I'm beginning to think that Messenger really is making a difference in all my plants. I know this is a bit off topic but here's a pic of an oddball hydrangia I purchased many years ago from Wayside Gardens. It hasn't really done well the last 5 years or so but this year after 3 treatments with messenger it's never looked better.
Rich
Also here's a pic of an EB with 2 Better Boys plus you can see the EB cucumbers on the left. I'm going to pick my first ones this weekend, Park's All-Season Burpless and Amour which is similar to Cool Breeze.
Rich
ritchh --- Always a pleasure to look and enjoy your very healthy garden. Messenger really makes a dfifference.
Why thank you very much Tplant. I trust Dennis is in the process of completely missing you and my thoughts go out to carminator1 and anyone else here that may still be in harms way. I have been a real sucker over the years for all the latest so-called breakthru products...the "Bionic" this and "Super Grow" that etc. etc. I almost didn't purchase Messenger because of that but after reading many comments here at Dave's Garden about it I just couldn't resist. You are absolutely right about it as my garden as a whole has never looked better before using Messenger. The only downside is that with my dense planting I am quickly running out of room and some plants are already starting to crowd out others. I've already had to get my son to help me move some EB's and as you know, that ain't fun! A perfect example is this pic taken yesterday of my out of controll Juliet EB. If it gets any higher I'm going to have to use a ladder.
Rich
Rich,
Your plants look absolutely amazing! They look so lush and bushy. Like I said, your cuke leaves are at least twice as big as mine and mine are kind of yellowish green instead. Your tomato plants look much bushier than mine too. I know I didn't start using Messenger until now (mid-season) but I am hoping my plants will start looking half as good as yours.
Your juliette looks crazy big! Do you have the reinforce wires all around the plants to keep them erect like that? Do you have stakes in there too?
Well, still it is kind of nice to have a problem of good growing plants than having plants that don't grow very well, isn't it?
tmm
If you were getting the earthbox for the first time and you were just starting to garden, would you buy the entire box with starter kit (mix, lime, etc.) or would you buy just the box and go buy the other stuff at the garden shop or somewhere?
Would there be a huge difference in cost going one way or the other? It seems like an extra $30 for the mix, lime and stuff is a lot. Is it?
Comments, recommendations please???
phkat,
Just about everyone here seems to just get EBs without the starter mix, etc. This is my 1st year using EBs myself and all I got was the EBs too. Personally, I just was not willing to pay $60 per box with fertilizer, etc while I could do it cheaper myself. I just followed the organic recommendations (which came with the shiptment) and used 3 cups of organic fertilizer to mix in myself. I probably only spent $10 for each box if that for the potting mix and the fertilizer. If you look at this thread, tons of other people do use different fertilizing methods especially for tomatoes, but all I did for tomatoes too was to use Tomato-Tone from totallytomato.com (again, organic) but I am getting some magnesium decifiency symptoms so I don't recommend Tomato-tone at this point.
I am fairly new to veggy gardening so perhaps others will post their better and "favorite" way to fertilize EBs.
tmm
tmm99 --- Seems like you forgot the dolomite lime ! This is a requirement for tomatos.
tmm99...
The Juliette EB has a cage made from 2"x4" opening wire fencing that slips over the entire EB. If you look at the EB at the bottom of the pic you can see it. This cage is only 4 ft. high so I have woven a bunch of 4 ft. long bamboo stakes into about the top foot of the cage and have tied the tomato branches to the stakes. The branches are now about a foot over the stakes and I guess I'll just have to top them off at this point or let them flop.
Rich
tmm99...
Tplant is absolutely correct as you need the 2 cups of Dolomite for tomatoes. Without that you will surely have BER problems. All of my EB's are fertilized with 2 cups of Espoma 100% Organic 5-3-3 plus 1/2 cup each Bone Meal and Kelp Meal plus the Dolomite only with tomatoes. This is mixed into the soil before planting. Please note only 100% organic can be mixed in while with standard fertilizer you must use the surface stripe method. Also please note that the label MUST say 100% organic. There are many fertilizers on the market that are mixtures of organic & chemical fertilizer. These CANNOT be mixed into the soil.
Rich
Thank you Rich.
I wasn't aware you had to put dolomite for tomatoes. Well, I didn't. Oh well. I used Tomato-tone from totallytomato.com and hopefully, they know what they are doing and made their mixture right so I won't have any problems. I did have a BER problem with one plant (Better Boy) but I found out this was caused by stem disease. I cut a branch at the ground level and some disease took over from there and started drying up the main stem and no nutrients could travel up to the tomatoes and hense BER. I had to chuck the whole plant eventually since the whole plant started drying up. Anyway, so far I haven't had BER problems with any other plants so I am crossing my fingers. I seem to be having some magnesium deficiency problem though. (I saw your post elsewhere mentioning epson salt so I am going to try it.)
tmm
tmm99 --- I've been following your posts and happy to hear that you enjoy EBs. What makes you think you have a magnesium problem ? What type of soil did you use for the set-up ?
Hi Tplant,
I am getting yellow leaves at the bottom and according to my book (The Vegetable & Herb Expert by Dr. D. G. Hessayon), it looks to be magnesium deficiency. The book say
Symptom: Yellowing between veins (it has a colored drawing next to the description and mine looks just like the drawing to me.)
Discoloration begins on lower leaves and moves upwards until all foliage is affected. Yellow areas may turn brown. A common and serious disorder which is made worse, not better , by standard feeding.
Treatment: Spray with Epson Salts (1/2 oz/pint) or use a foliar spray containing magnesium.
All I have so far is yellowing of leaves at the lower 1/4 of the plants. Some plants are better than others. My sweet millions are totally fine. My celebrity and a russian tomato (unknown variety) are being affected more than any other ones but Celebrity more so (Celebrity happened to be in a regular container... not an EB).
I used tomato-tone from totallytomato.com. Tomato-tone is made by Espoma. Here is the URL
http://www.espoma.com/content.aspx?type=p&id=23&intCategoryID=4
What do you think? Should I not worry about it? Before you posted with your question, I had already done an epson salt water remedy to these plants. I don't really know what I am doing (1st year growing regular tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes seem to be doing GREAT but then, I think they are easier to grow anyway) so any comments would be greatly appreciated.
tmm
Wish you could show pictures ? It would make it easier to identify. You always take a risk with store bought plants. This is the reason why it is best to raise your own from seed purchased thru a reputable dealer. Meanwhile it sounds like you, like so many others this season, have a problem with a blight. There really isn't much to offer w/o pictures. Trim off the yellow and hope for the best.
P.S. -- What did you use for soil ?
This message was edited Jul 11, 2005 12:32 PM
I used potting soil from SummerWinds (CA local nursury) which I used for all my plants. BTW, one of the plants I am having trouble with was raised from a seed, and the seed came from a tomato (it didn't come from a packet).
I don't have a mega close-up shot photo of the yellow leaves, so I am uploading the photo have. It is my Celebrity. You can sort of see the yellowing between veins (the bottom few leaves)...
tmm
I can't make it out. Maybe Carolyn can as she is the one in the know about plant disease but it doesn't look good to me. If the yellowing were confined to the bottom of the plant it would be natural but since you don't have any rings or brown edges on the leaves I would guess it to be the fertilizer as in to much ? Only a guess ???
Thank you Tplant, for your comments.
I think I will wait a while and see how this plant fares. So far, it is setting fruit fine, and although some leaves are yellow, the leaves seem strong (although kind of leathery but it could be the characteristics of Celebrity, I don't know.)
tmm
For tmm99 & anyone else interested in growing EB cucumbers here is a pic of the four EB varieties I am growing and at the moment picking most every day. Left to right...Park's All-Season Burpless, Sweet Success, Tasty Jade & Amour. All set fruit without pollination and are burpless. The three large varieties are thin skinned and without a trace of bitterness. The Amour has very spiney skin and must be peeled but quite honestly is the sweetest cucumber I have ever tasted. Much better than Cool Breeze which it resembles.
Rich
Nice to see you back on the EB thread Rich!
I see you've been busy growing and picking beautiful cukes! They all look so great.
All the thin skinned ones, are they very thin skinned? I'm most interested in your Tasty Jade in comparison to the others. For some reason, both my English and Diva's skins are on the tough side, but this could just be my crop. (I have only gotten 2 english, 1 diva and 1 armenian so far, which is rather disappointing. I think I will follow your fertilizer mix next year and see.) Diva was very very sweet though. Would you say Amour is even sweeter?
tmm
And Rich,
How is your Raven doing? Are they still pretty compact? Have you harvested any yet? How do they taste?
Wow, that was a mouthful wasnt it.
tmm
Wow tmm99...a bunch of questions. First the Raven are staying very compact. I picked 6 or 7 from each plant and then they seemed to stop for about 10 days however now I am seeing more starting to set and I should be picking them in less than a week. Very nice squash with a dark green smooth skin and good flavor. The cucumbers are all sweet without any bitterness and although I prefer all my cukes peeled I will say that a fingernail goes thru the skin very easily when handling them. Again the Amour is by far the best tasting of them all. I am presently inundated with fruit winding up picking 22 total today. Here's a pic taking from one side of my Park's All-Season Burpless EB & trellis showing some of the fruit on the first couple of plants, the rest is really hidden. It's been a very good cucumber year here in NJ.
Rich
Your photo of all season burpless looks fantastic!
22 cukes a day out of 4 plants correct? Well, even if you had 8 plants, you are getting a whole lot more cukes than I am. Next year, I am going to swap the space with my sweet million which is shading the cukes in the afternoon and use your fertilizer method and see if they do better.
I already bought Tasty Jade for next year and now I am thinking of trying either Amour or all-season burpless.
Thank you very much for your info on Raven. I have 3 zucchini plants this year and a couple of them are getting pretty big, and I am looking for something that is more compact so I will definitely consider Raven.
tmm
Hello everybody. It's been a while since I've been on here. I'm kinda having second thoughts about these EB's. While everything started out growing great it seems as though it's all going downhill, and that's making me cranky. I harvested probably 20 cukes, some bitter and some delicious. The cuke plants started to yellow and die after a short while. They were watered every day but it didn't take much water to fill it up. My other two EB's that have tomato's in them are growing good but I'd say that 75% of the maters on each plant has had BER. I followed the instructions precisely when planting and now I'm experiencing these problems. For the addition of lime I used Espoma's garden lime. It has 21% calcium 10% magnesium. I mixed it with the soil per instructions, made sure that they always had water and now I'm getting these results. I just can't win.
Today I had to completely remove all cuke plants and get rid of them. We had a severe t-storm come through last night totally destroy them. All of my boxes were turned over and the soil was spilling out. I went to Menard's and bought some 7' fence posts to put next to them so hopefuly I can at least save my maters. I had thought about buying three more boxes for next year but now I'm not so sure.
Anyway, enough with my complaining.
This is my first year for my earth boxes. I have them on my deck. ITs like a jungle out there. Everything seems to be doing great. They are just growing out of sight. Here is a pic of my cukes. They are bush ones so they don't get real big. got some nice ones on there. Will post my other too also. Yvonne
Here is my Broccoli. I've never grown it before. I have two that are heading out. I don't think I would do broccoli again. It takes up a lot of room and I don't think you get that much out of it. I'm thinking peas next year. Yvonne
Here are my tomatoes. This is two plants. I tied them up because they were so heavy. They are just like one big plant. Sorry pic isn't that good. One plant is Brandywine and the other unknown, may be a yellow. seeds got mixed up. Yvonne
Cranky -- sorry about your current situation -- that hurts.
Vonny -- you've got quite a crop going. Haven't used EBs before. It's interesting to see what people do with them. You make me want to plant some Brandywines! It's been years but remembering the size and flavor....yummm. :)
Thank you. I've never grown them before but I've sure heard a lot of good things about them. Yvonne
ahh Vonny next year if you grow Brandywines you might want to put that in a EB alone.
Everything looks great, happy for you that you are having such luck.
cranky ---- Sorry to hear about your cukes. What you describe sounds like a virus. I don't raise cukes because to me they are very susceptible to disease especially in wet weather. Rather than having it spread to my tomatos I choose not to grow them but to buy them at the supermarket. As previously stated I believe it was the weather that caused your problems and not the EBs. Also , we all have problems with BER. Some tomatos like the hybrids seem to be more susceptible to it. However it does clear up after the first batch so don't give up.
As far as Brandywines are concerned they prefer the cooler weather. Mine did great during our winter months when the temperatures were in the low 70s during the day and low 60s at night.
Cranky...as Tplant mentioned we all have BER problems, for me only regular & plum
varieties and never with cherry or grape tomatoes. That Espoma garden lime is the same that I use and it is dolomite. This year for the first time I am treating all my plants with Messenger every 3 weeks and for the first time I have no BER on all my plants both in EB's and in the ground, not one tomato. As for the cucumbers, you must have had some kind of major problem because they grow beautifully in EB's. If you had 4 healthy plants in each of your EB's they would take a full fill-up at least once per day. The pic is of my 3 EB's (12 plants total) and I am watering them twice per day at this point.
Rich
Hey Rich. Your plants look amazing. Where can I find this "Messenger"? What is it good for? I did get my tomato's staked back up and hopefuly I got them secure enough that they don't get blown over again. While I was staking them I had a spur of excitement. Under the foliage I saw bright red and I thought that I was going to pick a ripe one. Once I got it off the vine I noticed that BER struck again. If I put Messenger on now do you think that it might end BER for the rest of the season?
I've been looking for something to put in the EB that had the cukes but I can't come up with anything. I was looking for some seed's such as snap peas or the like but all of the stores here in Indianapolis don't have them out anymore. If everything turns out ok with my tomato's I just may order 3 more boxes for next year.
Cranky...
Messenger is Harpin, a naturally occuring protein that is isolated from a specific bacteria and is 100% non-toxic.. When sprayed on plants it activates the plant's immune, growth and reproduction systems as it tricks the plant into thinking it is under attack. That's a terribly over simplified explanation but for more info go to www.edenbio.com. It's probably too late to start using it now as it should be used every three weeks starting at the seedling stage. Also, since BER is caused by among many things uneven watering, and this year I am religiously watering my EB's at least twice per day I cannot guarantee that the lack of BER on my tomatoes is solely due to Messenger, but it sure looks to me that it is working.
Rich
Thanks Rich. I just looked at their website. That stuff sounds amazing and by looking at your pix I see the proof. I think that I'll order some for next year. I noticed on the site that single use packets can be ordered so you can get just the amount that will be needed. I also read that it can be found in retail stores. Where did you get your's?
Mark
I've seen it at Lowe's...but not in the single use packs only the larger bottle.
I bought it online from their website. I got the 0.12 oz. packets that each make 1 gallon of spray solution. That 1 gallon more than covers my entire property including all my vegetables, flowers, fig tree and various shrubs in the front.
Rich
Sweet!! Thanks guy's. I sure am going to use it next year. Do you think that I can start using it now on my other plants or should I wait until spring now?
araness --- Are you sure it was Messenger ? I know they are trying to get into retail stores but in packet size only ! Are you certain it was Messenger and if so how much and what quanity ?
Humm price was around 30.00 and not sure about the size. About the same size bottle that the Ortho comes in. They had it on a cardboard display near the checkout, in the outside part or the garden center
Does the pakage just say Messenger?
