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c355n4 posted:Talking about cucumbers, I'm at wits end with these cucumber beetles. They've killed two of my cucumber plants and a kabocha pumpkin plant. I've tried a a sticky trap which caught a bunch and a bunch of other bugs. What other options do I have? It is probably just too late for this year to salvage. Cucumber beetles are monstrous piles of poo poo and I hate them and I desperately wish I had any "good" advice. I lost my entire crop to bacterial wilt from them a few years ago and I've been struggling with them every single year, including this one. I have the problem moderately under control now (probably), but not before losing a bunch of cucumber plants. There's not a ton I can offer, but I'll try to tell you where I've had the most success. Hand-picking kind of works, but you need to really stick with it and you're probably going to lose plants. You need to be looking for the larva, too. They look like tiny spiky orange caterpillars and, at least in my experience, they tend to show up on my pumpkin stems and leaves. if you notice any pumpkin leaves with obvious damage, check the stem and bottom of the leaf very closely for cucumber beetle larva. I've had zero luck with insecticidal soaps. They seem to do basically nothing to them unless they're dying much later and out of sight. Neem oil is so-so if I can see them and douse them, but I might as well just handpick the fuckers in that case. Dusting with diatomaceous earth seems to be moderately effective, but you have to keep at it and keep a fresh coating on the leaves. I would say DE has probably been the most consistently effective and least harmful method I've tried. That said, everyone around here has problems with them and the only really successful people I know have had to use hard pesticides like carbaryl-based stuff (ie, Sevin dust). I don't like using that poo poo at all but these fuckers are by far the closest I've come. The truth is that if they're in your garden and they're already spreading diseases, then there's a good chance none of your plants will make it if you can't completely shut them down very quickly.
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Jul 27, 2021 02:09
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Cucumber beetles took out 9 of my 10 cucumber plants this year, plus however many replacements I planted. Last year a neem oil/eight blend seemed to stop them but this year their bloodlust knew no bounds
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Jul 27, 2021 02:23
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Inter season garden cleaning was a huge part of me figuring out cucumber beetles in my last garden. They will absolutely overwinter in even tiny amounts of last season's crop. Rotation, sanitation, and where possible grading the soil after growing can make a huge difference.
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Jul 27, 2021 02:47
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 Dick butt radish Some of my radishes have flowered, is there any reason I shouldn't eat them anyway? Every loving click bait website is telling me I can eat the pods and foliage, but no information on flowered. I am guessing they are going to be bitter and a bit chewy, but I can work with that.
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Jul 27, 2021 13:15
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CancerCakes posted:
No idea on flowers, but I can attest that the pods are absolutely delicious and are  in a salad. Foliage is like a lot of similar leafy garden greens (think chard/collard/mustard greens), but get spiky/spiny so you should cook it well first.
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Jul 28, 2021 00:39
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Anyone have any good habanero recipes? Getting ready to make some habanero mango sauce, but the recipe only calls for 8 peppers and I have two plants with probably ~3 dozen fruits in various stages of ripening right now. Also eyeing these green ghost peppers because I don't know wtf I will do with them besides scare my nephew.
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Jul 28, 2021 01:43
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Cap them and stuff them with sausage and cheese and bake. Mini-poppers. Or, freeze them to make salsa again after season.
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Jul 28, 2021 02:21
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Whenever I get more habs than I'm using fresh I dry 'em and then make hab powder, which I usually end up using for brisket rub.
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Jul 28, 2021 02:27
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SubG posted:Whenever I get more habs than I'm using fresh I dry 'em and then make hab powder, which I usually end up using for brisket rub. You can also decant them into an oil. I had a bush with 20 nice ones on it that was frozen one night. Dried them all out the next day in the oven until crispy then crunched them up into bits and heated them in oil for a while. It ended up bright orange, very spicy, with little extra flavor. Really nice for adding some heat to something quickly without hot sauce flavor or anything like that.
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Jul 28, 2021 02:52
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i am harry posted:You can also decant them into an oil. I had a bush with 20 nice ones on it that was frozen one night. Dried them all out the next day in the oven until crispy then crunched them up into bits and heated them in oil for a while. My go-to when I want a hot sauce like thing out of habs is to dice, brine, and then ferment them. The resulting sauce definitely ends up having a lot of habanero flavour, but it goes well with the fizzy funk of lactofermentation so most of the time I want the flavour.
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Jul 28, 2021 03:14
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I made candied habaneros once and tear gassed myself in the process so if you do that be safer than I was.
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Jul 28, 2021 03:32
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CancerCakes posted:
You can eat 'em, they'll just be kinda woody. They're okay in thin slices for cronch in tacos but I wouldn't really recommend them in a salad.
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Jul 28, 2021 03:51
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We pickle a lot of hot peppers with whatever veggie we have around, giardiniera basically. Its great on sandwiches, eggs, pasta.
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Jul 28, 2021 14:08
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Paradoxish posted:Cucumber beetles are monstrous piles of poo poo and I hate them and I desperately wish I had any "good" advice. I lost my entire crop to bacterial wilt from them a few years ago and I've been struggling with them every single year, including this one. I have the problem moderately under control now (probably), but not before losing a bunch of cucumber plants.  Yea, I'm not willing to go to hard pesticides. Such is the way of the garden. At least my tomatoes and long beans are doing well.
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Jul 28, 2021 14:12
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You can roast radishes like potatoes too. Toss with oil, salt, pepper and into a hot oven. They become like little spicy potatoes and soften up a bit. Might be an option for less than optimal radishes you just want to use up
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Jul 28, 2021 14:18
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c355n4 posted:
Yeah I don't blame you. I almost got angry enough this year to just dust everything, but hand-picking and DE got the situation under control enough that my second cucumber crop is doing okay. mischief is right that this is really a multi-season battle and clean-up between seasons is a big part of it. Keeping things tidy is probably the only reason I was able to control the situation at all this year, but cucumber beetles can fly an okay distance so it's not necessarily something that's entirely within your control. Next year I may do a very, very early planting of sacrificial cukes away from my main garden and go hard with hand picking, DE, and neem oil. Maybe I can stop them before I'm ready to plant my main harvest.
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Jul 28, 2021 15:41
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My mother has had good luck fighting the beetles with traps like this one https://vegcropshotline.org/article/diy-traps-for-striped-cucumber-beetle-management/ She's had Japanese beetle issues, and this has kept them off her plants this year mostly. There's another version out there that puts Sevin in the traps, but most of them seem to only use insecticidal soapy water in the traps. Yellow is a must and the lures are a must, but you can make them out of whatever plastic bottle laying around.
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Jul 28, 2021 17:13
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We bought a house with a largish garden plot (~4000 sqft). It's completely overgrown with weeds that are 3-4 feet high at this point. Also some saplings here and there. Should I buy a good trimmer or upgrade to a brushcutter? It's a 2.5 acre forested property so I could see needing a brushcutter at some point, but those projects are all a ways off. The local shop has these in stock: Trimmer: https://www.husqvarna.com/us/string-trimmers/129l/ Brushcutter: https://www.husqvarna.com/ca-en/products/brushcutters/129r/967193301/ e. Its similar specs but the brushcutter in-store comes with a blade attached already. The trimmer + blade attachments puts me about $30.00 shy of the brushcutter price, but then I don't get the bullhorn handle. e2. A pic I had on my phone. It stretches on to the right of the frame. 
just another fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Jul 28, 2021 |
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Jul 28, 2021 17:37
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just another posted:We bought a house with a largish garden plot (~4000 sqft). It's completely overgrown with weeds that are 3-4 feet high at this point. Also some saplings here and there. I think a string trimmer with the thickest line will handle it except the saplings. I would very highly recommend the Stihl Kombisystem if it's available. It may be a bit more expensive but it works really well and it's great to have just 1 engine to maintain and it has every attachment you could ever want. For a 4000 sq ft. garden you are well into 'small tractor' territory though.
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Jul 28, 2021 17:43
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I think a string trimmer with the thickest line will handle it except the saplings. I would very highly recommend the Stihl Kombisystem if it's available. It may be a bit more expensive but it works really well and it's great to have just 1 engine to maintain and it has every attachment you could ever want. I'll look into it. I think there's a Stihl dealer in town or one town over. I'd love a small tractor but I'm trying to save money where I can, lots of maintenance was neglected in the previous few years as the former owners were getting older. The garden also has buried wires and possibly buried irrigation pipes so I don't want to go in and start tearing it up too much until I have a better sense of where everything is.
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Jul 28, 2021 17:50
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Thumposaurus posted:You can roast radishes like potatoes too. Yep that's what we did in the end and they were really good roasted with garlic, oil and salt. I'll get another planting of radish in as they should finish before our first frost. Fingers crossed for the toms, we have had zero so far, but plenty of green ones are ready to ripen up.
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Jul 29, 2021 09:35
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My go to for radishes, woody or not, is fermenting. They are delicious even in a plain salt brine, and you can experiment with herbs as you like.just another posted:We bought a house with a largish garden plot (~4000 sqft). It's completely overgrown with weeds that are 3-4 feet high at this point. Also some saplings here and there. A brush cutter of some sort will be good for maintenance but you might see if there are any goat weeding services in your area. They usually bring an electric fence and contain the goats in an area for a time and voila, no more weeds and brush.
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Jul 29, 2021 15:24
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Better than goat service, just buy your own goat. Once it’s done clearing the area sell goat for profit. Your first win with the new garden!
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Jul 29, 2021 16:49
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I do have an old garden shed that would make a very fancy goat barn...
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Jul 29, 2021 17:10
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just another posted:I do have an old garden shed that would make a very fancy goat barn... Where I grew up we got a small herd of goats, about 10, for the summer. Put them in an overgrowth spot fenced in and just watered and started feeding them some corn when they ran out of growth to eat. Sold at the end of fall for a profit. Where you live and buy a goat may be a different experience than what I experienced.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:15
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Does anyone have recommendations for a wifi thermometer + hygrometer for monitoring ? Need to monitor a small greenhouse from afar, and I'd like historical data so I can see what highs/lows were via my phone or whatever.
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Jul 29, 2021 18:11
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Sylink posted:Does anyone have recommendations for a wifi thermometer + hygrometer for monitoring ? Need to monitor a small greenhouse from afar, and I'd like historical data so I can see what highs/lows were via my phone or whatever. Costco often sells Lacrosse weather kits for around $50 or so. The one my wife got me for xmas has all that wifi/app monitoring and included a thermometer/hygrometer/anemometer. It's also really easy to buy and hook up more sensors. I can see data from the past day or the past seven days. You can even set alarms and what not. But how far is far? You might need a signal repeater to ensure that connection is stable. Solkanar512 fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 18:21
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Joburg posted:you might see if there are any goat weeding services in your area. They usually bring an electric fence and contain the goats in an area for a time and voila, no more weeds and brush. A neighbor did this once, but the company used cheap plastic fencing. The goats ate the fencing. Goats everywhere for months; RIP everyone's vegetable gardens.
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Jul 29, 2021 18:25
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Solkanar512 posted:Costco often sells Lacrosse weather kits for around $50 or so. The one my wife got me for xmas has all that wifi/app monitoring and included a thermometer/hygrometer/anemometer. It's also really easy to buy and hook up more sensors. I can see data from the past day or the past seven days. You can even set alarms and what not. Maybe 100 ft outside the house from the nearest wifi point. My phone does ok out there on wifi.
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Jul 29, 2021 18:31
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CancerCakes posted:
You can totally eat the flowers on any cruciferous plant. They're freaking delicious, too; sort of like nasturtiums. And you guys are giving me flashbacks with the vine borer stories. They've killed any sort of cuke/zucchini/pumpkin I've tried to grow for the last two years. I have some cucumbers growing now and so far so good. I've pickled radish and mustard green pods and they're excellent. I always let some of my greens go to seed - fresh mustard seeds are awesome.
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Jul 29, 2021 21:41
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I have some fennel(herb) that survived winter and started flowering so I'm just letting it do its thing I'm gonna have so much seed the plant is like 6 ft tall at this point.
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Jul 29, 2021 22:09
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Sylink posted:Maybe 100 ft outside the house from the nearest wifi point. My phone does ok out there on wifi. If your phone can make it, I'd give it a shot.
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Jul 29, 2021 22:18
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I have a tomato plant that's about 6' tall that I want to prune but it has some flowers up near the top. should I just accept their loss or keep that bit of the plant going for fruits? I'm worried that when fruits start growing it'll break the plant apart. it's in a trellis cage sorta thing I made out of wire cloth that's about 75% of the height of the plant. plant is a pink brandywine, 5 gal fabric pot, 25% vermiculite 75% manure/compost plus maybe .5 cup/gal of bonemeal
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Jul 29, 2021 23:28
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I think a string trimmer with the thickest line will handle it except the saplings. I would very highly recommend the Stihl Kombisystem if it's available. It may be a bit more expensive but it works really well and it's great to have just 1 engine to maintain and it has every attachment you could ever want. I'm going to echo this, I don't see anything there that a heavy string trimmer and a cheap machete or billhook can't deal with. My Stihl brushcutter has been great, but since we bought the Makita battery string trimmer it doesn't get out much. Once or twice a year to cut back the blackberry and salmonberry canes on the paths and that's it. Could probably do that easily enough with a billhook but  The Kombisystem wasn't available when we bought ours but I'd seriously consider it now just for the pole saw. Renting one is starting to get expensive. I'd suggest a garden tractor too, but good luck finding one after the pandemic flight to rural areas. Another approach would be to re-develop the garden into no dig beds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LH6-w57Slw I ended up doing this and now my 48" rototiller doesn't get out of the equipment shed much either. DO NOT under any circumstances allow goats on your property. No matter how good your fencing is the clever little bastards will figure out how to escape at least once a year and that will set your fruit trees and perennials back for another fruitless year. What they don't eat they stomp flatter than piss on a plate. The only things more destructive are swine which dig up and eat any roots missed during the surface destruction. There is a reason the devil dances on goat hooves.
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Jul 30, 2021 00:07
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just another posted:We bought a house with a largish garden plot (~4000 sqft). It's completely overgrown with weeds that are 3-4 feet high at this point. Also some saplings here and there. I got a walk-behind string mower like this in the spring: https://www.homehardware.ca/en/150-cc-22-walk-behind-gas-string-mower/p/5124034 It's been excellent for clearing out big open relatively flat areas like you seem to have. It can't handle big saplings of more than about 3/8 or 1/2 inch. Or I should say it possibly can but you'll break the strings after more than a few. I broke my first set of strings using it to chop down some dogwoods in the spring. Then later tried it out on some tall Japanese Knotweed and busted another set of string. But for regular tall weeds and such it works awesome. I bought a big spool of string so I should be set for pretty much a lifetime given how long that big chunky string seems to last so far though.
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Jul 30, 2021 00:37
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Hexigrammus posted:
If the goats are fat enough they won’t even try. 
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Jul 30, 2021 02:04
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Have a container garden and learned what early blight is this year with my poor tomatoes, any advice on how to deal with blight in the garden? Is the soil of the blighted containers hosed? Is the whole garden hosed for tomatoes? Do I need to burn literally everything?
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Jul 30, 2021 02:57
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just another posted:We bought a house with a largish garden plot (~4000 sqft). It's completely overgrown with weeds that are 3-4 feet high at this point. Also some saplings here and there. I was at work when I was posting about the goats today. I didn't get to appreciate how absolutely envious I am of your 2.5 acre homestead. With that much land you could definitely get a goat for a season to help clean it up. Instead of fences just get a really long leash for the goat and attach to a post that you move around the land. I go for walks about the city I live in and yesterday found a garden that made me darn envious. Today I went for another walk and found another garden that made me mad envious. Lots of garden envy going on right now. My garden is going okay, but obviously not as good as it could be with all this envy going on. My grapes are getting eaten by something, my peppers aren't turning colors, my tomatoes are getting attacked by squirrels, and rabbits beat up my blueberry bushes. Squirrels and rabbits and probably raccoons are the bane of my existence.
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Jul 30, 2021 03:31
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rojay posted:And you guys are giving me flashbacks with the vine borer stories. They've killed any sort of cuke/zucchini/pumpkin I've tried to grow for the last two years. I have some cucumbers growing now and so far so good. Vine borers aren't too bad if you take a defensive approach. Grow your zucchinis vertically if you can and trim off all the lower leaves, then check the stem for eggs. Keep the whole bottom part of the stem doused in diatomaceous earth and reapply it after it rains. Worst case scenario, you can dig them out of the stem and the plant will recover. Zucchinis are stupid resilient. One of the plants I have growing vertically snapped in half but only broke about halfway through the stem. I just tied it back up and it's still producing 5-6 big zucchini per week above the point where it broke. I don't even get how that works.
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Jul 30, 2021 04:40
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Earth posted:I was at work when I was posting about the goats today. I didn't get to appreciate how absolutely envious I am of your 2.5 acre homestead. With that much land you could definitely get a goat for a season to help clean it up. Instead of fences just get a really long leash for the goat and attach to a post that you move around the land. 
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Jul 30, 2021 05:04
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