Basil seedlings crowded12/8/2023 ![]() “The seedlings were so tiny, and we wanted lots of vegetables, so I fudged on spacing,” confessed one of my favorite newbie gardeners. Seedlings need more space to grow well as they reach maturity Crowded Plants Complain A few twiggy branches stuck into the ground among the plants would have increased sunlight, reduced the threat of diseases, and made the peas much easier to pick. A neighbor watched her “self-supporting” peas grow into a tangle that collapsed into the mud – an easy vegetable gardening mistake based on misinformation. Peas need support, too, regardless of what the seed catalogs say. I now use small 3-ring tomato cages for most of my pepper plants, with more stakes added in fall when the branches often hold heavy fruits near their tips. Too many gardeners learn this lesson the hard way, myself included. Nobody said I had to stake peppers!” my friend Carly confided. Leaves that look pale with darker green veins are a warning sign of magnesium deficiency, which can be quickly cured by drenching with dilute Epsom salts (1 teaspoon per quart of water). This physiological disorder can be prevented with several good gardening practices – amending the soil with compost and a balanced organic fertilizer, maintaining even soil moisture, and perhaps adding pulverized eggshells to planting holes to provide extra calcium. Shortages of calcium and magnesium often appear as blossom end rot, which causes dark patches to form on the fruits’ blossom ends. With most gardeners’ favorite crop, tomatoes, soil-borne mineral deficiencies become apparent in midseason, when the plants are growing, blossoming and setting fruit all at once. Some instant soil mixes for raised beds are great, while others need time to come alive. ![]() New gardeners and those who have recently relocated often work in “new” soil that is not naturally-occurring, having been purchased in bags or off-loaded from a truck. Cloches can be used to protect against wind as well as cold Getting it Right with Tomatoes and Peppers ![]() In places where wind is a factor, tender seedlings need protection. “Everything was fine – temperature, sun, soil – but the wind ate them up.” Cloches, row cover tunnels, or even cardboard boxes placed over seedlings can prevent wind damage, but you have to watch the weather and think ahead. “Wind wrecked my broccoli seedlings,” a new gardener recently told me. (When you try to keep up with fiddly little tags, ‘Romas’ somehow turn out to be ‘Green Zebras’.)Ī top early season vegetable gardening mistake involves the unexpected deaths of carefully nurtured seedlings. Maybe you made a mistake on planting dates, or had to deal with disastrous weather, or perhaps you just forgot why you started writing your tomatoes’ variety names on a piece of painter’s tape and sticking it on the pots. No matter how long you’ve been growing a vegetable garden, each season you learn new ways to do it better.
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