Many volunteers in small area. Thin or Keep?
8 years ago
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- 8 years ago
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How Many Watermelons to Keep Each Plant?
Comments (2)An overload of melons can hurt size and quality. You have some medium melons and one/ones unknown which doesn't help giving help. I have seen a medium or so melon like Sangria have 5 melons in the first set. They tended to be 18 or 19 pounds apiece and not top quality as Sangria can be about the best there is. two 25 pound Sangrias are better than 5 only fair ones. In your case, it is partly a matter of how healthy the plants are. If they are vibrantly healthy, they can handle 3 at a time. If average, only 2. For small varieties...let them set what they will. Very healthy vines can make a nice second setting too....See MoreWhich volunteers to keep?
Comments (5)Thanks for the feedback. Ladyslppr: I do think the spiderwort is a garden escape, so not a true volunteer. I'll be working on getting rid of it (have to dig down). Davidl: I love the heart-leaved asters too, although they do reseed prolifically in my yard and I've cleared them out of certain areas where they were engulfing smaller natives. Peter: I actually had a pokeweed along the fence last year covering up a missing slat, but it hasn't come back. I do get a little nervous about its reseeding habit, but the birds love the berries and it's nice to have such a tall herbaceous plant in a garden with lots of small plants. Beggar ticks aren't a big problem so far, but I'll probably pull them. Indian tobacco has little blue & white flowers in the late summer when not much else is happening, so I may keep it (although it reseeds quite a bit). I'm surprised no one said anything about the brambles -- I had been pulling this religiously. Should I let it grow? They seem to pop up all over the place. I didn't mention my least favorite native volunteer -- poison ivy -- it serves an ecological purpose in the woods away from habitation, but just doesn't fit with my small native garden. My next door neighbor has it all over and every year it starts to come through, under and over the fence and I break my 'no chemicals' policy and get out the Brush-B-Gon. Another native volunteer I didn't mention is daisy fleabane, Erigeron sp. I tend to pull these also, but I'm not sure why. -- wd (Now if I can only encourage some volunteer native birds to nest in my birdhouse so I stop unintentionally breeding English house sparrows.... but that's a post for another forum.)...See Morethinning blossoms or small tomatoes from a cluster of tomatoes
Comments (2)It is strictly your choice. It is not required for any reason unless perhaps someone is trying to grow a giant for a competition and even then the potential for gain in size is primarily variety-related. IME with the variety you usually only see such clusters with the first sets only so why not do it on a couple of clusters and leave the others and see which you prefer to do. Just keep in mind that it is determinate variety so you will be sacrificing some production. Dave...See MoreHow many volunteers do you usually get?
Comments (10)"...why so many this year but not other years (I'm not doing anything different)?" It could be weather conditions or perhaps, and more likely, you allowed more tomatoes to fall on the ground last year than you did in years past. "Another question: are volunteers always going to be from the prior year's crop or is it possible to have a seed sprout from previous years?" I suppose it is possible, but not very probable. I have a limited space and only want to grow what I want to grow, so I too pull volunteers. I have however done experiments with saving commercial F1 seeds. Here are my results thus far: Early Girl - Inconclusive, need to retry. 4th of July - Came back true. Park's Whopper - Small fruit that didn't taste as good. Big Beef - Not as productive. Big Zak - In progress 2008. Randy...See More- 8 years ago
- Suzi AKA DesertDance So CA Zone 9b thanked daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
- 7 years ago
- 7 years ago
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