re: 2022 Fall Garden Thread

I have what I believe is quackgrass in my garden. The root system is incredibly obnoxious. Grows like a spiderweb. Everything I have read says there is no easy way to get rid of it. The only thing I've seen recommended is tilling when it shoots up a few sprouts and get the root system at a nutrient deficit. I've been burning my garden 3 times a week because it shoots up so many sprouts. I couldn't even plant this spring because of it. It robs the nutrients out of the soil and you can't even get a shovel in the ground because the roots are so dense. Guess I'll just stay the course and hope to win with perseverance.

For those of you that have planted Purple Hull Pinkeye peas, are these bush/semi-vining? There’s a ‘bvr’ variety that is semi-vining but I don’t see a description for regular PH’s.

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For those of you that have planted Purple Hull Pinkeye peas, are these bush/semi-vining? There’s a ‘bvr’ variety that is semi-vining but I don’t see a description for regular PH’s.

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I planted some called “Top Pick” purple hulls. They’re a bush variety.

The BVR stands for black eye cowpea mosaic virus resistant.

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I'm pulling what remains of a squash that fell victim to a vine borer.

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I’ve never grown squash, zucchini, or pumpkins, so I’ve never really had to deal with vine borers. I’ve read that they also sometimes attack cucumbers and melons. But I’ve never had that happen. I hope they don’t come after my pumpkins. But I’ll try to be as proactive as possible and spray Bt often and visually inspecting the vines as good as I can.

One thing I was thinking about doing is getting a trap. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried one of these, but they come with a pheromone lure and apparently help a lot based on testimonials.
Vine borer trap - eBay

Then there’s this one on Amazon that looks the same but it’s all green to supposedly not attract bumble bees.
Squash Pumpkin Vine Borer Trap

I worry the pheromone lure would actually attract more vine borers though.

I also saw one video where this woman wrapped the base of her squash plants with athletic tape and swore by it. I’ll see if I can find the video.

ETA: Found it. YouTube

I don’t know if that would be practical for pumpkin vines.

Has anyone grown these varieties down here (Louisiana) and had success?

Black Cherry Tomato




Atomic grape tomato



It is my first time growing tomatoes, I'm sure I should probably just get common generic ones but I thought these looked interesting.

I've got an atomic grape plant producing right now. I've tried to grow them for the past 3 seasons but this is the first that I've been successful in getting one to produce. It's been weird because I don't have that problem with any other tomato seed starts. I've been thinking that I may have a bad batch of seeds. The starts get to be about 7" tall and then start struggling really badly.

Anyway, I finally got one in the garden outside this year. It has made a lot of tomatoes and they're cool to look at. The skin is really thick and they crack pretty badly. They are also kind of an odd size - too big to be a cherry, but too small to really use on sandwiches or slice. Pretty much a salad tomato. The flavor also isn't that great.

That all sounds pretty negative, but they're really pretty and I'd say they're worth growing if you want a cool looking tomato for salads, capreses, etc. The plant that I have is also super prolific. I will have picked well over 100 tomatoes from it by the time it quits. I prefer other varieties for eating plain though. I consider myself halfway decent at growing tomatoes from seed and the atomic grapes are the only ones that have really given me trouble, so just food for thought. It's especially weird for a smaller variety. I normally find those to grow like weeds.

I have grown black cherries twice and they're great. I normally grow sweet millions and sungolds for cherries, and the black cherries added a nice color mixup to those. They also taste great.

I grow contenders every Fall. I plant them between 7/15–8/1.

I cleaned the beds up a bit yesterday and my cucumbers have decided that they'll climb the sunflowers, too.

finally some rain here
this hot/humid air and no rain has sucked all the energy out of me

Do you actually pull the sunflowers up? I just cut them at grade and leave the roots to rot.