Hi this is my first post. we currently bought a house at the beginning of last month. my dd and I dug out a square for our veggie garden we added a few bags of mirical organic veg. soil. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v31/kmb34me/Picture627.jpg mid may we started adding stuff... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v31/kmb34me/Picture689.jpg some beans a few romain and some tomato plants. last week of may this is what it looked like http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v31/kmb34me/Picture702.jpg well things have just gotten SO LARGE and are growing like crazy..... this was yesterday http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v31/kmb34me/Picture705.jpg this is this morning http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v31/kmb34me/Picture707.jpg we have gotten so much rain. I live in Mass and we got about 2ft at the beg. of May (nothing was in the ground when we got it) and it still has been raining like mad. I do use mirical grow garden food once a week (is that enough) and water everyday. im not having problems with the garden (except I have to cut the grass back its growing over the edging) its just everything got bigger than I expected. any tips on how to handle this, I do have a small spot in the middle that I put carrot seeds down in but dont seem to be coming up, if I try to transplant something will it die? in all honesty my 3 yr old dd and I did this, and I didnt think much would grow, ive never gardened before except in containers on the porch and nothing ever amounted from it. One more question, I have some various flower plants around the yard, when the flower heads die and I go to snip them off some have a fuzzy white substance on them, were talking different plants here what could it be?
Well, you sure have growth. Now that the garden bug has bitten you, the first thing you will be doing is enlarging the bed. Those little plants grow into large monsters. Good produce is made by not crowding. With a little experience, which comes year after year, you will eventually get to know just how close the rows can be, and also plant spacing. Good healthy plants cannot be crowded too much. Before pruning and or cutting bushes it is good practice to do a google and read a bit about the plant. Sometimes this will save a lot of headaches. It might be helpful if you had annotated the plants that are growing, then responders could be more specific. All in all, your first effort is most promising. Durgan.
Hi KMB, Your garden looks wonderful for a first try!! You only mention 3 veggies and it doesn't appear that any can be transplanted. You might want to consider harvesting every other of the romain lettuce to make room for some to get larger. I don't know if you saved the seed packets (if indeed you grew them from seed) or plant tags, but your beans should grow to about 2' wide. I'm guessing that your beans are bush beans. The tomatoes look way too close and you may need to dig up every other one and transplant them. If you know which variety they are you can google them and see how large they get. Here's some sites about growing veggies and when to harvest that you should find helpful. http://www.explore.cornell.edu/scene.cfm?scene=home gardening&stop=HG - Find a Vegetable http://www.savvygardener.com/Features/harvesting_vegetables.html http://pubs.caes.uga.edu/caespubs/pubcd/L291-w.htm You asked about insect repellents. I prefer companion planting. Some plants will repel bad bugs and other plants will attract good bugs. Keep in mind that you will need some insects to pollinate some of your veggies. I've found that planting certain plants together and avoiding other combinations is helpful. This should be helpful to you. http://www.moonsweb.com/companions.shtml http://www.eap.mcgill.ca/Publications/EAP55.htm The "fuzzy white substance" you mention is either mealy bugs or powdery mildew. I suspect it's mealy bugs. Is this what you see? http://www.pdis.org/ImageLibrary/ImageDisplayTest.aspx?BasicCriteria=mealy bug http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/entomology/ornamentals/mbugswp.html If so, you can use insecticidal soap to get rid of them. You will have to be persistant and keep after them. Newt
