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Thank you Mac, I had my share of horn worms and I am good at finding them now, search for their droppings and trace up words and you will find the worm.
First year with zucchini and I am learning the hard way, lost couple plants now and waiting for the other two to die. Next year I will sure watch out for all these signs early.
I keep thinking on bug killer toxins, but so far my answer is NO. I wonder stuff like a treatment after harvest in Fall, or tilling that in after harvest, as winter is snow around 4 feet+ and Spring rains come after, but my answer has always been no.
I try to plant for loss, but bug loss is hard to deal with. I really work almost every day at killing the eggs, larva and breeding adults, unless it rains as it is doing of the instant.
It is too cold to find bugs, and they won't lay eggs then. The sun will be out again in the morning and I will be there coffee in one hand and at hunting eggs and bugs.
Over the past 5 years in this spot there is far less Japanese beetles. My wife and i would hunt the field at the wood line and kill every Japanese beetle we coud find, and we used to get daily counts in around 6,000. It's nothing like that any more.
Right now I am hoping the few growing weeks left will produce a fitting harvest. So far all we have is apx 30 pounds of green and yellow beans in a frozen combined.
I prefer to eat what i grow for the fact I know where it came from and it saves so-called dollars for metalic things. That can be like the new 2 stoke cultivator I just bought, to anything. That is one handy little tool, much like a power how. Last year i traded a .22 single shot rifle for a not running Pony Tiller. That worked out well as it took a 78 cent gasket and some know how of mine to get fixed. Once it ran I changed all the oils and cleaned the air filter. It starts on the first pull every time too.
Some day I want a auto correct speeling checker keyboard too!
I agree with the no toxics being the best way, but I also want to eat something from the garden and a few of the creatures will just take over too fast if not contolled. I don't care about the Japanese beatles that much, they seem to eat leaves more than the fruit. It is the tomato and squash bugs that I do stray, especially the tomato bugs. I will spray usually once or twice a season for all of 2 minutes, but I do it and I will continue to do it. As for treating the ground after the season, I don't think that will do any good. The pesty bugs start to produce as the weather warms up. I don't think if the ground is treated it will make much difference, plus, I don't want to go quite that far.
I am going to use grass killer under the cardboard for next season. We sill treat the garden area with grass killer in the fall. We already have our cardboard all ready to go. We will put it down and put fresh top soil over the cardboard. I don't think that will create any toxics in our food.
nmnita, Man has a funny way of finding toxins that work 'on bugs', and then years later we find the same chems in other things like falcons, and the chems end up almost ending falcons. There is just too much man doesnt know to suit me. It's just me, as I don't decide on what law, chems, and such IS for other people.
Grass? like inbetween rows? This year I bought a 12 inch wide gasoline powered cultivator, and for the first time can sweed the between rows and some of the plants with this machine. In the past it was all hand weeding and drudgery.
But I have always made a harvest of the weeds here, since the top soil what little there was had been removed sometime before 1930. For us to have any garden I had to make the soil to grow things in from scratch by way of composting anything I could get my hands on.
I compost still. Things I compost are waste lawn cuttings, and I will take a pick up to get any, fall leaves, cardboard boxes, news paper, and assorted other paper not glossey, of course garbage waste, no bones no meat. I use the card board boxes to create air space.
It just so happens I have full time use of a skid steer Bob Cat, and while I don't own it, the use for turning compost is a blessing. For a few years I had access to spent grains from Tuckermans Brewery. They changed their system to get rid of these to my loss, but that helped me out a lot never the less, as I would go there one a week for a while and drag home (3) 55 gallon drums of spent grains. I am looking into matching their new system, which will take the loan of a 1 ton dump truck, but I have access to one 24/7 as well.
I just order the square foot gardening book from the library "I am too cheap to buy it". I had it in the spring and it gave me some good ideas to start and now I wanted to see it again for ideas to start my fall season. I want to build the infrastructure to be able to have a good harvest my next seasons. Saying that what should I add to the soil to get it to be at it's best shape, would compost be enough or I need to add something else?
I don't know. I just make my soil from compost and stuff grows. My wife adds a very little 10-5-10 at the start of the season and again are fruits bearing times. She loves to garden, but I still get to do almost all the bull labor. I just am a little old fashioned.
Any times I till with the pony tiller apx 24" a heavy machine, sand from below the compost gets mixed in, and so do rocks, but each year the rocks get smaller. The first rocking came up with the rocks to build my lenai, but nothing like that comes up often anymore.
Last year for on the lawn 2 tons of loam were bought, and after seeing how the rains effected that, I'ld say the soil I make composting is better. That store bought stuff looked really good at first and is plenty good for a lawn. My stuff has that garden soil smell too.
I believe all you need is a soil that can contain air spaces, and hold a certain amount of moisture at the same times. People around with little soil, which is basic in NH since the glaciers stripped much top soil as well, they use sand and clay mixes with any organics they can get, and use store bought fertilizers.
I also believe you can use too much fertilizers and make it too easy for plants to grow. If that happens you will get a lot of stocks and a lot of leaves and not much flowers or fruits. The plant will be overly comfortable and just get fat and lazy. I could be wrong, as this is just an opinion I have.
Another is the late start I got in NH has me bugged. I felt a need to delay normal planting times due to wet and cold. So I am trying to play catch up and nothin's happening.
I think in one more week we will have far more than just 2 kinds of beans and lettuce. I hope so.
Thanks Mac.. we have clay soil here in Charlotte and it's amazing that things grow. I started my garden this year so the soil need a lot of work. I know I will have a good workout this fall when I work on my garden beds.
Thanks Mac.. we have clay soil here in Charlotte and it's amazing that things grow. I started my garden this year so the soil need a lot of work. I know I will have a good workout this fall when I work on my garden beds.
Compost anything you can get yer hands on. I appear to be addicted to composting. It isn't work anymore
Over the years I've just gotten used to Zucchini having a relatively short life span. It produces a whole lot of fruit, then dies young, three months is about all I get.
I did soem researchonline after my post and thought I found a possible cause for it dying. I pulled it out( for a big plant it had kind of a shallow root system) and right at the base I found some sawdust looking holes. Inside were 4 grubs, squash borers. Thats what killed it. Luckily our green zucchini on the other side of the garden is okay and we just had a zucchini from it for dinner.I'm going to spray its stem with Sevin just to eb safe. I replanted the Zucchini stem as best I could and watered it down so maybe it might retake root. I have some root tone cutting hormone which I might try putting on it.
The grubs got tossed by the bird feeder so hopefully the birds enjoyed the sanck.
I didn't pull up my plants by the root - I just slit open the stem, removed the grubs, and then covered the damaged stem area with buckets of good soil, where it will form new roots. This took almost 3 hours, because I have a lot of plants - dark green zucchini, striped grey, yellow straight neck, and yellow crook neck. So far, it looks promising - the plants were a wilted drooping mess but now have formed lots of new small green leaves that look healthy. My zucchini and yellow straight neck squash were both infected. The grey zucchini and yellow crook necks are okay, so far, but I'm keeping a close eye on them.
My neighbor up the road had beautiful zucchini plants just a day ago, but now they are all flat and dead.
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