Old timer tricks to help your veggies flourish!

[Nik4me]

Originally Posted by TinaMcG

See, it's like seeing ants on your plants that have chewed leaves. You blame the ants. Well, guess what? It isn't the ants. Ants don't chew your plants. They just happen to be noshing on the honeydew left by the aphids that did the damage to your plants. But you blame the ants because that's what you see, but you don't opewn your eyes to see the whole picture of what is going on.

Science, people. Not voodoo. If a plant with matches underneath it yields more than a plant with no matches underneath it, that tells you nothing.

Good example, Tina, but after graduating from your Master Gardener course you know now that aphids don’t chew leaves- they suck the juice out of plants. There is a third party to your story besides ants and aphids..
Whodunnit?

[Nik4me]

Originally Posted by Ghengis

speaking of nonsense, I always found the admonishment of watering in the evening way over the top. Considering that where I live, it often rains in the middle of the night! Does not seem to lead to fungi and mold despite my failure to dry all my plants off the next morning.

This could be because the strong night rain and/ or an early morning watering washes fungal spores off the surface of leaves of plants.
Different fungal spores need different “ moist” time period to develop and cause the disease: some only need 4-6 hours, a lot of them need 6-8 hours or longer.
So if night rain washes off the dew and spores off the leaves and than a sun or wind dries out leaves- the existing spore can not develop, so the countdown for next spore starts again
So your night rains actually may help stop fungal diseases sometimes

[phonelady61]

Banana peels in the rose garden sure bring out beautiful roses . My grand swore by them and so do I . all my neighbors roses are no where near as healthy and pretty as mine .

[nuts2uiam]

A friend swears by watering his tomato plants with a mixture of 1/2 low fat milk and 1/2 water does the trick for fabulous plants that produce huge amounts of fruit. I often wondered what would happen if you used whole milk or better yet buttermilk.