins requires garden soil that drains well, and has plenty of organic materials blended into it.
- Your soil ideally should have a pH balance in the range of 5.8 to 7.5; right in the middle of that is the best pH level.
- Your soil needs sufficient levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, most of which are achieved with the liberal application of compost and/or composted manure, bone meal, blood meal, and the like.
PREPARING THE SOIL
- As mentioned above, Pumpkins need generous amounts of soil nutrients, which can be supplied mainly with compost and composted-manure.
- The best way to apply your compost is to lay out where your hills will be, then mix several inches of compost into about a 2 foot diameter area – about a foot deep.
- If you’re rototilling rows, add 2 to 4 inches of compost, composted manure, etc., and rototill it to around 8 inches deep.
- You can also mound the soil where your plants will be to aid in the mixing in of compost or other organic matter.
- Other items you can add to your soil are alfalfa meal early in the season for nitrogen – and/or feather meal later in the season – ground oyster or egg shells for calcium, greensand for potassium, and kelp meal for trace nutrients.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT SEED VARIETIES FOR YOUR AREA
- If you have a small garden, be aware that pumpkin vines can occupy up to 100 square feet or more.
- Pumpkins, at least most varieties, are too heavy to trellis, but do grow well in larger garden areas.
- Contact your county extension office to find out if there are common diseases in pumpkins in your area. If there are, get recommendations for seed varieties that are resistant to those diseases.
- Diseases that afflict pumpkins are covered in detail in the latter part of this post.
SEEDS AND GERMINATION
- Pumpkin seeds are usually still plantable 6 years after you’ve purchased them from a reputable seed supplier.
- Pumpkin seeds won’t germinate in soil temperatures lower than 60°F or higher than 105°F. The optimum germination temp is between 86°F to 95°F.
- The seedlings should emerge in about 5 days at the optimum temperature range, if they are in full sunlight or under grow lights (fluorescent lights are OK).
- If you’re seeding directly to your soil, you can use a black plastic mulch to heat up your soil. Secure your plastic with soil (make sure all edges are covered with dirt), and cut holes for seeds.
STARTING PUMPKIN PLANTS INDOORS
- Plant your pumpkin seeds in peat pots or soil blocks 3 or 4 weeks before the last frost. You can use tapered plastic pots as well, but peat pots and/or soil blocks are better options.
- Use a good potting mix or starter mix to start your pumpkin seeds in. These mixes are readily available at your local garden center.
- If you want to create your own potting soil mix, you can purchase mixing loam soil, sphagnum peat moss, and perlite at your local garden store. Adding compost to this mix will create an optimal starter mix.
- Don’t use garden soil as it has lots of weed seed, fungus spores, and bugs in it that aren’t optimal for starting your pumpkins indoors.
- If you want to grow a pumpkin plant in a container, you’ll need at least a 10 gallon pot.
- Mix 9 gallons of potting mix, a couple cups of alfalfa meal, half a cup of feathermeal, half a cup of powdered eggshells or oyster shells for calcium, half a cup of greensand for potassium, and a few tablespoons of kelp to cover your trace minerals.
- Plant three or four seeds about 1″ deep. Don’t thin until the plants have at least 2 true leaves; leave the 2 best seedling and after the plants reach about 10 inches tall, choose the best plant and clip the other off with a scissor.
TRANSPLANTING PUMPKINS TO YOUR GARDEN
- Before you actually transplant your pumpkins to your garden, you’ll need to “harden off” your plants.
- To harden off your pumpkin seedlings, move them outside during the daytime and cut back on watering.
- Your plants should have 2 or more true leaves at this stage – it will have been 3 to 4 weeks since you planted them.
- As pumpkins prefer warm temperatures, ideally the daytime temps should be about 75° to 85°F and 60° to 65°F at night.
- However, if you live as far North as we do, you may not hit those temperatures until 2-4 weeks after transplanting, so it might be advisable to use row covers and black plastic ground cover to help your pumpkins to get a good start.
- You need a minimum soil temp of 60°F to plant your squash, so plant them in an area that gets lots of sun.
- If you’re planting in rows, space the rows 4 to 6 feet apart and the plants about 2 to 3 feet apart in the rows. If you have a larger variety of pumpkin, you might want to plant them 3 to 4 feet apart in the rows.
- When you plant your pumpkin seedlings, dig a hole large enough to place the peat pot, soil block, or soil mass into; then pack soil in around the plant.
- Make sure the soil is moist but not too wet; you shouldn’t be able to pack a tight dirt clump with your hand or it’s too wet.
PLANTING PUMPKIN SEEDS DIRECTLY TO YOUR GARDEN
- Once your soil temps have stabilized above 60°F, you can plant pumpkin seeds in your garden. You should make sure that you’re past the danger of frost.
- If you’re hilling your pumpkin area, make your mounds about 4 to 8 feet apart and plant 4 to 6 seeds about one inch deep and about 1 inch apart in a circle or square configuration.
- If you’re planting in rows, the rows should be 4 to 8 feet apart, and the seeds should be planted 6 to 12 inches apart.
- Once the seeds have germinated, you can thin your plants to one every 18 to 36 inches, depending on whether they’re larger or smaller pumpkin varieties
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR PUMPKINS
- Once your plants have at least 2 true leaves, thin them to 2 or 3 plants per hill, or 18 to 36 inches apart if they’re in rows.
- Pumpkins have male and female flowers. The male flower will appear first, 40 to 50 days after germination. A week later female flowers will begin to emerge.
- If you have plenty of pollinating insects such as bees, wasps, or hornets, pollination should be no problem.
- If you have too few insects, you’ll see the female flowers begin to drop. To avoid this, you can hand pollinate by using a cotton swab or a small brush to take pollen from the male flowers and dispense it to the female flowers.
- Early in the season, make sure your pumpkin plants aren’t choked out by weeds.
- Hand pull any weeds within six inches of the pumpkin plants, then surface hoe the weeds that are further away; rototill weeds more than a foot away from your squash plants.
- Once the vines have covered the ground, you’ll not need to weed much in your pumpkin patch the rest of the season.
- It’s a good practice, about half-way through the season, to side dress your pumpkin plants (about 6 inches from the base of the plant) with compost, composted manure, or alfalfa meal.
- Pruning smaller pumpkins from your plants will help the remaining pumpkins to get bigger.
- It’s also a good idea, if you have squash borers in your area, to mound dirt around the base of your plants to discourage them from laying eggs.
- Jenny’s Tip – When you’re growing pumpkins, spray them with a liquid organic leaf spray fertilizer. We highly recommend Organic Garden Miracle™. OGM™ naturally stimulates your garden plants to produce more plant sugar in the photosynthesis process. That in turn creates a more robust plant, more produce from your garden, and better and sweeter flavored squash. And they have a really good warranty!
- Jenny’s Tip #2 – If you’re growing smaller pumpkins (the size of a volleyball or smaller), you can trellis them and as the pumpkins grow, you can use pantyhose or similar to make a sling to hold them up.
MULCHING & WEEDING
- Early in the season, black plastic may be your best mulching option as it warms the soil and suppresses weeds.
- As things heat up, grass clippings or clean straw, spread around your pumpkin plants, both help to throttle pesky weeds and conserve soil moisture.
- You won’t want to apply these types of mulches until the soils reach about 75°F as mulch tends to keep your soil cooler.
- One of the biggest assets of mulching is that because pumpkins have shallow roots systems, you won’t have to disturb them much by weeding.
WATERING PUMPKINS
- When growing pumpkins, depending on your climate, they should be watered between 1 and 2 inches weekly.
- If you mulch, you can use somewhat less water, but still check your soil’s moisture level frequently during hot, dry spells.
- If you water once per week, especially if you’ve mulched, that should be adequate.
- Water enough to get about 6 to 8 inches into your soil. Light watering of pumpkins is virtually useless.
- If your soil is sandy, use a smaller amount of water, but water a couple of times per week.
- If your pumpkins are trellised, you may need to water a bit more than if the plants are rambling across the ground.
- As with most vegetables, drip irrigation or soaker hoses are the preferred watering method. However, if you only have overhead sprinklers, water early in the day so as to reduce risk of fungi and mildews.
COMPANION PLANTING AND ROTATION CONSIDERATIONS
- A good companion for growing pumpkins includes beans, which supplement your garden with nitrogen that it absorbs from the air.
- Pumpkins are a good companion to corn as they help corn roots retain moisture.
- Radishes are reputed to protect your pumpkins from squash borers by attracting them away from your pumpkins to eat radish foliage which doesn’t hurt the radish but protects your pumpkins.
- Mint is said to help control ants, aphids, flea beetles, and rodents.
- Onions ward off fruit tree borers, weevils, aphids, rust flies, moles, and some root nematodes.
- Marigolds and Nasturtiums repel bugs and beetles away from your squashes. They also attract bees which help to pollinate your squash flowers.
- Oregano is also said to benefit squash in keeping away pests as well.
- Bad Companions for winter squash are potatoes. Potatoes inhibit the growth in squash plants.
- You don’t necessarily need to rotate squash annually unless you’re having issues with verticillium wilt, fusarium rot, mosaic virus, or other fungi-related diseases.
WHEN TO HARVEST
- Like most winter squash, pumpkins are ready to harvest when the skin is hard and you can’t puncture it with your fingernail.
- We usually wait until the first “killing frost” to harvest our pumpkins. By this time the skins are usually a dark orange and the stems have hardened.
- I always use a pruning shear to cut the pumpkin stem from the vine, leaving around 3 inches of stem. This helps protect the pumpkins from rotting and provides a handle for picking them up.
- It’s a wise practice to wear some type of cloth or leather glove when handling pumpkins as the dried stems are abrasive.
- Handle your harvested pumpkins with care. Bruising or injuring the skin will affect the storability of pumpkins
STORING AND/OR PRESERVING PUMPKINS
- Pumpkins store well through the winter. We’ve often still had pumpkins into June if they’ve been harvested with care.
- A basement area, dark space in your garage, a crawl space under your home, or a root cellar are typically ideal locations for pumpkin storage.
- If a pumpkin has been bruised or cut during harvest or when moving into the storage area, use these first as they’ll rot more quickly.
- You can cut out the rot spots and bake, steam, or otherwise cook pumpkins with no negative effects to the flavor or nutrition of the remaining portions.
- You can steam and freeze pumpkin as well as canning pumpkin if you don’t have an appropriate storage location.
- Beware: it may be difficult to get the pumpkin hot enough to kill all the bacteria that is recommended if canning a puree, so it may be best to cube the squash and can it in a little sea salt and water.
- We have experimented with pumpkins and kept them in warmer areas of our home at 65° to 70°F through the winter and still had plenty of pumpkin to eat all winter.
PREVENTATIVE AND NATURAL SOLUTIONS TO COMMON PESTS
- Cucumber Beetles are a striped beetle that is about 3/16″ in length, greenish yellow, with three black stripes running down their backs.
- The spotted cucumber beetle is pretty much the same but with a dozen spots on its back.
- Regardless of what these beetles look like, they’re pretty nasty pests that eat your plants and may spread bacterial or verticillium wilt to your plants.
- To prevent these beetles from getting to your plants, you can use row covers before flowering to keep them away from your pumpkin plants.
- If the problems get too serious, you can use organic pyrethrins or organic rotenone to deal with these critters.
- Another nasty pest is the squash vine borer. They typically appear about the time the vines begin to spread out across your garden.
- Squash vine borers are an inch long or so, quite fat, and are white with a brown head.
- They are the larvae of a small moth with dark front wings and light rear wings and a red abdomen. The moths lay eggs in the late spring or early summer near the base of your pumpkin vines.
- The borers appear about a week later and drill a hole in your vine to get inside them. You’ll see a small hole and green excretions below the hole. And you’ll see the vine die rather suddenly.
- To prevent squash vine borers from decimating your crops, first, watch for the moths (and listen…they have a buzz when they fly that’s unusual for moths).
- You may use yellow-colored bowls filled with water to trap these moths; they’re attracted to the color, fly into the bowl, then drown.
- You might alternately use row covers for about 2 weeks until the moths disappear again. Make sure you cover the edges of the row covers with dirt to seal out the moths.
- If your plants begin flowering during this time, you can hand pollinate your pumpkins if necessary. Don’t use insecticides as they can also kill beneficial insects that pollinate your crops.
- If you discover the borer has created a hole before the plant wilts and dies, you can sometimes carefully cut a hole in the vine and remove the borer. Cover the vine and the hole with dirt; most of the time the vine will send roots into the soil from the cut area.
- If you find a vine that’s been killed by a borer, cut back the vine and destroy it.
- Aphids are another common pest that can be found on the underside of your pumpkin leaves. You’ll know they’re there if you see leaves turning yellow and crinkling or curling.
- Aphids suck the juice from your plant leaves and leave a sticky substance behind. The only beneficiary of this process is ants, who harvest the sticky sweet stuff.
- The best solution to aphids is to import ladybugs to your garden. They feed on aphids and are very effective in ridding your plants of these little green, gray, or brown bugs.
- Another solution is to “wash” them off with a hose and high-pressure spray nozzle, or spray them with an organic insecticidal soap.
- Squash Bugs are probably the most prevalent pest but are somewhat easier to control than borers. They suck the sap from your pumpkin plant leaves, leaving them initially speckled; then the leaves wither and die.
- Controlling squash bugs is easier if your soil has lots of nutrients and your plants are healthy.
- Get rid of anything around your garden, such as old boards or anything they can hide under during the winter.
- It also helps to rototill or turn under your garden in the fall to eliminate places these bugs like to hide.
- To get rid of the bugs, hand-picking usually works in most gardens as they’re not so large as to take more than an hour or two per week for a few weeks in the summer.
- When you pick these bugs and nymphs, have a pail of soapy water to drop them into…the soap breaks the capillary action of water so the bugs immediately sink and drown in the water.
- If you find eggs attached to the underside of leaves or stems, simply crush the eggs.
- Lay a board or two in your pumpkin patch overnight…the bugs will congregate under the boards at night. In the morning, lift the board and capture the bugs and drop them into the soapy water pail.
- Organic compounds such as rotenone and pyrethrins are also effective if you have a heavy infestation of these varmints.
ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
- Blossom-end rot causes your fruit to develop a black rot on the end of the squash. Hot weather/lack of water, and/or a calcium deficiency are the main cause of the rot. It can be prevented by making sure your plants have water and, if necessary, add lime to the soil before watering.
- Downy mildew is a leaf disease that’s caused by a fungus with a long Latin name. If you really want to know the name, let me know and I’ll copy and paste it in a reply.
- This mildew usually isn’t a problem unless you have a cold spell in the 45° to 55°F range for a month or longer.
- The mildew shows up initially as yellow patches on your squash plant’s leaves, then turns brown or tan with gray or white downy fuzz below it. Then it progresses to black patches and the leaves and sometimes the plants shrivel up and die.
- To prevent downy mildew, grow squash varieties that are resistant to it.
- Also, allow plenty of space between your plants so they don’t stay wet too long.
- And if the conditions appear favorable for the disease to appear (i.e. a long cool and rainy spell), spray your leaves with a compost tea. To make the tea, put compost in a bucket and fill it with water; when it settles out, fill your sprayer with the brownish water and spray your plants’ leaves with it.
- Powdery mildew is another mildew that can affect your winter squash plants, but looks entirely different. It’s whitish and powdery and grows on squash leaves and stems.
- It is also caused by wetness, but warmth and humidity cause it rather than cool weather and rain.
- If the leaves are infected, they’ll usually die. If the infection is severe, it can kill the whole plant.
- If you are able to, avoid overhead watering. If not, water early in the morning so the plants can dry out by noon or so.
- If you keep insect pests under control and spray your vines and leaves with a compost tea solution or a baking soda solution, you most likely won’t have an issue with this disease.
- Other solutions include organic sulfur sprays or a weak solution of milk and water (9:1).
- If you spot any of this mildew, destroy your vines at the end of the season and rotate your winter squash to a new area next gardening season.
- You can also purchase seed varieties that are resistant to fungi such as downy and powdery mildews.
- Another fungus with a long Latin name causes a blight called “black rot.” Black rot is found mostly in warmer and more humid climates such as the Southeastern U.S., but can also show up in winter squash and pumpkins in the cooler climates.
- Black rot is a gummy blight that attacks the stems and leaves of squash plants. It is usually brought on by too much moisture.
- It lives on dry plant material or in the soil, where it can survive for more than a year. It is necessary to rotate your squash crops to a new area if this blight hits your plants.
- To avoid black rot, irrigation should be managed to minimize free moisture on leaf surfaces, and a minimum two-year rotation cycle is a must.
- Again, overhead watering should be avoided, but if you have no choice, water early in the day.
- You can also make an organic fungicide spray using bicarbonate of soda (baking soda). In a gallon of water add a couple drops of organic olive oil, a couple drops of environmentally-friendly liquid soap, and 3 tablespoons of baking soda. Spray it on your squash leaves to effectively control all of the above fungi.
- Fusarium fruit rot is a soil-borne fungus that may affect your pumpkin crop.
- You can see this problem in slightly sunken lesions with purplish-red margins. A white fungal growth will develop often in the center of the lesions. It can spread with watering.
- Crop rotation and planting resistant varieties are the best defense against fusarium fruit rot.
- Straw mulch can help reduce fruit rot by preventing pumpkins from contacting the soil directly.
- Don’t store pumpkins showing the described symptoms as they’ll rot quickly in storage.
- Angular leaf spot is a bacterial infections that creates spots that have a water-logged appearance and are guided by the leaf veins, giving them an angular appearance.
- Warm, wet weather is a promoter of this infection, and if things dry out, the holes created by this disease may be outgrown.
- Prevention of ALS starts with clean seeds and resistant varieties. Also, don’t crowd your plants as moisture creates the condition in which this disease thrives.
- If you have only overhead watering, water in the morning. Spray your plants with the homemade fungicide mentioned above if symptoms appear.
- Just when you thought it was safe to grow pumpkins, along comes the mosaic virus.
- Mosaic is spread by aphids mostly. Your pumpkins leaves will develop irregularly, both in shape and size, and the fruit may have the same symptoms.
- Using row covers to prevent aphids from infecting your plants may be the best option. Diatomaceous Earth also works well, but only if it remains powdery (it doesn’t work if it gets wet).
- You might think by this point we’d have nothing else, absolutely nothing else that could affect your pumpkin crop, but unfortunately we still need to mention bacterial wilt.
- Bacterial wilt goes back to your cucumber beetles; if they’re around when your pumpkin seedlings emerge, they may infect your plants early.
- Bacterial wilt causes the leaves to start to wilt into an umbrella-shaped appearance, then the whole plant collapses and dies.
- As you might imagine, controlling the cucumber beetles will control bacterial wilt, so if you’re growing your pumpkins organically, row covers are the most effective prevention early in the season.
- Most fungal infections can be controlled by planting resistant varieties, rotating your crops, and using the homemade spray mentioned earlier.
- Everything else can usually be handled by controlling the bugs with row covers, diatomaceous earth, and pyrethrins if it gets serious.
Basics 101:Cherry tomatoes
‘Green Grape’, an heirloom tomato.Photo: Scott Phillips
Cherry tomatoes are easy-going fruits, which, if grown right, will yield basket after basket of flavorful harvests. They are less prone to many of the problems that plague larger-fruited varieties and they often produce fruit early.
My 96-year-old grandmother, Jinx, when asked the secret to her longevity, advises: “Never say can’t, try everything once, and make one new friend each year.” She should add growing cherry tomatoes to her litany. Other than walking the dog or taking a language class, I’ve found that the best way to increase my circle of friends is to grow cherry tomatoes. When they start ripening in late July, I place small baskets of these multicolored sweets around the office. Without fail, people I’ve never met before approach me to say how much they enjoyed a particular variety, and I invite them to visit my garden for more.
Wild cherry tomatoes are the grandmothers of most tomato varieties we enjoy today. Native to the South American Andes, they traveled north through Central America to Mexico, where they were domesticated and cultivated before the arrival of Columbus. In the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors returned from Mexico with the seeds of small-fruited tomatoes, as well as those of larger, irregularly lobed cultivars.
According to Andrew F. Smith, author of The Tomato in America, many European varieties were derived from crosses between these different forms. A related species, the tiny-fruited currant tomato (Lycopersicon pimpinellifolium) is native to the western coastal areas of Peru and Ecuador, where it grows as a sprawling weed.
Because of its resistance to diseases like fusarium and bacterial wilt, as well as its habit of producing fruit in long trusses, the currant tomato has been crossbred with other tomatoes, producing many modern cherry tomato varieties.
Chose varieties for your region
At a market garden I worked for in Germany, we would sprinkle a few gold tomatoes in each box of Sweet 100s, just to highlight their glowing red color. Imagine what you could do with today’s array of cherry tomato colors and shapes.
If you’ve never outgrown your desire to play with food, and if the thought of making mosaics with multicolored cherry tomatoes appeals to you, then you can choose yellow, orange, pink, or green, round, oval, pear-shaped, or pointed varieties. Since there are so many, I’ll concentrate on my favorites, their flavor, and their suitability for different climates—a deciding factor in areas with difficult growing conditions.
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| ‘Sun Gold’ is sweet, fruity, prolific, and a strong grower, even in very hot zones. | |
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‘Sun Gold’, an orange hybrid, has attracted a cult following because of its burst of warm, sweet flavor, reminiscent of tropical fruit. Most of the people who tried these fruits in my garden last year could not stop eating them, and decided to grow their own this season. ‘Sun Gold’ has received good reviews from around the country, including states as hot as Alabama. Expect fruit early and often.
‘Sweet 100 Plus’ is another all-around great choice if you like your cherry tomatoes sweet. Extremely vigorous (so you’ll have to stake the vines), productive, and crack-resistant, it’s widely available and is a reliable standard hybrid, no matter where you live.
If, instead of sweetness, you prefer a more versatile tomato-ey flavor, grow ‘Camp Joy’. This variety, a favorite of organic gardening pioneer Alan Chadwick, is the most vigorous in my garden. The seeds of ‘Camp Joy’, an open-pollinated variety, are lovingly preserved on a farm of the same name near California’s central coast, where nights are cooled by ocean fog. ‘Camp Joy’ is also an excellent choice for drying.
‘Golden Nugget’ is another excellent choice where nights are cool. Developed in Oregon, this variety has tasty yellow fruit that does not require night temperatures above 55°F, as do most varieties. ‘Gold Nugget’ ripens fast and resists cracking. Determinate in habit and therefore compact, it is well suited to growing in containers.
Another group of devotees in my garden worships ‘Rose Quartz’. Its rosy-pink, extremely juicy, oval-shaped fruit hangs in abundant, grapelike clusters. Its only fault is its susceptibility to cracking in periods of alternating wet and dry weather. Mulching and even watering can ensure you a plentiful harvest.
‘Green Grape’ heirloom tomatoes are actually green and yellow when ripe (you can tell because they become softer and slip easily off the stem).Put them on your crudité platter to complete the mosaic of colors, or use them to make bright green salsa and ketchup.
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| ‘Green Grape’ is an heirloom with a bright flavor that’s sweeter than its green skin implies. | Diminutive currant tomatoes grow in trusses of gold or red, with very little work on the part of the gardener. | ||
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Children (and most adults) can’t help falling in love with adorable pear-shaped tomatoes. ‘Red Pear’ is meaty and is a good choice for drying; ‘Yellow Pear’ tastes lighter and more ethereal, with lemony overtones.
Tiny currant tomatoes come in red, pink, and yellow. Their fruits tend to be seedy, but have a distinctive sweet-and-sour flavor. Seed savers should be aware that because of the shape of their flowers, currant tomatoes are more likely to cross-pollinate with other varieties, so seeds saved from nearby tomatoes might not come true. If you plan to save seeds, set the plants at least 50 feet from other varieties.
Another type of cherry tomato that has become more widely available in the last several years is oval-shaped. One such variety is ‘Santa F1’, a hybrid from China. You’ll find similar oval tomatoes sold at markets as grape tomatoes.
Give cherries full sun and regular watering
Growing cherry tomatoes is easier than growing many large-fruited tomatoes, primarily because cherries produce so many blossoms that there’s a good chance some will set fruit, even in less than ideal conditions. For healthy plants and prolific yields, give them what they like best: full sun (eight hours per day), fertile soil, and even moisture. If you buy nursery-grown plants, find the stockiest ones you can, without flowers or fruit. If only lanky plants are available, bury them sideways several inches deeper than they were in the pots. The plant will reach skyward, and more roots will develop along the buried stems.
Start cherry tomato seeds indoors on a warm surface six to eight weeks before the last expected frost date in your area. If it never freezes in your zone, start them six to eight weeks before night temperatures are consistently in the 50s. Use a fine seed-starting mix, and sow seeds 1⁄4 in. deep and 2 inches apart. Water so the soil is moist but not soggy, and keep the soil temperature between 70˚ and 90°F. A seed-starting mat that provides consistent bottom heat will provide the warmth the seeds need to germinate.
If you cover your flats with plastic, make sure air circulates in. If you see moisture forming underneath the plastic, take it off to prevent rotting. Proper air circulation is critical.
When you see the first signs of life—usually within a week or two—provide strong light. Most gardeners don’t have a full day of intense sunlight pouring in through their windows, especially in early spring, so I’d advise against setting your seedlings on the windowsill. Position a grow light 2 to 4 inches away from seedlings for up to 18 hours a day. This should prevent plants from getting leggy.
 If you let your seedlings get a little too leggy, here’s how to remedy the situation: Use a pencil to loosen and carefully lift out the roots and plant. Remove the lowest leaves, and plant the seedling deep in the pot. Firm the soil and water well. Photos: Jodie Delohery. |
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Once all the plants are up, high temperatures are no longer necessary or desirable, and 60° to 70°F days and 55°F nights are ideal. When the second set of leaves appears, it’s time to transplant. Loosen the roots with a pencil and transplant seedlings into 4-inch pots or deep flats. When night temperatures are in the 50s and all danger of frost is past, gradually acclimate your plants to the outdoors.
When they’re ready to live outside, prepare a garden bed by adding plenty of well-rotted manure and a source of phosphorus and calcium (such as bone meal). Set seedlings 2 to 3 feet apart in rich, well-drained soil, and water them in well.
Like regular tomatoes, cherries need a consistent supply of water. At the same time, cherry tomatoes often remain productive in very hot weather that causes the blossoms of larger-fruited varieties to drop off. How much you need to water depends not only on the amount of rainfall you receive, but also on your type of soil. If you have fast-draining soil, you’ll need to keep a close eye on your plants and water often if the weather’s been dry. Well-prepared clay will hold water for some time. Before watering, check the soil for dryness. If the foliage looks limp, you’ve waited too long to water.
Once the plants are established and about a foot tall, lay down mulch. I wait until the plants are this size because they are then better able to withstand damage by slugs or other insects that you might find under mulch. Either straw or compost makes a good mulch.
Indeterminate, or vining, cherry tomato varieties need strong supports. There are many possible methods. I like to prune the vines to two branches and wind them up strings supported by a wooden frame, for neat appearance, good air circulation, and easy access to the fruit. Caging requires the least work, however, and often produces an even greater yield. Use strong cages made from concrete reinforcing wire and stake them firmly into the ground; you’ll be glad later. Those flimsy inverted conical cages sold at garden centers bend and fall over under the weight of mature plants.
Fighting diseases and cracking
If tomato leaf diseases are a problem in your area, choose a variety described as resistant and vigorous. Rotate your crops, since many diseases survive for several years in the soil. Try not to plant tomatoes where other members of the nightshade family, such as peppers, potatoes, and eggplant, have been grown recently.
Watering the soil rather than the leaves, and mulching the ground with a material such as straw will keep the water from splashing onto the lower leaves and stems. This can help prevent diseases from spreading. Some gardeners even remove the lower leaves of tomato plants once they are well established to prevent them from picking up diseases from the ground. Red plastic mulch is said to keep nematode populations down. There are, however, diseases for which there are no resistant varieties.
I plant herbs like cilantro and dill near my tomatoes and let them go to flower. They attract beneficial insects that keep pests such as hornworms under control.
Cherry tomatoes are less prone to many of the cosmetic problems—blossom-end rot, catfacing, and sunscald—that plague larger-fruited types. Certain varieties are more prone to cracking than others, including most currant tomatoes, which often do better during hot, dry summers. I’ve never had problems with ‘Camp Joy’, ‘Sweet Million’, or ‘Gold Nugget’.
Cherry tomatoes are perfect container plants
All cherry tomatoes can be grown in containers. Use a 5-gallon pot with drainage holes at the bottom; I use plastic rather than terra-cotta because terra-cotta dries out so fast that you’ll be a slave to watering. Fill the pots with a planting mixture that drains well. Start and harden off the plants as directed above, and plant one tomato per pot in a sunny location protected from strong winds.
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| Rose Quartz’ is high on the list of perfect tomatoes. ITs one fault is cracking, which can be prevented with even watering and mulching. Photo: Janet Jemmott. | |
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Water and nutrients leach quickly out of container plants. Feed every two weeks and keep the soil evenly moist, but don’t let the pots sit in a saucer full of water. A good fertilizer to use on container tomatoes should have more phosphorus than nitrogen. Too much nitrogen can result in abundant leaves, and few fruits. Unless you are growing a very dwarf variety, provide a stake or cage to support the sprawling vines.
At harvest time, loose, ripe cherry tomatoes overflow into my hands, but plants often produce so much fruit that it’s hard to keep up with the picking. Now’s the time to start leaving baskets of fruit in strategic locations, or to recruit children to help pick. It’s amazing how many children who won’t touch larger varieties will eagerly reach for cherries.
At the market garden I worked for in Germany, everyone worked so quickly that I had to train myself to pick cherry tomatoes without eating them to keep up my speed. With peas, for which I still have absolutely no self-control, I fortunately got fast enough to be able to snack and pick at the same time.
Let’s eat!
Although eating cherry tomatoes whole, directly off the vine, is the most common way to enjoy them, I like to reserve a supply for my brother, John, who is our family’s most artistic cook and has great ideas for using cherry tomatoes. At the height of the season, when you have an abundance of cherry tomatoes (something I’m sure you’ll achieve), try one of these recipes that John has created: Herbed Goat Cheese Tartlet with Currant Tomatoes and Cherry Tomato Sundae (yes, with ice cream!). They are wonderful for family events or parties with your new-found, cherry-tomato-loving friends.
Growing cucumbers in containers
Cucumbers do well when grown vertically on a trellis. Photo by Sakura.
The important thing about growing cucumbers is not for their foliage or flowers, but for the crop they will give you. Take great care of your cucumber plant in order to have a small but rewarding crop of cucumbers later in a few months.
The Plant Container
Cucumbers are relatively large plants, taking up a lot of space with their vines and large leaves, but it is possible to grow these in plant containers in your balcony. Choose a large container (at least 20 inches deep and 20 inches in diameter), and a tall trellis (4 feet tall or so) that can be placed behind the plant container or staked into the container itself. You will be training the cucumber plant’s vines to grow up the trellis. This will maximize your floor space and allow the plant’s foliage to get more sun.
Planting
Plant your cucumber plants from seed, rather than purchasing seedlings. On the seed packet, check to see if that cucumber variety does well in plant containers. Some varieties for containers include suyo, salad bush, Liberty, Sweet Success, Bush Slicer and more. Wait until the weather is consistently above 70 degrees Fahrenheit before planting. Plant the seeds about a half-inch deep, and plant a few more seeds than you intend to grow (in your 20-inch-deep plant container, you can grow about six plants). After the seeds have germinated and have gotten two sets of “true” leaves, cut them down to the strongest-looking plants. Cut seedlings off at the soil line, rather than pulling them up. Pulling them up will damage the other cucumber plants’ roots.
Maintenance
Because your cucumbers are grown in a relatively small amount of potting soil, you will need to fertilize often (at least every week). Water often to make sure the soil never dries out. It is appropriate to water if the potting soil dry about 2 inches down into the soil (put your finger into the potting soil to check this). Dry potting soil will affect the crop, but overwatering can lead to root rot, so pay close attention to watering.
When you check the plant every day, also check for garden pests and soil-borne fungus (fungus shouldn’t be a problem because the vines are growing up on the trellis). Cucumbers are susceptible to aphids, cucumber beetles, slugs and snails, fungus, various types of rots, etc.
Harvesting
Pick cucumbers once they are ready, and you can harvest cucumbers regularly. Once you pick a cucumber, the plant (as long as the weather is still good) should produce more fruit. Too many ripe cucumbers will stunt more cucumber growth.
Cucumbers are ready to harvest when they reach the size indicated on the seed packet, and if it is a nice dark green color (some varieties may have a different color) and is firm when gently squeezed. Cut the cucumber off the vine with garden pruners. Rinse off the cucumber and eat right away, or store it in the fridge immediately.
QUICK LOOK: Cucumber Plant Requirements
- Above-70-degree heat
- At least 6 hours of full sun each day
- Large plant container
- Trellis
- Consistent watering
- Fertilizer once a week
- Regular harvesting
14 Tips for Starting Your Own Seeds
14 Tips for Starting Your Own Seeds
Ensure that your plants are organic from start to finish by starting your own seeds.
Start your own seeds and you can be sure that your plants have been raised organically from first to last. And by sprouting and nursing your own seedlings, you don’t have to wait for warm weather to get your hands dirty. Best of all, starting your own seeds is easy and fun. Here’s how to get started now:
Place sure bets
Some plants lend themselves to home germination better than others. Surefire vegetables include basil, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, chives, leeks, lettuce, onions, peppers, and tomatoes. Some reliable annual flowers are alyssum, cosmos, marigolds, and zinnias. Perennials include Shasta daisies, columbines, and hollyhocks.
Get the timing down
To calculate when to sow your seeds, go to our seed-starting chart, print it out and then fill in the blanks. Then you will have a planting plan you can follow through the season.
Gather containers
Reuse last year’s nursery flats if you have some around. Otherwise, any container 2 or 3 inches deep will do. Punch holes for drainage into the bottom of containers and set them into trays. Protect against plant disease by thoroughly cleaning all used containers: Wash them in hot, soapy water, and rinse with a dilute solution of household bleach and water. If you want a less-irritating substitute for the bleach, use distilled white vinegar.
Pick the right growing medium
You can buy bags of seed-starter mix or you can make your own seed-starting mix by blending equal parts of perlite, vermiculite, and peat. Add 1/4 teaspoon of lime to each gallon of mix to neutralize the acidity of the peat. You’ll eventually want to repot most of your seedlings into larger containers before setting them into the garden. But lettuce, melons, and cucumbers are finicky about being transplanted and should go directly from the original containers into the garden. When starting these fussier plants, always add two parts well-aged, screened compost to your mix to give them a healthy beginning.
Sow carefully
Moisten your medium in the containers before sowing the seeds. Next, drop seeds onto the surface of the mix, spacing them as evenly as possible. Cover the seeds to a depth about three times the thickness of the seeds. Some seeds, such as ageratum, alyssum, impatiens, petunias, and snapdragons, should not be covered at all because they need light in order to germinate.
Top it off
Lightly sprinkle milled sphagnum moss, a natural fungicide, over everything to protect against damping-off, a fungal disease that rots seeds and seedlings. In the case of seeds that need light to germinate, sprinkle the moss first and then drop the seeds onto the moss.
Keep seeds cozy
Cover the flats with plastic wrap or glass to keep the environment humid and place them near a heat vent or on a heat mat made especially for seed starting. Most seeds germinate well at about 70 degrees F.
Keep them damp
Mist with a spray bottle or set the trays into water so the mix wicks up the moisture from below.
Lighten up
At the first signs of sprouting, uncover and move the containers to a bright spot—a sunny window, a greenhouse, or beneath a couple of ordinary fluorescent shop lights (4-footers with two 40-watt bulbs). The lights are worthwhile, especially if you live in the North. They provide a steady source of high-intensity light. Short days restrict window light, and your seedlings need 12 to 16 hours of light a day. Suspend the lights just 2 inches above the plants and gradually raise them as the seedlings mature. If plants have to stretch or lean toward the light, they can become weak and spindly. To turn the lights on and off at the same time each day, hook them up to an electric timer.
Cool down
Seedlings don’t have to stay as warm as germinating seeds. Move them away from radiators and air vents, or off the heating mat, as soon they have germinated.
Feed them
If you’re using a soilless mix without compost, begin to fertilize your seedlings as soon as they get their first true leaves. (These leaves emerge after the little, round cotyledon leaves.) Water with a half-strength solution of liquid fish/seaweed fertilizer every week or two. Use either a spray bottle or add the fertilizer to the water you set the trays in if you’re using the wick-up method described above.
Give them room
If the seedlings outgrow their containers or crowd one another, repot them into larger containers filled with a mix that includes compost. Extract the seedlings with a narrow fork or flat stick, and handle by their leaves and roots to avoid damaging the fragile stems. Tuck the seedlings gently into the new pots, and water them to settle the roots.
Pet them
Lightly ruffling seedlings once or twice a day with your hand or a piece of cardboard helps them to grow stocky and strong. Or, set up a small fan to gently, continuously blow on your seedlings.
Toughen them up
About 1 week before the plants are to go outside, start acclimating them to the harsh conditions of the big world. Gardeners call this hardening off. On a warm spring day move the containers to a shaded, protected place, such as a porch, for a few hours. Each day—unless the weather is horrible—gradually increase the plants exposure to sun and breeze. At the end of the week leave them out overnight; then transplant them into the garden.
Link to the original article, above
Fruit Trees in Containers
By: William Ross
For folks who want to grow their own fruit, but who don’t have adequate space or a suitable climate, growing fruit in containers offers several opportunities. Cherries, peaches, figs, apples, tangerines, lemons, and limes are among the many types of fruit trees that thrive in containers. And, you can grow them in just about any region of the country. Of course, container-grown fruit trees produce fewer fruit than full-grown trees, but fresh limes and lemons on a cold winter day in Vermont, for example, are refreshing, not to mention soul-stirring.
Some container-grown apples and cherries (deciduous, or leaf-dropping, trees) will not fruit properly in some mild-winter areas because they require a long period of cold temperatures. Ask your nursery staff about varieties that require a shorter cold period (also called “low-chill” varieties) and that do well in mild-winter regions.
Where to Buy Container Fruit Trees
To get fruit through the winter, buy and plant fruit trees in the Spring. Most plant catalogs and nurseries contain a selection of fruit trees that can be grown in containers. Trees ordered from mail-order catalogs are shipped bare-root.You should plant your tree within a day or two of receiving it, but only after soaking the roots overnight in warm water.
Nursery-bought trees will be either in containers or balled and burlapped. Look for trees with branches arranged symmetrically around the trunk and without broken or diseased limbs. Avoid buying rootbound trees (roots circling the container), and prune any broken or damaged roots before planting.
Choosing a Container
Containers are available in almost every size, shape, and material. Containers made of untreated, rot-resistant wood are good options, but wood rots eventually. Clay pots dry out faster than wooden ones, and fungi and bacteria can grow in the porous surfaces. Also, old clay pots can build up enough fertilizer and salts to make them impermeable to air and water. Plastic pots, on the other hand, are light inweight, but they heat up in the sun. All containers must have adequate drainage holes.
A good fruit-tree container is a 15-gallon pot, which is large enough for a 5-foot tree. Such a container could weigh between about 70 and 125 pounds, depending on what the pot is made of, the size of the tree, and the type of soil. Weight is no small consideration if you have to move the container with the tree in it.
For a citrus tree, a conventional container, called a Versailles planter, is especially well suited because the sides can be removed to make it easy to add or remove soil without uprooting or having to lift the tree out of the pot. The tree it holds can be 10 feet tall, and the planter with tree can require four people or a forklift to move it. Citrus-tree soils are especially heavy because they require sand, which adds considerable weight. The wheeled platforms sometimes advertised for use in moving large plants usually list a rating of the ranges of planter weights between 150 and 400 pounds.
Soil Mixes
A good container mix ensures thorough soaking and good drainage to nourish and support the plant. When water runs right through or down the edges of the mix, leaving dry places, the plant should be repotted in the same-sized pot or in a larger one.
Here is a good container mix for growing fruit:
- 4 cubic feet of dampened peat moss or rotted pine bark
- 2 cubic feet of sand (washed sand or horticultural sand is fine)
- 2 cubic feet of perlite
- 2 cubic feet of compost
- 1 pound of dolomite lime
- 3-1/2 pounds of Osmocote 17-6-10
Purchased container mix is available in bags of 3 cubic feet ($15 wholesale, $30 retail). Read the ingredients, and add sand to make the mix heavier if necessary. Pro-Mix, Customblen, and Fafard brand mixes don’t contain sand, but Metro-Mix 200 does.
Fertilizing and Watering
Fruit production requires regular fertilizing all year long. Monthly feeding is a good regim to maintain. Cut back the nitrogen in fall and winter to avoid encouraging new growth in those seasons. If your container mix includes a slow-release fertilizer such as Osmocote, it’s good for several months. After that time, you have many choices, from the garden store’s one-size-fits-all to the specific fertilizers suggested by the tree-supplier. Ask his or her advice, and follow the instructions that came with the fertilizer.
The most important part of watering is proper drainage. Between waterings, the soil should dry well, but it shouldn’t dry out completely, because dryness can cause fruit to drop. An outdoor container-plant in the sun can dry out very quickly and needs more than one watering per day. Protection from the sun reduces soil temperature, and burying the container allows rooting into the ground through drainage holes for less dependence on daily waterings.
Excess wetness or poor drainage can lead to root-rot (Phytophthora) in susceptible plants. However, you should overwater moderately once a month to leach out fertilizer residues.
Hedge Clipping and Root Pruning
Pruning controls a tree’s size and shape, maximizes fruit production, and maintains tree health. Hedge clipping and “cleaning out the inside” are the minimum treatments.
To prune, remove all foliage from the inside branches of the tree so that most of the foliage grows on the outside. Pay attention to the fruit location. On many citrus plants, the fruits are on the tips of small branches, and many of these fruits are always left, even after the most severe pruning.
During the first few years, you may prune a newly transplanted tree, but allow the tree to increase in size several inches a year. As it approaches mature size, prune to limit its increases to up to 1 inch per year. Most container plants eventually reach an optimum size for a specific container size. Fruit trees, especially citrus, can live more than 75 years, so annual repotting is the best way to maintain the health and vigor of both plant and soil.
In the spring, repot the plants before putting them outdoors for the summer. Remove about an inch of the rootball, and comb the root tangles. Prune a similar amount of foliage at the same time. Additional summer pruning is necessary to limit the tree’s size.
The best pruning job I’ve ever seen was done by a herd of cows on a wild apple tree. Every spring, the cows grazed the tree down to a stub; they ate most of the new growth from summer until fall, when they would leave it alone. This tree was a perfect sphere of foliage about 5 feet tall and about 60 years old. The cows had created a perfect bonsai specimen.
As the art of bonsai demonstrates, you can limit almost any tree to any size by careful pruning. I have a 1-foot-tall ‘Ponderosa’ lemon in a 1-gallon pot that produces 3 pounds of fruit a year. Of course, the smaller the pot, the more attention you must pay to watering, fertilizing, root and foliage pruning, and repotting.
Overwintering
Deciduous trees, such as apples and cherries, require a period of temperatures between 32o to 40oF. in order to fruit properly the following year. Gardeners in mild-winter regions should look for fruit trees adapted to fewer chill hours.
If you’re not in a mild-winter zone, move your fruit trees indoors in winter or protect them outdoors. After their leaves drop in the fall, deciduous trees should be kept moist and moved to an unheated garage. You can also keep them insulated outdoors to prevent freezing and thawing of the roots. To insulate your outdoor trees, tie up the branches, create a wire-mesh cylinder (around the tree and container) 1 foot wider than the tree canopy, fill the cylinder with leaves or straw, wrap the cylinder with burlap, and cover the top with plastic to shed water.
Citrus and tropical trees should be moved to a heated greenhouse or solarium before the first frost to overwinter indoors. Some citrus and tropicals m need supplemental light and heat in winter for best fruiting. However, excessively hot and dry conditions can cause citrus to drop fruit. In that case, you should mist the foliage with tepid water. Citrus will often have flowers and fruit at different stages on the same tree, and ripe fruit can be left on the tree for weeks.
Pests, Diseases, and Sanitation
Proper sanitation can prevent or control many problems; but the longer you put it off, the harder it gets. For your trees, a regular shower, a spray with an insecticidal soap such as Safer (an organic treatment), and a gentle scrub all over with a soft brush will control most pest outbreaks. For serious scale infestation, use a light horticultural oil spray once a year or get the appropriate beneficial insect predator, available for most insect pests.
Prevention is the best approach to diseases. Find varieties and rootstocks that are resistant to the microbial problems in your area. It deserves repeating: Sanitation is the most important aspect of container and greenhouse growing; as gardeners say, when in doubt, clean it up, and clean it out.
Growing trees in containers can produce an abundance of fruit (and satisfaction) for city-dwellers, people with limited space, or folks who live in unfavorable climates, so don’t feel that your location limits your fruit-cultivation options.
How to Grow Figs
Many people wonder how to grow figs. These fruit trees are among the easiest of the fruit trees that can be grown. They grow happily in both the ground or containers, making the perfect for all kinds of gardeners. Let’s take a look at when to plant fig tree and how to care for your fig tree.
How to Grow Figs
When it comes to fig tree care, you should know that growing fig trees requires well-drained and fertile soil. The best soil for growing fig trees would be loamy soil that has plenty of organic matter cut through it. Also, be sure the area gets plenty of moisture. The perfect pH for growing fig trees is a soil pH of 6.0 to 6.5.
When thinking about how to grow figs, you should know that they should be protected from cold winter winds and direct winter sunlight. Unseasonably warm temperatures can cause your fig trees to grow. If this happens too early in the season, and then another freeze sneaks in, your growing fig trees will be damaged.
When to Plant Fig Trees
For good fig tree care, remember that a northern exposure keeps your fig trees dormant until the time comes that they should be blooming. You can set your dormant, bare-rooted trees out in late fall to early spring. For easy fig tree maintenance, you should choose fig trees that are free of root-knot nematodes.
Fig tree maintenance is not a lot of work. You can plant your growing fig trees about 15 to 20 feet apart. If you are going to train your trees to be bushes instead, plant them 10 feet apart. Either way, there is little fig tree care you will have to administer.
Fig trees like full sunlight and adequate room for growth. Be careful not to have too much nitrogen in the soil. You can fertilize the soil at a rate of one pound of 8-8-8 each year of age of the tree, or each foot tall the tree is. This is to a maximum of 12 pounds and then you would maintain the same rate each year.
With regard to fig tree maintenance, you should fertilize your trees annually. If you have heavy soil, fertilize the tree when the buds swell. If you have loamy soil, you can fertilize with half the amount required when the buds swell and the other half can go down in late May.
Good fig tree care requires some pruning. However, fig trees don’t require much. You should prune in late winter just before growth begins so you don’t injure the plant.
Harvesting your figs can be done as soon as the fruit is softening. Figs are not tasty until they are ripe, so you will need to let them stay on the tree until fully ripe. Figs will stop ripening once they are removed from the tree. You can store them in the refrigerator for a week or two until you are ready to use them in recipes or eat them.
Fig Types: Different Types Of Fig Trees For The Garden
Image by julie corsi
By Jackie Carroll
When you consider the number of fig tree varieties available, choosing the right one for your garden is a daunting task. Most home landscapes have room for only one tree, and you want a fig tree that produces an abundance of sweet, tender figs with a minimum of fuss. Here are some suggestions to help you make the right choice.
How Many Types of Fig Trees Are There?
There are over 700 named varieties of fig trees, but many of them are of no use to home gardeners. All of the varieties fall into four fig types:
Caprifigs – Caprifigs only produce male flowers and never bear fruit. Their only purpose is to pollinate female fig trees.
Smyrna – Smyrna figs bear all female flowers. They have to be pollinated by a caprifig.
San Pedro – San Pedro figs bear two crops: one on leafless mature wood that requires no pollination and one on new wood that requires pollination by a male flower.
Common figs – Common figs are the type usually grown in home landscapes. They don’t need another tree for pollination. Figs that require pollination have an opening that allows the pollinating wasps entry the internal flowers. Common figs don’t need an opening, so they are less susceptible to rot caused by insects and rainwater entering the fruit.
Here are some different types of figs in the common group that perform well in home gardens:
- Celeste is a small to medium-size brown or purple fig that grows on a fairly large tree. It produces dessert quality fruit that ripens earlier than most other figs.
- Alma figs aren’t much to look at but the fruit has excellent, rich flavor. It ripens late in the season.
- Brown Turkey produces a crop of large, tasty figs over a long season. The fruit has attractive flesh and few seeds.
- Purple Genca, also called Black Genoa or Black Spanish, is a large, deep purple variety with sweet, red flesh.
One of the best ways to find a variety suitable to your area is to visit a local nursery. They will carry fig types suitable for your climate and can make recommendations based on local experience.
Vegetable Growing on the Patio
What Can You Grow on a Patio?
Even if you’ve only got a paved patio or yard, you can still grow a surprising range of vegetables. You won’t be self sufficient but you can make a significant contribution to your food supply.
I’m often asked what vegetables you can grow in containers on a patio and the answer is most of them. If you’ve ever seen the top show growers with their large onions and leeks as long as your arm, you may be surprised to know they wouldn’t dream of growing in the soil!
Patio Salad Crops
The easiest thing to start with are the saladings. Any old pot will do as long as the compost is about 6″ deep. You can buy mixed variety seed packs of cut and come again varieties. Just scatter the seeds thinly across the top and cover with a very thin layer of compost then water.
As the young leaves grow to a couple of inches tall, cut off enough for your salad with a pair of scissors. We use a trough and it gives us about 4 meals per row. Once cut the seedlings will grow back again and you can then take another cut.
After about three cuts they become exhausted and you need to sow again. One packet of seeds for a pound or two will keep you in fresh salad leaves all summer.
Onions and Carrots
Still on the subject of salads, spring onions and carrots work well together. As the carrots develop, pull them up in alternating one to pull and one to grow. The same with the spring onions.
You need an early variety of carrot. Amsterdam Forcing or Early Nantes rather than the maincrop varieties but any spring onion will be fine. Early, in vegetable growing just means that a plant is ready to crop quickly. So if you are late planting you are best using an early variety that will crop quickly before the season changes.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes either in a growbag or pot are ideal for a sheltered patio. If you can provide them with some cover towards the end of the season you will get more ripe tomatoes than green. Don’t forget green tomatoes make a fantastic chutney anyway.
Cucumbers
Cucumbers do well in a pot, for outdoors go for a variety like Burpless Tasty Green. Unlike shop cucumbers they have spikes on the skin and need peeling but the flavour is far superior.
Other Patio Vegetables
Courgettes do well from pots on the patio and you can, in a good summer, get an excellent crop of peppers and chilli peppers although they do tend to do better in a greenhouse with the British summer.
If you’ve got a trellis up a wall then you can grow climbing beans up it. Runner beans can do well but they need to be watered frequently. If they dry the compost out then the flowers will not set to form beans. Painted Lady is a variety originally grown for its flowers that we’ve grown successfully in containers.
Cabbages and cauliflowers can be grown in pots although you are best looking for small varieties like Hispi that will not need too much nutrition to heart up. Even potatoes can be grown in a barrel on a patio. Best to go for the early varieties like Swift or Rocket.
Patio Fruit
Strawberries are a good patio plant but you can grow apples in pots. They’re quite decorative as well as productive.
Don’t forget with patio growing you will need to water regularly and feed as well or they will exhaust the soil. You can by organic feed or use inorganic fertilisers like Miracle Gro
More Information
As well as being the author of two books on growing your own, Vegetable Growing Month by Month
- Container Gardening Patio Vegetables
- Container Vegetable Growing – Getting Started
- Container Vegetable Growing – What to Grow
- Container Vegetable Growing – Protecting Your Crops
- Container Gardening – General Advice
- Basic How to Container Gardening
From Austerity Blues to Green Living
It’s surprising really, how little difference it makes to us whether the economy is booming or in recession. Sure, we’re substantially down on last year regarding income, but we’re so used to eking out every pound anyway, that economic tribulations have little or no effect on our day to day living. We grow a lot of our food, heat the house with wood that we gather, cut and chop ourselves, we’ve managed to bring our electricity bill right down and as we use a spring, we don’t pay for water. Whenever we need to buy stuff, we almost always get it second hand via Ebay or Swapshop (our local version of Freecycle) and buying new stuff has become a bit weird, tedious even. The times that I bought myself anything new to wear are so few that I remember the last three times I did so, which mostly was for special occasions and years ago. I didn’t even get anything new for my wedding, but got married in torn jeans and on bare feet and it felt good not to be a slave to the demands of a consumer culture that measures ones value according to how much money you can afford to spend buying stuff. Shopping, that popular Western pastime, makes me lose the will to live within the hour and I’m puzzled as to why so many people find the process enjoyable.
Yet for all our frugality, we live well; our plates are full and the house is warm. It doesn’t feel like I’m wearing a hair shirt, so how do we do it? Well, it does take a bit of work and preparation. Food wise; apart from growing our own, we keep a three month pantry. It means that you can buy pasta or rice when it is on offer, get our beans and lentils in bulk via companies such as Survival Wholefoods, as well as toothpaste, laundry soap etc. Apart from the food security a three month pantry gives you and the money it saves, it also saves time (you don’t need to go shopping so often). If you join up with friends and neighbours, you can buy as a group and avoid paying delivery charges by making really big orders.
We never buy anything or pay anybody to do jobs that we can do or make ourselves and after many years, I can turn my hand to a lot of different things. We don’t go on holiday in the way most people seem to do, but we do go to festivals, where the rental of our big Berber tent is our ticket in plus expenses paid. And on those rare occasions that the weather allows, we’ve got a beach only 10 minutes away. Car and fuel remain our biggest expense, as public transport is a bit rubbish around here, but we always try and make any journey serve more than one purpose.
This time of year, as I’m looking through gardening suppliers catalogues, I’m always astonished at how expensive gardening can become, if you go for all the gadgets and miracle cures. But it doesn’t need to be that way. Apart from a good spade, a garden fork, a simple hoe, a sharpening stone, a sharp pocket knife, a pair of secateurs and some smaller hand tools, you really don’t need a lot. Old food trays, the type that meat and mushrooms come in, make excellent seed trays, yoghurt pots, tetra bricks and plastic milk bottles cut in half make plant pots and margarine pots cut into strips make fine plant labels. Wooden vegetable boxes and blue plastic mushroom trays which you find by the dozen after a street market, make good transplant trays if you line them with newspaper. Compost bins can be made with old pallets and go to your local seed swap event to get your seeds. Even better; save your seeds from your own plants, it’s not hard to do and if you get it right, your plants should end up being better adapted to your specific growing site and conditions, year after year. “Back garden seed saving” by Sue Stickland is a good how-to book on the topic and the Real Seed Catalogue give excellent advice for free.
If you can, collect horse manure from stables nearby and get your compost in bulk from a community composting scheme, which is much cheaper than buying bags. Diluted with sand and leaf mould, it will make good seed compost. But most of all, get together with other people in your neighbourhood and share tools, seeds, plants and above all enthusiasm and you’ll find that gardening is the best cure for austerity blues!
Dandelion coffee recipe.
I like herb teas, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I really long for something that has a bit more oomph to it and then dandelion coffee is hard to beat in the non caffeine section. Unfortunately it is rather expensive, sold in little jars in the wholefood shop, but actually surprisingly easy to make. Dandelions grow everywhere, but try and find some that grow in a relatively pollution free area. Select the biggest, oldest plants you can find and loosen the soil around them with a fork before you harvest them.
Then scrub and cut the roots into small, even pieces roughly the size of peas. Put on a flat tray in a medium oven taking them out and stirring a few times until they are a dark brown all over. Once cooled, stick them in a coffee grinder or the grinding attachment of your blender. Grind about as fine as ordinary coffee.
Put a tablespoon per cup in a pan with water and bring to the boil. When it boils, take it of the heat and let it sit for a few minutes. Strain the coffee through a fine tea strainer into mugs. You can add sugar and milk if you like, but it has a sweetish flavour of its own and although I like a dash of milk in my dandelion coffee, I don’t need to sweeten it. Tip the grounds from the strainer back into the pan and add more hot water. It still makes a pretty decent cuppa the second time round. Apart from being a nice drink, unlike “real” coffee, this one’s actually good for your health! Cheers to austerity!
Auntie Dogma's Garden Spot 
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