Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Yes... I heard your Family Garden Doctor radio program! Great! I didn't find out till Sat. nite, and as you say, it is available there to listen to any time... actually listened a couple times while I was putting up some pear butter! Is this to be a weekly program? (YES it is - JK) I already shared the site on fb! And am starting a gardening class to share the Mittleider Method! We are starting next Sunday afternoon! :)

I have a couple questions about our garden... I have been using the
micronutrients/Epsom salt/16-16-16 combo to fertilize everything this
year... and most of it is doing pretty good! Here are my questions:

1)I have your chart which shows how many weeks to fertilize each type of crop, and I am trying to stick with that as close as I can, but after hearing you last night on the blog radio site, I am wondering if I have stopped fertilizing too soon...is there a general rule I could follow about how long to keep going with the fertilizer(just from looking at the plants and knowing where in their growth and harvest cycle they are at) such as: until I start to harvest it? or as long as I am still harvesting? or as long as the crop is still blossoming? or???

(Single-crop varieties should be fed until 3 weeks before harvest, and ever-bearing varieties should be fed until 8 weeks before the end of harvest - JK)

2) my melons are having mixed results: the ones I left on the ground
look better than the ones I am doing upright... they are all in the same area of the garden, but for the upright ones, I am using my old tomato
cages made of concrete reinforcement wire since I only had time and $
this year to make one of the trellises for our tomatoes... For the ones that I am growing upright, a couple of the plants look really great... right next to the rest which look like they are dying, shriveling up and wasting away. I have checked the water situation, and I think they are all getting water... I have wondered if I have over fertilized them? Do I need to be careful about how close to the plant stem I get the fertilizer? And how much wiggle room do we have with the amount of fertilizer? Exact? Better to be under the amount if it varies at all?

(Plants that are dying with water and fertilizers in place probably are suffering with a disease. You would have to apply a LOT of excess fertilizer to kill them. If you ever notice wilting of plants that are getting ample water it could mean excess salinity (fertilizer), disease, or something gnawing on the roots. You need to remove them from the garden. - JK)

3) When pruning our tomatoes, I discovered something on a few of the
plants I have never seen before: beyond where the fruit was setting , a sucker-looking growth took off after the fruit, not from the stem, but from the end of the cluster of fruit... ! :O Have you ever seen this, and what causes this? It didn't seem to hurt the plant & I just pruned
them off, but it seemed so unusual, and since it was happening to
several of the plants, I thought it must be something I was doing to
them... and the fert. seems like the only thing different that I am
doing this year.. should I cut back a little (it is possible that,
since the row isn't quite 30 feet, that I might have given them a bit
too much fertilizer.)

(Use 1/2 ounce per foot when applying the Weekly Feed. That way, no matter how long your row is you always know how much to use. Sucker stems growing from the fruit cluster is not uncommon. Just remove them as soon as you see them, so the plant doesn't waste energy trying to put out another stem. - JK)

The squash and corn look fabulous, the beans are doing great too! Thanks for all your help and amazing handouts online! I will be sharing all of this with my Garden Group!

Thanks so much for your help! Hope you are recovering well from your
surgery!

(I AM recovering - amazingly fast it seems - praise the Lord! - JK)

Happy Harvesting!
Carmen in zone 8 or 9... still don't know! ;-)

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