Still Growth Problems – Aminopyralid Still Around?

After a total disaster this spring with planting in this bed, I decided to grow a quick crop of bush beans before I plant broccoli and cabbage seedlings in this bed – which will be covered with hoops & plastic this winter.  I figured that the added nitrogen would be good for the soil and I was looking forward to yellow wax beans.  Didn’t work out that way.

Well, one end of the bed – actually about 2/3 of the bed, the beans did not do well.  At this end, they were the most stunted, a bit less stunted in the middle of the 16 foot bed, and awesome (normal) at the other end of the bed.  Use the clay pot to show scale.  These beans are sorry looking and many of them are turning yellow and dying before any buds appear.  Others have buds, but won’t be able to produce many – if  any – bean pods.  So scrawny – so sad.  What a waste of good seed – Dow cost me more money and won’t take responsibility.  ( Now, all my reply emails to their rep go unanswered.  They just don’t care.  Dow Agriscience wants your $$$$$$$$ and screw the home gardener!)  Unfortunately, most of my bean seeds went into this end of the garden.

This bean plant is what they should look like.  See those giant (normal sized) leaves?   And all those buds?  For some reason this end of this 16′ x 4′ raised bed is normal.  Something in the other end is causing stunted beans.  I fear it is still Dow’s widespread poison.  Beans are a test crop to see if that poison is in your compost.  Well, thanks Dow, you, like Monsanto, like to do evil things to gardens and seeds and heirloom crops.  Maybe by next spring your poison will be degraded enough that I can grow something in my garden.

(The piece of rebar below the clay pot is what I put my pvc conduit hoops onto to secure them so I can put plastic over the hoops – making my winter hoop garden beds.  I actually use 10′ sections of gray plastic electrical conduit of 1/2″ diameter, I think.  One end is enlarged, both ends fit well over 3/8″ rebar.  1/2″ rebar is too thick.  I bend the 10′ section over the 4′ wide bed.  It works out perfectly, leaving about 3′ internal height for the inside top center of the bed.  I bought 16′ sections of rebar and had my sons cut them into 2′ sections – pounding 12″ into the ground and leaving the other 12″ above ground to slip the conduit over).

Yeah – this is what a bush bean should look like.  Look at all those blooms – I have already harvested a few yellow wax beans.  I hope I can get enough for a decent serving.  This may be difficult though, since most of my beans were planted in the poor section of the garden.

I finally purchased a gallon jug of Garrett Juice, a foliar feed.  I sprayed all of these plants with it, adding some neem oil in it to help as insecticide.  I think it has helped – but couldn’t counter the effects of Dow’s poison on the smaller beans.  I could have mixed some up myself, but I can’t be confident in the animal manure compost component of the ingredients, so I purchased a jug.

Late Season Bean Planting

After trying to get over the failure of my spring garden, probably due to Dow Agriscience’s poison aminopyralid, I have decided to replant some quick growers for the second half of our growing season here in Texas.  This bed is scheduled to have broccoli, cabbage and greens this fall.  However, since these crops won’t be planted for at least 6 to 8 weeks, I am going to try to get a quick crop of beans.

So far, the beans look OK.  I think that maybe most of the poison aminopyralid may have degraded in this bed.

This half of the bed is planted with yellow wax beans. I intend to pick them for fresh yellow beans and have no intention of saving seeds. This means that this crop should be done in 60 days.  There is basil planted all thru this bed – I planted it after my squash mysteriously started to dye – probably thanks to Dow’s poison aminopyralid that is now loose and ruining compost piles all over the western world.  One okra plant survived – barely holding on for the past few months, but now seems to have taken off – it is in the lower left side, circled in red. In the front right corner is a lone surviving pepper plant.  The peppers seem to be doing better – again I suspect that maybe Dow’s poison aminopyralid may be degrading.  The tomato next to the okra never recovered and really needs to be pulled.

This end of the garden – below – was initially planted with left over Seed Savers Painted Pony beans from a 2009 batch. The seeds were refrigerated, but I guess they were just too old – only 2 seeds sprouted. So, a week later I replanted the area with a few Bolita Bush bean seeds that I had left from Baker Creek, dated 2010. They sprouted and now they look like they are actually pole beans! As such, I had to put some tomato cages among them so that they have something to climb onto.  I had intended to only grow bush beans for 2 reasons: to improve the nitrogen in the bed and for something quick – bush beans mature quicker than pole beans. Well, this is a surprise an I hope that they will be done and producing by the time I have to yank them out to plant my broccoli seedlings in. I didn’t have enough seeds to cover this whole half of the bed, so I’ll just leave that bare spot unplanted for now.  I had planed to save some of these Bolita seeds – if the plants can mature quickly enough.

I still don’t have my greenhouse moved over to our new property and have had a very difficult time trying to get seeds to sprout.  These are my cabbages and broccoli seedlings.  The chinese cabbage seedlings were rained on and over half of them were lost.  I have reseeded these trays. I need several hundred chinese cabbage seedlings and at least 6 dozen cabbage transplants and at least that many broccoli seedlings.  I plan to grow the broccoli under my winter hooped garden beds and stick the cabbages all over – under the hoops and outside.  It can take the freeze.

I have trouble knowing when to start the cabbages and broccoli because it is so hot here for so long and quickly gets cool.  It is almost too hot to get the seedlings started and then gets too cool to get them growing good in the garden.  I can’t even start the spinach until the soil cools to 75 degrees and at the same time I plant my lettuce.  I plan to direct seed the carrots, chard, beets and kale pretty soon.  The turnips are the last thing to get planted.  The winters seem to be getting colder and get here sooner.  I’m having trouble timing plantings.

Too Much Rain – Peppers Water-Logged

We have had a very unusual week of rain and my peppers don’t look too happy.

The new leaves, grown since the rain which left the soil in the beds drenched, are curled and deformed looking.

All of the peppers in the raised beds have these curled, defective leaves.  The few peppers in pots that didn’t get rained on look normal.

Doing research, the most likely cause of these leaf issues are either too much water and/or temperatures too cool, which it is with all this rain.  Peppers like it hot and dry.  I have to hope that things will dry out and the peppers will grow back normally.  The beds are filled with fertile soil rich in humus and organic matter, so they drain well.  The problem is that it has rained just about every day.

You can see that the older leaves look just fine, but the newer leaves that grew during the rainy time are deformed.  I started my pepper plants from heirloom seeds that I save and use year after year.  Gotta hope these plants make – I’m counting on all of the peppers – AND the fresh seeds for next year’s plants.

The swiss chard and squash are loving this rain.  I’m not sure about the beans or tomatoes – they don’t look just great either.

Cutworms? Something Is Loose In The Garden

These are new beds so for some reason I didn’t expect to have a problem with cutworms.  Well, not so.  In at least 2 of my raised beds, I have numerous peppers that have been cut off at the ground.  I have also found a few cucumber seedlings and Chinese Long Red beans that have also been cut off.

The picture shows the cinched stem there at the ground level.  That healthy green stem ends with a constriction and grayish tissue.  I have sprinkled diatomaceous earth around the pepper stems where there are damaged peppers.  Well see if it does any good.  I sprinkled the DE earlier today and it is raining hard tonight.  Fortunately, only a few of my peppers have been damaged – maybe 5%.   A couple of the peppers seem to still be alive, but laying down because their stem has been damaged.  I’ll let them grow as they lay and see if they ever produce.

I have started all of these peppers from seeds that I save each year and I don’t like them to be damaged.  I do keep a thick leaf mulch on the soil, but I don’t think that affects the cutworm.  It is going to live in the soil anyway.  The mulch may even make it more difficult to find a plant stem?

The Bean Patch

Although it is now harvest time in the bean patch, here are some older pics.

This is the bean patch as it is just sprouting. I planted Romano pole beans all along the cattle panel and Chinese long red beans along the shorter edges. I planted Orka bush beans and Texas Cream 8 cow peas in the middle section.

These Orka bean seeds are a few years old. They are also called Yin Yang and a few other names. They started out very prolific. Look at all of those buds.

Here is a closeup:

In about 2/3 of the space, I planted what was labeled Texas Cream 8 Bush beans. Oops – those bush beans are actually pole beans. I had trouble trying to take a pic that showed the bean runners – this is the best that I could take. I had to scramble and put up some things for the runners to grow on.  I put some tomato cages in the area and laid a 3×3 foot section of old fence over the top to give the runners something to grow on.

 

These are all heriloom seeds and I will be saving the best seeds from some of the earliest maturing plants.  All of these beans are finishing up their run.  With the exception of the Chinese long red beans, all of the beans were grown for the dried bean.  The pods are now drying on the vines.

Spider Mites Made Worse By Excessive Heat

Originally published in late Summer of 2011

Spider mites have decimated the garden.  They started in the tomatoes.  (White flies were also a problem in tomatoes this year).  They spread to the squash and watermelons – but were harder on the watermelons.  Or, it could have been a virus that made those tomato leaves yellow speckled, then spread to the watermelons next to it.  Doesn’t matter now, all vegetative matter is dead or almost dead.  Spider mites are also on the Sweet Potatoes is the green house – they were treated with neem oil.  Sweet potato can take the heat and partial drought – I’m hoping to keep them alive until harvest time this fall.  Spider mites are particularly hard on the pole beans.  They slowly wiped out these Missouri pole beans, but didn’t do too much damage to the yard long green beans next to them.

I hadn’t had real problems with spider mites ever before, so they got ahead of me before I realized what was happening. Spraying with neem oil didn’t save these beans. A word of warning – Sevin will kill the bugs that feed on the mites – so if you diagnose spider mites – only use neem oil. Spider mites are NOT an insect, so Sevin won’t kill them. Neem oil and soap will.

I’ve had several new pests this year that I hadn’t had to battle before – spider mites and white flies. Neem oil seems to eventually kill off the white flies and hopefully will keep the sweet potatoes going until fall. Chinese long red beans are very susceptible to ants and their aphids – I have to constantly spray the ants and aphids. They will be back the next day on another plant. But those long red beans in stir fry is worth the effort of war.

Rattlesnake Pole Beans

Originally published Summer 2011

I have found that rattlesnake pole beans seem to thrive the best in my garden environment.  They grow the fastest and mature the fastest.  I usually grow them for dry beans.  The pod has purple streaks running it’s length, so it doesn’t have the edible appeal that a plain old green bean does. They grow fast and produce prolifically.  When the summer drought hits, they slow down, but still grow.  When we get an occasional heavy summer rain, they go into another growth spurt.

I just love these pole beans. And, since beans are self-pollinating, you don’t have to worry about those pretty little lavender flowers crossing with any other beans in the garden.