Do you cut off the first flowers of vegetable plants?
Ariel (Zone: 7b)
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
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LoneJack Zn 6a, KC
4 years agotheforgottenone1013 (SE MI zone 5b/6a)
4 years agoRelated Discussions
cutting off flowers of garlic plant
Comments (13)There is really no question that prompt removal of the scapes increases the eventual bulb size for most BUT not necessarily all varieties of hardneck garlic. Last year I had two patches of a rocambole, one with the scapes removed and one not. The one with the scapes removed produced bulbs twice the size of the other one, with identical treatment. OTOH This year I got very nice bulbs from my Japanese without removing a scape. Planting the largest cloves also produces the largest bulbs, virtually always better than bulbils and/or rounds often by a good two years. That is one of the easiest ways to improve one's own stock....See MoreHow do you keep vegetable gardening groove in the off season??
Comments (15)We have a 12 X 30' hoophouse to extend the fall and spring seasons. When the ground in the hoop house freezes in winter (as is happening today), I cover everything with remay for extra protection and wait for a stretch of warm sunny days to get things going again. It might be next week or the next thaw might not happen until April. Meanwhile, in the house, I've got potted herbs and cut and come again greens (arugua, lettuce, etc.) in all my east and south-facing windows. Tiny onions and shallots can be planted in pots for cutting too. I've found that I can dig up a piece of perennial herbs like oregano, lemon balm, spearmint from the garden in fall and put them in pots. It's best to do it early enough so they can adjust to the pot outside for a while before bringing them in. Tender herbs like basil and marjoram sometimes cooperate and let you dig them and bring them in too. This year I've got a pot of Thai basil indoors -- so far so good. My 20 year old Rosemary is trained as a standard. It goes into the ground in spring and gets potted up and brought in before winter. It loves the dry, circulating heat at a window next to the wood stove. Lemon grass, bay, meyer lemon and key lime plants all live permanently in pots, going out in summer and back in for winter. Scale is a problem with the latter 3 but occasional treatment with neem oil in summer and washing leaves in the sink in winter, keeps them healthy. For years I bought new organic potting soil for all these indoor pots but the last couple years I have dumped all used potting soil into a couple of old whiskey barrels outside and let the rain, air and outdoor micro-organisms, refresh the soil. When re-potting food plants to bring indoors, I add good compost and maybe some perlite if the soil seems too heavy. I add a squirt of fish and seaweed emulsion to my watering every week to keep the plants nice and green and producing new leaves even duing the short winter days. It works pretty well. Also last year I started a small vermicomposting operation in a 5 gallon bucket in the house. It's not an optimal container, but the worms are doing their thing and they create really nice potting soil from leaves/wet newspaper and a little kitchen waste. Amazing. We're going to start another vermicompost container and put the worms to work on our kitty litter (not for use on food plants!). The wood-based kitty litter is much nicer than the clay type and the worms should produce some good compost for use on ornamental plants outside. One more very easy winter harvest tip: grow belgian endive. Grow them as a root vegetable that you harvest in fall. I crowd the harvested roots, leaf side up, into a large plastic pot, put potting soil around the roots, water, and put the pot into a 5 gal bucket. This goes into a perfectly dark place with temps around 60 F. In a couple months you have gorgeous little white heads of endive. I like to exuse myself before a winter dinner party "to harvest the salad from the bedroom closet."...See MoreHow do you keep a tomato plant in vegetation stage?
Comments (46)This may shock sey, but I agree with what he said above. There are two cycles in the life cycle of a tomato plant. The first is the vegetative one where there is growth of roots and stems and foliage. I think that most of you know that small transplants can and do form buds and blossoms, the sexual cycle, and that means that the energy compounds made from photsynthesis are diverted to the sexual cycle, albeit prematurely. And that's why many growers take the buds and blossoms off those young plants as I usually did when I was setting out transplants. Most tomato growers want to keep the plants in the vegetative cycle until the plants are much larger. The blossom cycle itself is about 2-3 weeks so after removing any early buds and blossoms the plants will then form new buds and blossoms and at that point leave them on the plant. From then on of course the plants continue to get larger and larger as well as more buds and blossoms and the then more buds and blossoms and fruit set and fruit maturation, but with more foliage there's more photosynthesis thus more ATP, GTP, etc. to do both at the same time as sey mentioned. So yes, one can keep a plant in the initial vegetative cycle by over fertilizing it and/or growing plants in overly rich soil since that keeps plants in that initial vegetative cycle without going into the sexual cycle. I once was living in a small apt in a house that was owned by two brothers. I wanted so much to grow some tomato plants but the only place available was a small strip behind the garage and they said that was OK. I had to buy some plants, not a problem, set them back there and waited. They sat there and sat there and didn't grow, actually hardly any sun and overhanging branches from the yard of the folks who lived in back. Being now desperate, I fertilized them like no tomorrow and ended up with huge plants that were best used as shubbery, with never a bud or blossom to be seen.<G> And I should have known better since I'm the one who grew up on what we call a truck farm here in the East where we grew many different kinds of crops, and many acres of tomatoes and by age 5 was sitting on the seat atop the water tank of the plant setter and not that soon after that was riding the plant setter with her Aunt Olive and not soon after that was picking tomatoes, and they were 3 peck heavy bushels, but dad would carry them out to the dirt roadway and then come along later with that two wheeled cart, take them back to the big shed where we would then sort and pack them and load the truck to take them to market the next morning, and the gates to that market opened at 5AM when there was a mad dash of all the trucks to get to coveted spots in the long covered stall where the commercial buyers would walk down the aisle making decisions on which farmers' produce the wanted to buy. Darn good memories for me. Carolyn...See MoreBest to cut flowers/buds off when fall-planting?
Comments (10)I guess I would like to see a scientific article confirming the very common (and admittedly reasonable!) idea that a plant diverts energy from growing its roots in order to produce flowers and that it's just a one-way transfer of energy. It makes complete sense, but I'd like to see more of the botany and biology of it. I'm just not 100% convinced that producing flowers is a net loss to the roots, end of story. I wonder if it's possible that any growth process of the plant also grows the roots, and that there are other variables involved. But maybe I'm completely wrong. Clearly growing the leaves sends energy to the root, but maybe growing flowers just results in a net loss to the roots, and that is the end of the story. Maybe I'm just self-justifying because I want to see flowers on my plants -- yes, even the first few months after I plant them in September! I just can't stand the idea of cutting them off as soon as I put them in the ground. :-(((...See Moregardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
4 years agoAriel (Zone: 7b)
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoLoneJack Zn 6a, KC
4 years agoAriel (Zone: 7b)
4 years agoJamie
4 years agoAriel (Zone: 7b)
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agonanelle_gw (usda 9/Sunset 14)
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agogorbelly
4 years agoDekTek Tile
3 years agoAriel (Zone: 7b)
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agorobert567
3 years ago
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LoneJack Zn 6a, KC