Pam – Page 39 – Hydrangeas Blue

Troubles With Worms in the May Vegetable Garden

I would ordinarily consider May to be the beginning of vegetable growing season, but already I am giving up on one of my tomato plants and the summer squash. Worms are doing a number on everything else, and I am not sure it’s worth having a garden at this point.

Almost as soon as I planted the squash I had trouble with blossom end rot. I began watering less, and added a fertilizer with calcium.

I managed to pick two very small squash, but that is it. Other than those two, every squash that has grown, on both plants, has wizzled up and rotted. One squash plant has no flowers and no squash. The other has flowers and little squash, but all the squash are doing the same thing.

summer squash plant with yellow flowers — The summer squash began fine, then went downhill

I will be pulling up the plants and putting something else in the fabric bags. I do have zucchini seeds which I may try. Summer means fresh squash to me, and I hate that I can’t seem to grow it here.

Tomatoes should be easy to grow here in Florida. Tomatoes like sun and lots of water. Of the two plants I bought, one is a “celebrity” which is still doing okay. Currently it has around 8 tomatoes growing.

The other plant didn’t even have a name, and that one has bit the dust. The leaves began to turn brown and then the green tomatoes are rotting and falling off the vine.

I’ve grown tomatoes for many years, and very successfully, in New Hampshire. Just one year I had a problem with late blight. I don’t have blight this time, but I don’t know what the issue is. Honestly, I think the plant may have simply been bad stock. I hate having to buy my vegetables from a big box store.

Also I have been overrun with cutworms. They are eating the leaves of nearly every plant I have in the garden. I started picking them off by hand, but many of the leaves are already chewed. Being more vigilant will help, I hope. It’s been very rainy, which keeps me inside. Garden pests can get out of control if they are not caught quickly.

These worms are eating everything from the cucumber leaves to the tomatoes, basil and pepper plants. Cutworms can also cut off the new stems of seedlings. I don’t have that problem.

The squash and cucumbers have another kind of worm which bores into the vegetable and makes it mushy. They also eat through the stems which makes the rest of the vine droop and die, like in my photo. For more info on growing cucumbers and dealing with the pickleworm, read the post at the Central Florida Garden blog. It seems there haven’t been too many newer posts, but I intend to search it for useful information.

All in all, I am disappointed in my May garden. The orange ruffle hibiscus still has fuzzy mites on the leaves even though I have sprayed and trimmed it way back. I’ve seen this same circular white ring on the backs of some of my pepper plants. That is all I need! I didn’t have half these problems in the North. No wonder I don’t see farms around here!

Why I Remove the Peat Pot When Planting Seedlings

From the time I first began buying plants from Pell’s Nursery in Osteen, Florida I was told to “rough up” the roots when the plant was removed from the pot.

I’m talking plastic pots here, which are the way big plants usually come. Often the plant is a bit root bound from growing in a container. In order for the plant to do well when it’s in the ground, the roots need to know they can now grow outwards.

Some plants with thick roots can actually be sliced, or cut to train them to spread. You do this at a few intervals around the root and dirt ball before it’s set into the ground. The Pell family gave me good advice and I always had excellent luck when adding their trees and bushes to my Florida landscape. Their planting suggestion was a good one.

Screen Shot 2018-05-13 at 8.17.22 AM — Hot pepper plant from store

These days little seedlings are often sold in biodegradable, plantable pots, which will disintegrate in the dirt. We are told to plop the whole thing (minus the bottom, says the label) into the ground. Easy-peasy, no muss, no fuss.

I don’t like it. Why would I want a pot in my garden? And what is it really made of? I also believe it inhibits plant growth. “Peel off bottom of pot for optimum root growth” – it says this on the plastic. So imagine if you let the roots around the sides have that optimum growth chance as well!

In short, it’s not necessary. Treat it like a regular pot and remove it.

Screen Shot 2018-05-13 at 8.17.15 AM — Everything removed and ready to plant

I always remove the peat pot when I plant something purchased at the store (in my case the Home Depot). I do this because it releases the roots so they can instantly grow into the garden dirt in a natural way. I see no reason to add a pot to the garden soil. It’s just as easy to remove the plastic wrap and the pot.

This type of pot is often used for starting seeds. When I tried this when growing things for my northern garden, the pots began to turn moldy! So they aren’t necessarily a good choice for that either.

Screen Shot 2018-05-13 at 8.17.05 AM — New little pepper plant

By the way, I’ve found that hot pepper plants are one of the easiest types of vegetable to grow.

Pepper Plant Beasts Among the Greenery

One of my favorite garden plants is the bell pepper I planted over a year ago. Apparently here in Florida vegetable plants just go on and on. The pepper survived some pretty cold nights (below freezing temps) over the winter, and has come back stronger than ever.

Besides giving me some nice juicy peppers to eat, it is home to some special “beasts” that are common to this area.

I see lizards all the time scampering around my garden. Skittle the cat catches them, but seldom kills them. She simply likes to play with them. Often I see them without tails (which grow back) and figure they lost it when Skittle pounced.

This one is a brown anole, and I see them much more often than the green anole. After reading the Wikipedia article, I guess I know why. The brown one is an invasive species and eats the green one!! This thing really is a beast. It used to be that all I ever saw were the green lizards, but come to think of it, I don’t see them any more. I don’t see many green tree frogs either, so what has happened to those?

Florida is always changing, and usually NOT for the better.

There is a tree frog that seems to change sleeping spots from the garden to the umbrella to the hose holder. Is it the same frog? I only ever seem to see one at a time. Usually he sits on the bars beneath my table umbrella. The other day he spent the whole day tucked between the hose rolls on the garden hose holder. Each time I watered I was careful not to squish him.

As I was checking out my peppers the other day, there he was. Tucked in under a leaf and sitting on top of a big pepper. I think he is a Pine Woods Tree Frog. But it could be the Cuban Tree Frog… hope not. I’ll have to get a better look at him.

tree frog pepper plant — Tree frog napping on my pepper

Skittle the Cat is not hanging out on the pepper plant, but she has always loved snooping through the greenery of a garden. Her happy place these days is sleeping beneath the big leaves of the eggplant. It’s where she takes her cat naps between hunting lizards and getting into other mischief.

Potato Comparison – Why We Love to Eat Home Grown Vegetables.

Short and sweet, this photo compares a fresh dug red potato to one from the grocery store.

garden potato — Which red potato is fresh from the garden?

For some reason I am having a lot of trouble growing summer (yellow) squash here in Florida. Maybe it’s too hot, too humid, or something else. But I have had 2 small squash, and they were the sweetest, most delicious squash I ever ate.

Everything fresh from the backyard garden tastes a hundred times better than the bland, old stuff from the grocery store. I just had to take that potato photo when I saw the beautiful bright red color of my fresh-dug potatoes. Unfortunately most of them were really small because worms ate the potato leaves, so I dug them up early.

Potatoes are easy to grow if you have the space to grow them. Unfortunately I do not.

Starting New Tomato Plants From Suckers

I always plant little tomato plant seedlings when I garden. But there is a way to start new little plants from the original seedlings.

Once the seedling begins to grow, it will probably grow “suckers” which sprout from between stems. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, see an image of suckers at the Gardener’s Journal site.) The key is to only remove suckers below the fruit producing area. Usually down by the first or second stems of the plant. The reason is to give the tomato plant fewer stems and leaves to deal with, sending production to the tomatoes themselves.

But the suckers can be turned into new plants! Warning if you live in an area of the country with a short growing season. The season is too short for these propagated plants to produce before the weather turns cold. I’ve tried.

The “sucker” below was pulled off one of my store bought plants and I simply stuck it into the dirt in my garden bed. Each day I gave it plenty of water, and in the beginning it looked droopy. But they come back and begin to grow (plenty of water is the key here).

It doesn’t get any easier to have yourself a new, free tomato plant!

tomato propagating — Little tomato plant started from original, store bought plant

The other sucker plant (below) was brought into the house and stuck in a vase of water for about a week, or until it sprouted little white roots. Then I put it out in the garden.

As you can see, the water grown sucker looks better than the one simply stuck into the dirt. But you can do it either way. I look forward to seeing if these free plants do grow tomatoes eventually. It may become too hot before they get the chance.

propagating tomato plant — Propagating tomato

On a side note, this green pepper plant sprung up in the garden beneath my big pepper plant. I moved it to a better spot and it is growing nicely.

Be careful when weeding, and know what is what. I recognized the leaves of this little pepper and let it grow. It’s easy to simply pull out all the “weeds” and inadvertently remove a volunteer plant!

seed pepper volunteer — Bell / Green pepper plant started from a seed which dropped from the big plant

Update on Growing Eggplants That Survive Year Round

This year-round gardening with vegetables still blows my mind, but I have a few plants that have been in my garden for over a year now. Yes, they go dormant (and even look dead) when the cold weather moves into Florida, but they come back and produce even better the second time around.

Will they still be around next year? I have no idea. But this Spring season has been a great one for my bell pepper plant and now my eggplant is showing signs of producing as well.

In the Spring of 2017 I planted two eggplant plants. One was eaten up by a tomato worm and the other continued to grow and grow. It gave me no eggplants until well into the season. I finally got one. Only one. I tried the paintbrush pollination method but still nothing happened.

The plant got huge. I had to cut it back because it was taking over the garden bed. When the cold weather came, the entire plant turned brown and I thought that was it. I’m used to plants dying and having to be planted in Spring. When my vegetable plants don’t die, and instead begin to grow again, it amazes me. I didn’t even know vegetables could do that.

dead eggplant — Eggplant plant turned brown during Florida winter.

However, at the base of the plant some greenery remained. As the weather warmed, more leaves and stems appeared.

The plant is now large again, and getting lots of flowers, which contain spikes.

As of now, May 2018, the plant has been flowering like crazy but again the eggplants themselves were missing. So the other day I pulled lots of the flowers off (that is when I noticed how spiky they were!). I don’t know if that is what the plant needed, but suddenly I now see a small eggplant. There are signs of maybe a couple more ready to pop out as well.

Too many flowers? I don’t know if that was a coincidence, but if your eggplants are not producing, try removing some of the buds.

Thank you for sharing!

Thank you for sharing!

Thank you for sharing!

Thank you for sharing!

Thank you for sharing!

Thank you for sharing!