Northern Zone Pushers: watcha doing?

[Cole_Robbie]

Originally Posted by Sharpcheddar

I took my seedlings outside over the weekend for some real sunlight. Almost all of them are completely dying now, I'm beside myself I don't think they're going to recover and I've invested so much emotional energy in them that essentially murdering them all by trying to do something good for them is heart breaking.

If it is just the sun burning off the foliage from their first UV exposure, they should recover from that. The same thing happened to me last year.

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by Sharpcheddar

I took my seedlings outside over the weekend for some real sunlight. Almost all of them are completely dying now, I'm beside myself I don't think they're going to recover and I've invested so much emotional energy in them that essentially murdering them all by trying to do something good for them is heart breaking.

I'm sorry.

They could still bounce back for you if they are not totally burnt and you still have some green leaves on them. The key is to not do any more damage to them. Keep them in the shade and watered. Remember that the wind we have can dry out small pots really really fast so you many need to water TWICE a day to keep them safe until they get in the ground.

My Persimmon plant snapped clean in half in the wind last week. All it had left on the stem was one tiny leaf the size of a pencil eraser. I stuck it in the shade and gave it a little Neptunes Gold and the thing is already coming back!


Stacy

[Got Worms?]

The recommended date to set out plants is two weeks after the average last frost date. Here that would make it May 29th. I set out 10 out of the 18 plants that I'm going to grow two days ago, after only 3 days of hardening off. The opportunity was just too irresistible. A great 10 day temperature forecast, an overcast day with a fine mist every once in a while, 50-60% chance of rain for much of the next week; as Robert Palmer would say: "Simply Irresistible". I'm already contemplating my cover up options.

[Got Worms?]

Also, I picked up a 3.5 cu. ft. cement mixer (on sale at HF) to mix the grow media for my buckets. I did 15 buckets of pepper plants yesterday. Romanian Rainbows, Long slim Cayennes, Thai Hots, and assorted red, yellow and orange sweet peppers. All these are outside now.

[Father'sDaughter]

Last year was the first time I "pushed" and set the tomatoes out a couple of weeks earlier than recommended, and last year was the first time my plants struggled all year and yields were way down. Although the cool, wet June followed by July's heat probably didn't help, but those I didn't have any control over.

Being relatively new to all this, I only have a small number of growing years to compare to, but the only thing I did differently last year was set them out earlier. They did survive a stretch of cold nights in mid-May, but I'm thinking that had to contribute somewhat to my poor season. I'm doing my best to resist any temptation this year to plant out before Memorial Day. The tomato plants have been out in the mini portable greenhouse for over a week now, and they are turning into monsters. But after taking a look at our ten day forecast again this morning, it'll be easier to resist planting them out -- that long stretch of nights they were predicting to be in the low to mid 50's just turned into a stretch of nights in the 40's.

I'll be able to start harvesting some spinach and possible lettuce this week, so I'll try to be content with that for now.

[jakebb]

Count me among those who burned their tomato plants. They were bad; at least half the leaves just curled up and fell off. But they are recovering now and have put on a lot of new growth. Tomorrow was supposed to be the day I put my tomato plants out, but they're still hardening off and we're supposed to get a couple nights in the 30s before things even out.

My peppers, with the exception of the Early jalapeno and one of the types of sweet peppers (I forgot to label them), are still really small. I think this is because of how long it took them to germinate. The peppers seem to be almost invulnerable to sunburn, so I've been keeping them outside all day and bringing them in at night for the past week. The early jalapeno plants were twice as tall as anything else, so I decided to plant them out yesterday. It's been more than three weeks since the last frost, so I think I'm relatively safe.

[bughunter99]

I'm so pleased. Even the earliest tomatoes I put out are now showing good growth. I picked my micro climates well this year! All of my self-watering containers are now planted up. The six plants in the ground look good. I may put some wall of waters around them next week to see if I can get them to really take off. Heh.

I put out five more tomato plants this weekend, the first pepper and tons of stuff that will do fine if the temperatures drop down. (Fennel, cabbage, kolabi, lettuce, herbs, etc etc.)

Currently I still have five more tomato plants on reserve if anything goes terribly bad. I'm still holding off on putting out the basil, most of the peppers, and all of the eggplant.


Forecast for the next 10 days. Daytime temps ranging from 58-84. Night time lows ranging from 41-67. Zero clear nights in the forecast and rainstorms predicted 7 of the next ten days. Looking good!!!! These warm spring rains are magic, magic I tell you. Now if I could figure out a way to keep the magic away from the weed seeds.

Stacy

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by jakebb

The peppers seem to be almost invulnerable to sunburn, so I've been keeping them outside all day and bringing them in at night for the past week. The early jalapeno plants were twice as tall as anything else, so I decided to plant them out yesterday. It's been more than three weeks since the last frost, so I think I'm relatively safe.

I've been doing the same thing with my peppers. I don't like them to get chilled at all.

Stacy

[jakebb]

Originally Posted by bughunter99

I've been doing the same thing with my peppers. I don't like them to get chilled at all.

Stacy

Yeah, the reason I do that is that some of them just seem to plop over like they're dead if they are exposed to the cold. The last time that happened 3 of them plopped over and only two of them recovered. It was my first casualty

[Cole_Robbie]

The weather has been all over the place for me. We'll have one week of 40 degree nights, then a week of 85 degree days and thunderstorms every day, and then it flips back to being cold again. It's been so wet that I have barely had to water my high tunnel plants. Water seeps up through the ground to wet the high tunnel floor.

I put two rows between my greenhouse and high tunnel and they now have water standing between the rows. The raised beds are saving my tomatoes, but some of the peppers have died from damping off. I also lost a few high tunnel plants in the wettest part of the ground to damping off. This would be a good spring to be a container grower.

I have read people state that it is wrong to use both fertilizer in soil and fertigation through drip at the same time. But I'm glad I do both, because I don't want to run the drip irrigation when it is already so wet. 3/4 of my high tunnel plants took off and grew well. They are almost two feet tall and just now beginning to bloom.

[joseph]

Transplanted the tomatoes for the first time today. They were germinated about 25 to 35 to a big pot. Seeds that were slow to germinate, or that grew slowly as seedlings were eliminated while transplanting the quicker/bigger plants. I expect to plant them into the field in about 3.5 to 4 weeks -- weather permitting. The soil under the newly built greenhouse is warming up so it keeps things warmer at night than it did when first installed.

[Sodak]

We had a frost early this AM and wight the next two nights as well.

The 3 in WOWs look fine (Bloody Butcher and Pink Honey have open blooms!!!) Unopened flowers on Lucky Cross. I put a gallon milk jug full of water adjacent to the other three last night and then put a tarp over them at about 5:00 this AM. They look okay and are Gary'O Sena, Native Sun and Sun Gold.

The recently transplanted zinnias , started from seed from Sand Hill, look pretty bad, though.
I will likely apply the tarp at sundown today and tomorrow.

[Labradors2]

A friend started some early/small varieties in February for me to grow in containers. She also grew a Sungold ?!?!? Of course all of them have flowers/fruit on them now. So I had the dilemma of whether to pot it up, knowing that none of my containers is big enough to keep a Sungold, or to plant it outside. A few days ago, I dug a big hole in the clay which was sopping wet. I popped the plant in the hole and backfilled with compost, thinking that it would probably die in that wet spot. The next morning it looked a bit wilted, but I refrained from watering it - and then it perked up. Now it looks perfectly happy and it didn't drop it's fruit!

I know the purists would say that I should have removed all flowers and fruit first, but I simply couldn't do that. I don't care if it's has a limited yield, I just want to taste some Sungold tomatoes - the sooner the better!

The rest of the tomato seedling herd are spending the days outside and the nights inside. Night time temps can be in the 40's, and now we are getting rain at night too, so no point in inviting fungal diseases.

Linda

[Cole_Robbie]

High of 50 today with steady rain all day, low in the 40's all week. That's typical November weather for me...in mid-May. It was almost 90 for much of last week.

The unpredictable weather has made me want to stop raising plants to sell, or at least very many. Everyone wants to plant their gardens on the first warm sunny day, regardless of the calendar or anything I tell them. And that could come any time in a three month window, so it makes timing one crop of seedlings nearly impossible. I'd have to raise three crops, and end up throwing away 2/3 of all my plants. That does not sound very fun at all.

[taboule]

I planted the rest of my tomatoes this past weekend. Since then we've had temps between 80s and 40s. Looking good so far. Still have many spares and giving them away.