Hi All,
I have a zuke with short stems (1 to 2") and brittle yellowish leaves. Its leaves crack in half if you attempt to look under them for squash bug eggs. It isn't growing either.
Should I pull and toss it in the bin, such that whatever is infecting it does not spread to the other plants?
I ask as I know it is not a good idea to have dead animals kicking about but don't know if that applies to plants as well.
Many thanks,
-T
Toss it, it's dying anyway, plant another one.
...
yeah, if you are going to use the space for something else.
too late to plant anything here other than quick cover crops or a few peas if we get lucky with the frosts.
songbird
Toss or plow under? I do not know if it would spread disease if I dug it under.
I have some tomatillos I could transplant.
Got my first three baby eggplant fruits! They weren't there yesterday. Today I have three of them! Uh oh. Now I am sounding like a proud parent.
T wrote: ...
you don't even know if it was diseased, perhaps it didn't develop right... this is where having a diverse soil community is your biggest helper. they are the cleanup crew and break it down.
diseases are always present, there are millions or billions of different kinds of bacteria, fungi, virii, phages, prions, bugs, etc. which doesn't cover physical defects in the plant itself or mutations which can happen...
i think of annuals as fire and forget plants. not every one is going to make it, plant a diversity and that helps improve your odds of getting some harvest. also the diversity also helps in terms of using different soil nutrients and even perhaps different layers of the soil. plant divsersity also encourages diverse bug populations.
how many days do they take?
:)
songbird
They droop the first day. Start growing like hell the second!
Our three eggplants are still producing since early spring. I'm getting tired of them anyway, already have several pans of moussaka in the freezer and just how much deep fried eggplant can we eat? We generally plant the long, slender, either green or black eggplant, mostly called "Japanese" eggplant. American Beauty did well for us one year, large round eggplant, then they went south the next time.
There are lots of recipes for eggplant online, most are good too.
We usually just peel, slice, dip in a bit of oil, and bake on a sheet in the oven. Serve with a bit of tzatziki. But they are well-nigh onto impossible to grow here (the plants will grow - getting them to fruit - eh, not so much) so they are usually imported from elsewhere.
What's your climate and part of the world? We grew eggplant and zucchini in our very small, mostly sand, garden in Saudi Arabia. They weren't monsters but they were edible.
We did much better with frangi pani, fig trees, and bougainvillea. Luckily we had enough water from the two sea water conversion plants along the shore to grow anything.
We also grew orchids but had to build a shade over them. Bought the orchids in Thailand and shipped them back to Saudi and the Arab's loved to come by and look at our gardens, We would hold an "open garden" one Saturday a month and they would "oh and ah" the whole time. When we decided to go home I had a list of those who wanted to buy our orchids and then we had a bidding war. Made a good profit on them too.
We generally got local vegetables but a Dutch farmer started shipping garden vegetables to our area on the Red Sea and at a reasonable price. Things to eat became much better than goat and camel. Enjoyed the country and the job back in the early eighties, wouldn't want to go back though.
Here in SE Texas most anything grows well, this time of year you have to keep your garden from drowning, we get a lot of rain here.
43 north. 70-odd west. 'dam Yankees. If I throw up a hoop house I might, just might , have a hope in heck. Global warming has simply not made this part of the world safe for happy egg-plants yet (and the actual effects of GW make it less safe for them, not to mention what they did to all the fruit tree blossoms this spring - too warm, too early, followed by too cold followed by no fruit a'tall. More chaos, not "simply a little warmer.")
At the moment I'm looking at a ton of green tomatoes, but they are just ripening in dribs and drabs - I didn't even plant eggplant this year, and just as well, the garden is a mess (other things have reared their ugly heads to take priority) and I need to redo the hoofed-rat fence. Should have another month or so before normal frost date, last year it was 2-1/2 months more, so hopefully they will get their act together, but right now it's a bit frustrating.
The old Italian guys have their tricks, but not all of those are easily applied without obtaining a different house first that has a better situation for a garden right up against a south wall that's in full sun, say. It's a good trick, but one that really has to be applied before you start.
I spent a year in Newport, RI back in '59/'60 and this Texas boy damned near froze to death. Not to mention the destroyer I was on cruised the North Atlantic ice pack most of a winter. Have friends on another group that garden up yonder in frozen land and they have the same complaints.
Be grateful you're even getting tomatoes, our tomatoes when south early on when the heat scale started getting over 100F this summer. Same with sweet peppers but the eggplant is still producing for some reason and our zucchini never laid a fruit, just withered and collapsed.
In your climate position of the house as a wind break, tree line nearby, etc. really helps your garden. I've seen folks put up an eight foot high wooden fence on the windward side of their gardens and it helped a little bit. We will say a prayer for you, about the best we can do at this distance.
Moussaka !!! I LOVE moussaka.
Back in the 70's when I was in the service, my wife and I toured Greece. We basically ate moussaka at every stop. Each restaurant had its own recipe. They all were unbelievable.
I have been try to recreate it ever since. I came up with a Prime recipe and it was okay. But it was so hard to make, I only made it once. :'(
There are some excellent moussaka recipes online, both Greek and Arabic, take a look.
Hi George,
I based mine of this Primal, diabetic friendly recipe:
Ingredients:
1-2 large eggplants, peeled (optional) and cut into 1/4-inch slices 1 bunch of kale, chewy lower stems cut off 1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes 1 onion, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, pressed or chopped 1 pound ground meat (lamb is traditional) 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon allspice 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill 3 eggs 1 cup full-fat Greek yogurt 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese olive oil, for sautéing salt and pepper, to tasteI am not sure "kale" (penicillin flavored oak leaves) are actually edible.
Hmmm: full fat Greek yogurt. I though they made that stuff by skimming the fat out. Huh.
Holy crap it is a lot of work to make!
I have been eating my eggplant from the garden raw. Never done that before in my life. The stuff just tasted good.
-T
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