Gardening Plans For the Summer

We live in a RV park, so gardening is limited. We use EarthBoxes, and are getting lettuce, spinach, radishes, onions and arugula right now, with tomatoes coming on. With containers, there is no excuse for not growing SOME of the food you eat!

 

@tulianr I have a question regarding turnips. I see you planted them. I have googled and some say you can cut the turnips greens and the roots will still grow and others discourage it. Did you cut for green? Or are you just growing for the roots? Thanks

 

I've been harvesting my greens all along, but I don't cut all of the greens off of one turnip. I just take a couple of leaves from each. It seems to work well. I'll probably harvest the roots at the end of summer.

 

Thanks @tulianr that makes sense and will be helpful. Once again I planted bushy plants too close and I have a mound of greens. Good to know that I can thin the tops, get food plus create space.

Once again I am being attacked by little green caterpillars that love my broccoli and have now developed a taste for my kale. I spend time picking them off and squishing them. Any suggestions on how to avoid this pest?

 

Walk around them... You are faster, they can't catch you...,

 

Installed two 50 foot long 5 foot tall hugelkulture raised wood-core vegetable beds (permaculture technique using logs with soil and manure buried over them to mimic a forest's life cycle thus conserving water and increasing fertility -- see richsoil.com, then dug a 10x6' 4 foot deep fish pond and began Jack Spirko'd PermaEthos.com Permaculture Design Course.

 

Love that link! thanks for sharing

 

I have the exact same problem going on now, Sevin dust them thoroughly or do like me and start another crop. By the time their big enough to attract Moths, their breeding cycle will be over. Mine are about an inch tall now.
Where are you located? Kale, collards, Broccoli, spinach...... are all cold weather tolerant plants.
Alabama has a growing season that stretches into Nov. and sometime Dec. before we get a first freeze.
Next year I am goint to buy Netting to put over My greens!

 

I am in Colorado and due to my higher elevation I have a short growing season.

Sevin dust- is that toxic? I googled it and some said it is okay, other said no.

 

It is to bugs!
I don't know how bad it is, but if your lose your crops to insects whats the point of growing them?
We use Sevin dust here and just wash them with water and white vinegar before you eat them.
Luckily we have harvest better than 200 lbs of greens this years before my plants got hit. Mustard green have not been affected at all by insects I think they are naturally immune.
I have had something else going on with them but I think its due to incorrect watering. Since I've cut back on that they are doing great.
Nematodes suck here, luckily there not active once the temperature starts to drop.
I'll be posting an update on my peppers later. I cut the tops off them as soon as the plants split and they are fruiting like crazy, but the stalks are 1-1 1/2 inches thick and the branches are mush stronger as well. We have already harvested about 35 peppers just trying to give the plant a chance to get bigger.

 

Sadly I lost the battle. I admitted defeat to the "Cabbage loopers". I pulled all my broccoli and kale. The cool weather was slowing the growth and the caterpillars basically ate all the leaves. I had doubled my broccoli crop this year because the family really loves it. This is a yearly issue so I think next year if I choose to plant broccoli again I may have to take @Gopherman's advice and use something on the plants.

 

We lost out to the bugs. Seriously this year has been the hands down biggest garden failure of my entire life. All of our grapevines were loaded to the hilt with grapes... then an army hoard of caterpillars decimated every leaf on every vine within a week. Tried pepper spray, tried blasting them off with water, but there were millions. When they stripped the vines clean they moved onto the raspberries, but before they wiped them out they went cocooning or whatever they did, and returned as a million black flying bugs. Squashbugs hit the apricots, pumpkins, butternut and zucchini. Tried shop vaccing them off but didn't make a dent. The last year I tried Sevin on them, I had to put so much that it killed off the good bugs I guess, and nothing got pollinated until the Sevin finally wore or washed off. I got less than 10 zucchinis before two massive plants keeled over. 9 sugar pumpkins and they're small. No apricots, no butternut. Half a gallon of raspberries. Blackberries went nuts at least, but the grapes are all hard and sour. Once the caterpillars were gone the vines put everything into making new leaves and the grapes just turned to rocks.

The red potatoes did pretty decent, and the asparagus patch we started this year hasn't been touched by anything, but otherwise it's a wreck. I'm hitting the farmer's market this weekend to get tomatoes and peppers and whatnot to can because it sure ain't coming out of my garden.

The aquaponics system did great last fall/winter/early spring with the salad greens, but this summer the only things that really liked it was the mint I planted just to get roots going in there, and the 10,000 birds, bees, and wasps that come to drink from it. Well and the perch in the water tanks. They're growing like weeds. Peppers, strawberries, even the cucumbers all a total bust. The cucumbers are totally round, like they get when their water is unreliable. I *think* we needed to lower the bell syphon so the water cycles further down in the bed instead of coming nearly to the top once the plants got bigger. Need to read more. Got a lot of tomatoes but they're small and a bit tasteless.

I planted three jalapeno plants out front in my rosebed on a whim, and they produced but just enough to make some hot sauce. Not my best year and glad I'm not relying on it to survive.

 

Sorry to hear about the infestation @ditch witch. It has been a strange growing year. @Gopherman suggested Sevin powder to get rid of the cabbage loopers. I read that it can kill dogs so I am still searching for a perfect repellant. It sounds more toxic then I want to use.

Surprise, surprise. I had written my grapes off as dead. After flooding and winter there was no sign of life. Then in july one shot up a shoot. Now both grapes look quite hardy. I am happy that the roots were very much alive.

 

Well my gardening season is done for this year. I do have some fall planting to do but otherwise things have wrapped up. This years was not very good for my garden. Very odd weather and bugs cause my yield to be way down. My watermelons blossomed but never developed a melon. My broccoli was eaten and my eggplant got about a foot tall and nothing, just stalled. All the herbs I planted did wonderful and my romaine lettuce did great. I am pulling all my turnips this weekend. They look to be huge.

I planted amaranth because I faithfully read @Elessar's journal on his plantings last year. My grew to about a foot tall and that was it. I failed to save the seed packet but I think I got the wrong ones.

My garlic needs to get planted so that it winters over. Also any tips on protecting strawberry plants for the winter. I noticed a blossom on one plant.

How was everyone gardens for 2014? And what are your fall planting plans?

 

This year was hit and miss. The peas were awesome but the beans were wondering miserable failure. The cucumbers did great but the peppers only produced about 10 total and never got over a foot tall.

The tomatoes were pretty good but not stellar. The tomatillo didn't produce anything but blossoms.

We've planted the broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts and will be panting the cauliflower thus weekend.

Hoping they do a little better than last year.

 

The dish soap and water works on soft bodied pests like mealybugs very well. On squash bugs, not so much. Same with the DE. Same with pepper sauce. Squash bugs are a true bug. They don't eat the plants, but puncture them with a tube and suck the insides. Believe me I've tried all the natural (and some unnatural) approaches over the last few decades. The only predator they have are wheelbugs, aka assassin bugs, but you can't buy them. About the only non-pesticide thing that works on them is to take the shop vac to them on a daily basis, remove eggs from the leaves, and having an old voodoo witch hex them. Trap crops work to some extent, a sacrificial zucchini or pumpkin. Camouflage works pretty well too as squash bugs ID target plants while in flight, so if you mix up your curcubits with taller stuff they don't care for like corn, beans, lemongrass, etc, you can often keep them hidden long enough that by the time the filthy bugs find them, they're big enough to survive all but a massive infestation.

 

@Brokor Well I'll be damned. I've tried it before and it didn't do any good. Maybe I just didn't hit them hard enough. He's right about Sevin dust, they just wash their many armpits in that and laugh. Ok next year I'm running all my squash vertical so it should be easier to get to them at least. If they see you coming they rush to the opposite side of the vine to hide, grrr. And dude, I'd be evil cackling like him too if I saw them fall dead like that.