Category: Garden

Posts about gardening and related topics, such as canning and maybe other aspects of food preservation.

Post G22-060, two gardening fails

 

Here are a couple of cases of “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

Does a weak citric acid solution kill powdery mildew?

No.

See Post G22-039 for background.  This is based on a product offered on Amazon that said it would kill powdery mildew on plants.  That product was merely a very dilute solution of citric acid in water.  I was originally going to do a formal test, with a “control” patch, but the powdery mildew didn’t show up on time.

Instead, here it is firmly established on what’s left of my summer squash.  Near as I can tell, a dilute citric acid solution had no impact on well-established powdery mildew.  Here are two pictures, one before spraying citric acid, and one about a week after.  Any apparent difference is just an artifact of the lighting, compounded by the complete loss of some of the leaves.

Do bamboo leaves make a good weed killer?

No.  Or, at least, not good enough.  Or maybe it’s just very slow at it.  All of which is a pity, as bamboo surely kills lots of useful plants.

See Post G22-052 for background.  Bamboo is one of many allelopathic plants, that is, plants that produce poisons to keep competing plants in check.  I figured, why not give it a shot as weed killer.

Before:

Roughly seven weeks later, I pulled back half of the now-brown bamboo.  Unfortunately, there’s still plenty of live weeds growing through the driveway, like so:

 

 

Post G22-059, first summary of this year’s gardening season.

 

I tried a number of new plants and techniques in this year’s vegetable garden.  As we move into September, it’s time to start sorting out what worked and what didn’t.

Drip irrigation (Post G22-026, Post G22-027, Post G22-037).  A huge success.  For a bit over $100 in parts, and maybe two hours of labor, I can now water my entire garden either by hooking up to my rain barrels, or by using water from the spigot.  I can reconfigure it and add to it at will.  Key takeaway:  Use 1/2″ drip line.

Portable electric fence as a deer deterrent (Post G22-018).  A winner.  This is another project that took almost no time and a bit over $100 to set up.  Push in some cheap plastic posts, run the “wire” (more like metallized twine) through them, pound in a grounding rod, and hook up a small fence charger.  With deer deterrents, it’s hard to tell whether they worked or you just got lucky.  But I’ve had essentially zero deer damage since this went up.  I suspect the deer really don’t much like it.  (And, having tested it on myself, I concur.)  Key takeaway:  The technology has changed to make these easy, cheap, and flexible.  If you only need a small fence, you only need a small, cheap fence charger.

Sprawl technique for tomatoes (Post G22-035).  Thumbs down.  This year, I tried letting one bed of tomatoes grow un-staked and un-caged.  Just let them sprawl.  It’s by far the easiest way to grow them, but I’m not going to do that again.  They grow just fine.  I didn’t see (e.g.) any higher levels of leaf diseases and such.  This bed is now a mat of interwoven vines.  It’s hard to see the ripe tomatoes, and I’m losing more tomatoes to garden pests than I would if I had staked them.  Key takeaway:  The problem isn’t growing them, it’s getting a good harvest after allowing the vines to sprawl in the garden bed.

Cold-tolerant (early season) tomatoes (Post G22-025, Ripe Tomatoes in June).  A big winner.  This worked out quite well.  Not only did I have tomatoes by the end of June, those plants are still producing a decent yield of salad-sized tomatoes.  They slowed down in the heat of the summer, but it looks like they’re picking up steam as the cooler weather sets in.  I also learned a lot about what “days to maturity” really means.  Key takeaway:  Pick the right varieties, and you can have tomatoes in June without having a hothouse.

Growing large seedlings in paper lunch bags (Post G22-012, Post G22-017).  Works well.  This year, my butternut squash and pumpkin seedlings outgrew the paper cups I started them in before I was ready to transplant them to the garden. I moved them to doubled-up paper lunch bags filled with potting mix.  The idea was to give them room to grow and to avoid transplant shock by planting them bag and all.  Coincidence or not, I’m having my best butternut squash year ever.  Key takeway:  Double up the bags, and handle them gently when it’s time to plant.

More to come.

Post G22-055, Crock Pot crackpot.

 

Of squash and men.

As of this writing, I have the delightful problem of having almost too much summer squash.  Accordingly, this morning’s chore was to put together a squash-and-tomato casserole in the Crock Pot®.  Where it is simmering away right now.

Which got me thinking about my lifelong Crock Pot journey.  And all the very-nearly-useless things I’ve figured out about Crock Pots along the way.  Which I shall now pass along. Continue reading Post G22-055, Crock Pot crackpot.

Post G22-050: Parthenocarpic squash, is this a joke?

 

Edited 8/6/2022:  I may have been somewhat hasty in my original post.  I removed the insect barrier.  As expected, I am now getting full-sized summer squash.  But the largest of these, so far, has only a vestige of seeds.  For all intents and purposes, it’s seedless.  To me, this suggests that, at some point, these squash plants did indeed begin producing full-sized fruit despite a lack of pollination.  Perhaps they have to produce a handful of tiny ones first, before they give up on getting pollinated and begin producing full-sized parthenocarpic fruit.

The original post follows.

One tiny detail.  The seed packets for parthenocarpic squash failed to mention one tiny, little detail.

Looking on the bright side, you know how summer squash will go from small to gigantic before you know it?  One day they’re barely edible, three days later they’re barely liftable?

Or how you can be inundated with zucchini, to the point where you have to keep dreaming up new ways to cook it?  Where you start figuring out ways to hide it in food, so that your family won’t object.

The good news is, parthenocarpic squash have both of those problems licked.

They’re tiny. Unless a miracle happens, my parthenocarpic summer squash are going to weigh in somewhere around one ounce each.

If you’re interested, read on.  Or just check the photos below. Continue reading Post G22-050: Parthenocarpic squash, is this a joke?

Post G22-047: Heat and tomato ripening, just one more thing that I can’t test this year.

 

I’ve been harvesting ripe tomatoes more-or-less continuously over the past week.

Accordingly, it’s about time I admitted that my prediction of a period of no ripe tomatoes, due to excess heat, was wrong.  And it’s time to do the autopsy. Continue reading Post G22-047: Heat and tomato ripening, just one more thing that I can’t test this year.

Post G22-046, Vinegar and other organic herbicides

 

I’ve just been taught a first-hand lesson in why hardware stores sell 30% acetic acid (vinegar) as weed killer.   That’s because regular household-strength (5%) may or may not work.

Here you see a section of my driveway, sprayed yesterday with vinegar (4%).  It’s now a mix of dead and clearly undead weeds.  

Perhaps this explains the mixed reviews that vinegar gets, as an herbicide.  Above, it clearly left most of the grasses untouched, but did seem to kill some of the crabgrass. Continue reading Post G22-046, Vinegar and other organic herbicides

Post G22-045: Today’s driveway forecast: Mostly weeds, with occasional stretches of partly pavement.

 

This post is about killing a whole lot of weeds growing up through a long stretch of poorly-maintained asphalt driveway.  Options considered include:

  • Commercial weed killers (Round-Up, Spectracide).
  • Vinegar
  • Salt
  • Mechanical (weed whacker)
  • Heat.
    • Propane weed flamer
    • Electric heat gun
    • Boiling water
    • Steam
    • Solar, up to and including solar oven

This post is just about gathering the facts, trying to make my mind up.  I haven’t really tested any of these yet.

Arguably the biggest revelation (to me) is that several of the alternatives (e.g., vinegar, heat) are really no different from using a weed whacker.  It took me a while to figure that out, but all they do is take the tops off the weeds, leaving the live roots intact.  That’s just a roundabout way of doing what a weed wacker does directly.  In which case, it’s hard to argue in favor of some D-I-Y approach, when there’s a tool actually designed for the job.

After a false start with vinegar, I’ve decided to go with heat.  Primarily a solar approach, which seems to fit my situation well.  It’s an approach that isn’t typically used so there isn’t a lot of information out there on how well it works.  It’s plausible that I can amp it up enough to kill the roots.  Plus, I already have the materials on hand to try it.

The idea is not just to get the driveway surface hot enough to kill the top of the weed (and have it re-sprout), but to bake the driveway so hard that it kills the entire weed, root and all.  We’ll see if I can achieve that, or whether that’s just so much wishful thinking. Continue reading Post G22-045: Today’s driveway forecast: Mostly weeds, with occasional stretches of partly pavement.