Growing on in May!

It has been a while since I've made any updates. I've been busy with daily gardening and research. So for everything is growing well. The plants are doing wonderful, but as it is still early not much in development of vege's. I won't get to worried for now as I believe I started everything early enough to get the most development out of my plants before it's too hot to produce the fruit.

As for successes and failures. For the success, I've been using compost tea, and using the new compost I make compared to the store bought has been a huge difference. I'm trying to apply the tea on a weekly bases, but with the rain fall, it has been more about every week and a half. Also adding mulch is seeming to keep the soil went and keeping watering even and less frequent during the hotter days. For the most part the weather has been in low to mid 80's with occasionally hitting 90. This will soon change I am sure! :)

As for the failures, once again I failed to grow cucumbers. I have had about two small pickling cucumbers but that's about it. The leaves were also getting a spotty, mildew look. So after some research I add some baking soda and water. Unfortunately I added too much baking soda and also kept the leaves wet when the heat came. Needless to say, I totally burned my leaves to the point, I had to remove a good bit of them. They are starting to come back, but very slowly and not a lot of cucumbers as of yet.

I do see the starts of jalapenos and tomatoes in the making, and I'm hoping to have a descent growth for these. Next year I would like to add the mix that Ronnie from the Small Town Gardener, added to each plant during planting.

Growing Cucumbers

I DON"T KNOW HOW TO GROW CUCUMBERS. This is the second year that I have attempted to grow cucumbers. They tend to just be bitter and the skin is more pale green with white specks more so than a dark green color.

I can't even eat them because they just don't taste great.

I finally read some articles and even heard of other people with problems of having TOO MANY cucumbers, and found out what they suggested.... Shade.

Apparently even though every article you read says that cucumbers are a sun loving vegetable, around my part, the heat of the sun in just too much. Suggestion, grow them where they get morning and noon sun, then get shaded for the rest of the day... I will be trying this next summer, although I may try to grow in my regular, full sun bed for a fall garden.

So remember, these things need sun, but need a lot more shade that what I have been giving them.

How to transplant a plant.

On my struggle to grow squash this year, I thought I'd need to plant a few more plants than just one or two, because who knows when there will be flowers on them to be pollinated. More plants means more flowers.

So today was topping out at 100 degrees, so I would not recommend transplanting plants ad such hot temps, but around here that's all we go.

For squash the second planting is from August 1 - 15th, so doing it a bit early could help or hurt my situation. Only time will tell.

As for transplanting, the key is moisture. First completely soak the plant down in its container or in the surround are if its already planted. Once I found a few good spots for my squash I added some compost, bone meal, and Garden Tone fertilizer and mixed. Then move in your new plant and fill in with all the added material and dirt. Then once again completely saturate the ground. Continue saturating the planted area for a few days until its 'Shock' period is over.

I also have to move a full grown marigolds to make space for my squash. For a full grown plant transplant, it is recommend to cut up to 75% of the foliage off, including flowers.

Hopefully I can keep it wet enough to get through this heat.

When to plant for my summer garden?

For South Carolina, the last frost day is sometime around April 15th. I heard about a 'rule of thumb' around these parts, that 'Good Friday' is the best time to start your garden. Last year Good Friday was the first weekend of April, this year was at the end, April 22nd.

I feel that starting April 22nd, was not the best approach. Down here it just gets way too hot, too quick. I did notice that the weather was getting nice in March. I can't say for sure if the nights continued to dip into the frost temps or not, but if I got the chance to re-plant my garden, I would say March 15th would be the date to shoot for.

I would recommend to have my starts from seed planted a head of time, as I don't remember much choice for plants at the home depot / Lowes type stores. For these transplants, they started coming in pretty regularly at the beginning of April.