Overall, I've been exceptional happy with the early results of my garden's production. I've already eaten many pounds of produce, and flavored many meals with my herbs. Even so, I am a novice gardener, and I was bound to run into some problems. I'm hoping I can solve some of these with internet solutions, or others will work themselves out. I am a little worried about my tomato plants. While they all look very healthy on top, and have many blossoms and green tomatoes, there is some yellowing of leaves on lower limbs.
On the web, there are many potential explanations of this phenomenon. Over watering is one explanation. That seems unlikely. This happened during a dry spell, and while I was watering regularly, the soil did not look over watered. Hopefully, it's simply the result of healthy plants with too many branches to provide nutrients for. Apparently, it's not uncommon for lower level leaves on tomato plants to yellow and die, especially while producing tomatoes. For now, I'm just going to keep my eye on it, and hope for the best.
My cucumbers also have some yellowing and browning in the leaves.
Like the tomatoes, there are many potential explanations for the cause. It could possibly be a fungus. Because I'm trying to go organic, I'm going to let the plant try to fight it off on it's own. If I knew for sure it was a fungus, and what to use to combat it, I would just go ahead and use the fungicide, but since I'm in doubt, I'll continue to go the organic route.
Probably the most disappointing (so far (fingers crossed), if my tomato crop goes down that would be devastating) is the browning of my cauliflower heads. One of them was so bad that it had to go straight to the compost pile, and the other just had a couple of spots on it, so I cooked it up and it was good. This is disappointing, because I only had a couple of cauliflower plants.
I don't know what happened. It could have been the string of 90 degree days we had. The reason I didn't notice it earlier is because I had been blanching the cauliflower with the leaves. Blanching is the process of folding the leaves over the head, so it doesn't get any sun. This is supposed to improve the flavor and the texture. If I can find some more seeds I've going to plant some more cauliflower to harvest in the fall. I'm going to have to do a little more research before they start producing a head, so I can avoid this situation in the future.
2 comments:
I hope the garden starts to turn around. A gardnener is always going to run into some "problems." We're moving to South Miami this month, and I can't wait to check out the land-- I want to grow a few veggies and herbs, and have a small compost area. We're renting, so I need to see what I can do without changing the landscape much. Any suggestions for growing plants/veggies/herbs in Florida?
What you can garden depends on what you have to work with for space. You might even ask if you can make a little garden. In easy (although imperfect) way to quickly make a garden is to buy some bags of soil, and plant seeds directly in it http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/2008-06-01/No-Dig-Garden-Beds.aspx
If that's not an option at all, you could at least do some container herb gardening. Cilantro and basil love the Miami heat. Some good warm weather plants include tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melons, and eggplants.
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