Patty in Wisc

Some good growing tips I learned. Hoping you can add some more .

1) When you get a plant in mail, don't put it in direct sun right away. Give it a day or more to adjust from total dark to light.

2) A good seed starter tray is a plastic blanket bag w/ a zipper. They are usually clear for light to pass, & the zippered closure gives easy access & holds humidity. Use wooden skewers to prop top if necessary. (New sheet sets come in this too) If heat's needed, I use a old heating pad under, or set in a sunny window.

3) To keep bugs out of potted plants outside, put pieces of pantyhose or fine window screen inside at drainage holes before filling w/ mix.

4) For slug bait, put shallow pans of beer by plants. They crawl in & drown.

5) Crushed eggshells & old coffee grounds are excellent for garden soil addition.

6) Gnats or bugs in potting soil...cover soil with newspaper (black & white print) & water over paper when needed.

7) Miracle Grow potting mix (feeds for 3 months) mixed with perlite is the best for my plants - ESP potted nanas over this past winter!! Amazing growth!

8) To keep suns intense heat off black pots, spraypaint 1 side white & face towards sun. To heat pot, turn black side towards sun.

9) Indoor/greenhouse plants...if soil temp is 55*f or below, provide shade cloth against direct sun. Cover with sheet if necessary.
Warmth + sun = growth... cold & shade = dormant or semi dormant.
Warmth & shade = BAD... cold & direct sun = BAD or WLD (winter leaf drop)

10) For aphids & mites indoors... 1 tsp Dawn dish soap (because is said to be more concentrated & sticks better) to about 6-8 oz HOT tap water. Spray on to saturate & repeat if necessary next day. Outdoors... usually a good blast with a hose will do it. Stubborn insects...swab w/ rubbing alcohol.

11) Salt build up or when nothing else seems to work on a sick plant... flush pot with clear water 3 times the volume of pot.

12) To warm soil quicker for planting...cover with black plastic (don't all of us northerners know this?).

13) Never walk barefoot in garden if you're allergic to bees...unless you have a epi pen & ambulance nearby.

These are all tried & true. If they don't work, have a banana daiquiri on me!

__________________
Got a lite?
Patty




____
Patty in Wisc has sadly passed away 9/05/11. We will miss you Patty.

Richard

Some varieties of plants are better off going into direct sunlight.

Works great on sun-dried pit fruit seeds. Bad idea for lettuce.

Pots need to drain. Put small pebbles, masonry chips, or "pot feet" under them so they don't directly contact the ground. Never leave sitting in a tray of water. This dramatically reduces a number of problems. Pantyhose is too fine and becomes a venue for fungus. If the holes in your pot are too large for the granularity of soil you have, use 1/8 to 1/4 hardware cloth to hold in the soil.

The chemical content of the beer immobilizes the slugs or snails and then they die from a number of causes.

Iron phosphate is a human nutrition supplement and a common ingredient in many granular fertilizers. It is also the active ingredient in the "pet safe" slug and snail baits such as "Sluggo" from Monterey Garden Products. If you read the directions you'll find it doesn't take much. Sprinkle it on the perimeter of plantings where slugs and snails cross into your gardens or pots. Remember: you see the snails but it is the slugs that do the most damage.

The number 1 problem I see in plant care is overwatering, and the number 2 problem is over-application of coffee grounds -- they acidify the soil to the point of plant death. Eggshells are best applied to a compost mix. They are good for fruiting vegetables, but you'll need bushels of them to feed a fruit tree.

A compost mix that is 1% coffee grounds and another 1% eggshells is about right.

The easiest method is to not buy cheap "eco-friendly" potting soil. It is eco-friendly because it is full of insect larvae (from the cow manure).

If you have problems, add one of the following and watch the problem go away:
1% solution of either mint oil, laurel oil, or african chrysanthumum oil.
A few tablespoons of Neem seed meal.
A teaspoon of a pyrethrum in a quart of water, such as the people-safe product Bayer Powerforce (active ingredient "Cyfluthrin").

I think Miracle-Gro products are the most expensive choice of media and soils on the market. Further, you are subsidizing the disposal of excess phosphorus for the parent chemical company.

This was true in the days that lead and heavy metals were used as a pigment for black paint. It is not the color that absorbs, but the material in question. For example, nowadays white automobile paint actually retains slightly more heat than black.

The color of the pot makes little or no difference. If you must shield the pot (a good idea), put it inside a larger clay pot that allows 1/2 inch or more of space between the two. I'm too cheap for that -- instead I just position a piece of tile or cardboard between the pot and the sunshine, leaving the rest of the plant exposed to the sun.

Very true. Another approach for cold soil on a sunny day is to open the vents and the door to provide natural air temperature.

A good blast with water will knock them off the plants. Then they will crawl back up in a day or two -- if the ants don't put them back up sooner. A shot with a pyrethrum every two weeks will kill them and cut down the breeding dramatically.

I'd transplant it -- even into the same size pot. One reason for this is to determine what is going on with the roots, and another is to find out how much salt is encrusted to the inside of the pot. Also, don't use high-phosphorus products like Miracle-Gro.

Any covering that doesn't transmit heat (from the ground to the air) will work.

__________________
Back in business at plantsthatproduce.com

Worm_Farmer

Mulch, Mulch and more mulch. I like using a smaller much vs the normal wood chunk mulch. I use Grass clippings as mulch or horse manure mix with saw dust. The plant will grow roots up in the much medium and the worms below will come up and feed on the mulch provide even more food for the plants.

BOOST! Use fertilize, and a good amount Bananas love food!

Cut back leafs once they start turning yellow or the plant is pushing them off the p-steam.

Water, My in ground bananas will suck up more then 2 gallons a day during season. Good quality water is also a big help, I collect my rain water and find the plants like it much more then my City water. I would suggest installing a nice RO water filter and getting a good size storage tank.

Remove pups, once my pups are about 14" I will dig them out and put them in a pot so that they stop sucking resources from the main p-steam.

Patty in Wisc

"Works great on sun-dried pit fruit seeds. Bad idea for lettuce."
..I don't know anyone who would start lettuce seeds indoors...LOL

Originally Posted by Patty in Wisc
"3) To keep bugs out of potted plants outside, put pieces of pantyhose or fine window screen inside at drainage holes before filling w/ mix."
...All my pots sit on 2x4's or or are propped off ground & they drain just fine w/ pantyhose or screen at drain holes.
Some of my TALL tree pots are set underground to keep from falling over. With these 14) I wrap copper wire around the pot above ground to keep slugs & bugs from crawling up. They fry when they touch copper.
Around here, snails & slugs are the same thing. I won't buy slug bait...beer works fine. They are attracted to it & when they are laying at bottom of dish, they look drowned to me!

.."number 2 problem is over-application of coffee grounds -- they acidify the soil to the point of plant death."
I'm not talking Truckloads LOL. Just household use. I put my grounds & eggshells in my compost.

.."The color of the pot makes little or no difference. If you must shield the pot (a good idea), put it inside a larger clay pot that allows 1/2 inch or more of space between the two. I'm too cheap for that -- instead I just position a piece of tile or cardboard between the pot and the sunshine, leaving the rest of the plant exposed to the sun."
.. I tested this with a thermometer. Pots were at same temp inside. Brought out to sun, 4-5 hours later, the black pot soil was higher temp than white pot facing sun. Cardboard would work but looks ugly. Aluminum foil also helps deflect sun rays.

.. "don't use high-phosphorus products like Miracle-Gro."
The M.G. mix I used is N - .21%, phosphate - .07%, potash - .14%. So, not a whole lot of phosphate.
Since my whole point here is using what you have around the house & not buy baits or bug sprays etc, I should really make my own mix. I'd use peat, composted manure & a lot of perlite. Would be much cheaper than the MG mix I bought!

.. "if the ants don't put them back up sooner. A shot with a pyrethrum every two weeks will kill them and cut down the breeding dramatically."
.. I don't know what pyrethrum is. I won't buy it when my hose, or soap spray works fine for aphids & mites.
15) For ants I sprinkle boric acid around. It's cheap, available, & it works.

16) A wooden dowel (any unpainted stick) to measure moisture in soil. Expensive meters sometimes don't work. Shove your finger in pot to feel. In large pots, shove the dowel all the way down & pull it out to feel if it's wet. I leave the sticks in all my large pots. Smaller pots, I use wooden skewers. I learned this on a orchid forum where they use wood skewers in pots. Pull it out & press against the side of or above your lips. If you feel moisture don't water. Sounds crazy, but for some reason you can 'feel' the moisture better than feeling it with your hands.

__________________
Got a lite?
Patty




____
Patty in Wisc has sadly passed away 9/05/11. We will miss you Patty.

Richard

Patty,

These are mostly great ideas you've posted but I have seen novices take them to extremes!

You'd be amazed.

But in other climates -- like coastal San Diego the pantyhose becomes a venue for fungus.

Works great in your area, but there are several locations in the country where the slug population is easily 100 times greater than yours. The state of Wisconsin requires a slug-free phytosanitary certificate for import of plants from these areas. In such locations, pans of beer will get only 10% of the pests.


Common occurrence in the customer service department of a full-service nursery: Some customer read that coffee grounds are good for plants and so they put fresh coffee grounds on the same plant every day for several weeks and then the plant dies. They bring in the plant in a pot or a bag. Customer service checks the pH of the soil and finds it is about 4.

I would expect this result if the white paint was reflective and the black paint was not.

At many universities, students in a junior-level thermodynamics course will also do this test but make sure the reflectance is the same.


That IS a nice lower phosphate formula, especially for subtropical fruits like Citrus.

I'd recommend horse manure over steer or cow manure since it is lower in phosphates and salts. Instead of perlite I would use horticultural pumice (3/8 inch Scoria).

You can read about pyrethrum at Pyrethrin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Blasting lettuce with a water jet is bad for both the lettuce and the bugs. Further, the bugs are back on the battered plants within hours. This is impractical for a home vegetable garden with 100+ plants. Further, in parts of the world where it does not freeze the sheer number of insects can be overwhelming when you are supplying them with a food source.

For more information on a particular pesticide (e.g., Cyfluthrin) see PAN Pesticide Database

Yes, the "squirt" bottles of dry boric powder are really great. I squirt it into the back corners of shelves in the kitchen and into electric outlet boxes to discourage the little monsters from coming in during times of stress.

I especially like this method. Wooden chopsticks are very good moisture meters. The electrostatic meters sold in stores do not work well in clay soils -- in fact they read "wet" until the clay is dry and the plant is near death.

__________________
Back in business at plantsthatproduce.com

Patty in Wisc

Thanks Richard for explaining. I didn't take into consideration that different areas have different problems. I learned a lot from you on this forum & ... still learning!

__________________
Got a lite?
Patty




____
Patty in Wisc has sadly passed away 9/05/11. We will miss you Patty.

Wills

Make friends with someone with rabbits as the manure is gold and cold so cam be applied fresh.

Lagniappe

The number 1 problem I see in plant care is overwatering, and the number 2 problem is over-application of coffee grounds -- they acidify the soil to the point of plant death. Eggshells are best applied to a compost mix. They are good for fruiting vegetables, but you'll need bushels of them to feed a fruit tree.

A compost mix that is 1% coffee grounds and another 1% eggshells is about right

I've read that used coffee grounds had a Ph of 6.8 and would be consumed very quickly by the crawlers. I'm using them in my vermicomposting, almost exclusively , as a food source. The worms love em', and they are particularly sensitive to acidic conditions.
Oops, just read the "fresh " part....yeah, fresh grounds are best for making coffee!
Eggshells can be pulverized in a blender to make a kalkwasser (calcium water)solution. This can then be added to a larger container of water to be sprayed (conservatively)as a soil drench .


Pantyhose is too fine and becomes a venue for fungus.
Yuck!

"I think Miracle-Gro products are the most expensive choice of media and soils on the market. Further, you are subsidizing the disposal of excess phosphorus for the parent chemical company."

In addition, I've opened many bags of Miracle grow that were poorly composted. Some even had to be taken out of the garage because they had the house smelling like pine.

Richard

Rabbit manure has an N-P-K of about 7 - 2.5 - 0.5 when it is dry (when fresh, divide those numbers by 10). It is excellent for leafy vegetables, esp. if you don't mind your Arugula bolting a little early. As a fertilizer for fruit trees, you'll need about 14 lbs of the dry stuff plus a potassium supplement for each tree.

__________________
Back in business at plantsthatproduce.com

Richard

Washed, dried coffee grounds have an N-P-K of about 2 - 0.3 - 0.3. They are an excellent way to produce high-nitrogen vermicompost. However, you are missing out on trace elements that would be provided by vegetable greens.

Coffee grounds from a coffee house (e.g., Starbucks) have a more neutral pH because their pressurized coffee makers are more efficient than a home drip system. Fresh coffee grounds straight from the coffee filter after making coffee in a drip coffee maker are more acidic.

Worms used in vermicomposting (e.g., Red Wrigglers) are sensitive to pH below 6.3 or so.

__________________
Back in business at plantsthatproduce.com

sandy0225

I've heard it's not too good of an idea to use fresh manure around veggies.Be sure and use your fresh manure by mixing it into the compost pile and after it's composted well, then use that compost in the veggies. Especially leafy veggies that you eat without cooking thoroughly.

__________________
Sandy Burrell



Northern Tropics Greenhouse
1501 East Fuson Road
Muncie, IN 47302
www.northerntropics.com


specializing in bananas, heirloom tomatoes and water gardening plants~
check out our new online store at our website!

sandy0225

Oh, since this is really a "tips" thread, here's mine.
Bananas actually like it to be warm, moist and sunny. If everything in the first sentence is happening, then they like a lot of fertilizer too. They don't really care if they're in Indiana, or India if the above is true all year.
If you change anything in that sentence, then the other things need to change too. For example, if it's cooler, then the moist and fertilizer part has to decrease, even if it's fairly sunny. If it's not sunny, then the moist and fertilizer part has to decrease. If it's cool, and not sunny, then the moisture and fertilizer has to be decreased dramatically, because you took away two things they need to grow and be happy.
warm+sunny+moist+fertilizer=happy banana

__________________
Sandy Burrell



Northern Tropics Greenhouse
1501 East Fuson Road
Muncie, IN 47302
www.northerntropics.com


specializing in bananas, heirloom tomatoes and water gardening plants~
check out our new online store at our website!

Caloosamusa

Know your soil pH before you begin! As Sandy, Richard and Lagiappe have made mention of already, soil pH is very important. Bananas like pH on the acid side of neutral, 5.7 to 6.8. Where I live the soil pH is basic 7.8, so I use an acid forming fertilizer. What Sandy said about the warm, sunny, moist fertilizer is true, change any one, and the others must be adjusted. Soil pH is a very important component to the equation also!

Best wishes,

Patty in Wisc

Speaking of manures, I went back & borrowed this from citrus.forumup.org
In Europe, they use commas a lot, where we use periods.

MeyerLemon
Citruholic



Joined: 25 Jun 2007
Posts: 239
Location: Adana/Turkey Zone9
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:46 am Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi,

Here is a list of their components as % ;

Animal------ Nitrogen --- Potassium ----Phosphorus --- Calcium

Sheep ------- 0,55--------- 0,15 ---------- 0,31 ---------- 0,46

Cow --------- 0,29 -------- 0,10----------- 0,17 ---------- 0,34

Chicken ----- 1,70 -------- 0,90----------- 1,40 ---------- 2,00

Horse ------- 0,44 -------- 0,35 ----------- 0,35 ----------- 0,15

Remember that the manure must be processed before using, especially chicken and horse manure.You must not use fresh manure

...No rabbits there...oh well

__________________
Got a lite?
Patty




____
Patty in Wisc has sadly passed away 9/05/11. We will miss you Patty.

banana berserker

I once read in a magazine that when you make hard boiled eggs the water is full of calcium from the egg shells and that it's really good for your plants. Not sure how much of a difference egg water makes but it might be worth trying? Anyone notice something wierd...like cow manure is the least nutritios and thats what most people use?

Patty in Wisc

I noticed that too. I think it's used more because there is just more of it.
I just read somewhere of someone crushing eggshells & boiling them to use on plants or compost tea. Wish I could remember where.

__________________
Got a lite?
Patty




____
Patty in Wisc has sadly passed away 9/05/11. We will miss you Patty.

sandy0225

The main problem I have is that since I use soil less mix,(containing peat moss) the ph of the mix seems to creep up over time. For anyone not familiar with that, it seems that the plants, even though you fertilize, they just don't look the same. They get yellowish very light green leaves and seem weaker and thinner. This usually happens when the plant is in the pot for long-term, over 6 months. Now they also will do that if you use the wrong (too weak in nitrogen) fertilizer too. So if you know you're fertilizing them properly, and they've been potted in the same soil a while, maybe adjusting the ph will help.
I'm currently using citric acid here to adjust our water ph. It only takes a few teaspoons for my 1:100 gallon batch that I use with my fertilizer injector. But before I started citric acid, I used vinegar. Easily available and very safe to work with. I used that for years. Until I was needing like 10 gallons a week and it got too expensive. I'm just getting the food grade citric acid, I purchased it off ebay. I used to get it from a greenhouse supply guy around here, but it turns out he was actually charging me WAY too much.
You can get expensive ph meters to test your water ph, but I've had better results just using these little full range ph strips I purchased from ebay. Of course if you're colorblind like my hubby, you might need an assistant!

__________________
Sandy Burrell



Northern Tropics Greenhouse
1501 East Fuson Road
Muncie, IN 47302
www.northerntropics.com


specializing in bananas, heirloom tomatoes and water gardening plants~
check out our new online store at our website!

Richard

Sandy,

There are acid-forming urea-free water-soluble formulas for soil-less media. But perhaps you are using one of these already?

I know you are not overwatering, but amateurs should note that this is the primary cause of yellowing leaves. As you have noted, rising pH is another. A third cause I often see is a root-bound plant in a pot.

__________________
Back in business at plantsthatproduce.com