re: The 2021 Garden Thread

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Better put up an eviction notice.

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Here, you tell em.


I don’t know where they’re going, but they’re foraging somewhere. Maybe a few do visit during the day and I just haven’t noticed. I’m also still feeding them. But I think I’ll start to ween them off soon. I added another box cause they had the first one 90% full. So I figured they could use the sugar syrup to build comb since they’re still establishing themselves.

I was thinking I’d have to hand pollinate as well because I haven’t seen any in the garden. But I got a bunch of cucumbers growing. So I’ll just let nature do it’s thing.

Same for me, but our one cucumber is a tiny bit smaller. The ones I tried to pollinate failed.


Our bell pepper plant hasn't died, but hasn't grown either. No idea what's going on with it. Yellowish too.

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Our bell pepper plant hasn't died, but hasn't grown either. No idea what's going on with it. Yellowish too.

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Staying too wet? Pepper plants are usually pretty easy to grow, but every time I’ve had issues with them it was due to over watering. They don’t like as much water as tomatoes and cucumbers.

My guess is that they have found a more profitable source. So they’re focusing on it.

Maybe if I yank the feeder they’ll get busy on my garden.

Well, things appear to still be getting pollinated. So all is well I guess.

ETA: So I decided to do a little googling on the topic and this one guy said almost exactly what I just wrote.
Beesource.com

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They just have more profitable forage elsewhere is all. If bees didn't forage close to the hives then the commercial pollination industry would not work.

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Also what are these small things on my squash?

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Vine borer eggs. RIP squash plant.

I have no idea what’s going on with your cucumbers. Definitely looks like you have some insect damage. But it’s probably a combination of things and the plant is stressed.

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Impressive that you have ripe tomatoes in 65 days. I have all the varieties you mentioned, probably planted a little later, and am way behind you - on limited sun.

You got any secrets?

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Man not really haha. I’m kind of an idiot when it comes to growing stuff and I just started this a few years ago. My process is pretty straight forward. I start the seeds around the first week of January. Plant out first or second week of March. In the planting hole, I put bone meal, calcium nitrate, epsom salt, tomato tone, and compost. Probably about 1tbsp of each except tomato tone and compost. Like a handful of those. I side dress the plants every month or so with tomato tone and water with Texas tomato food liquid fertilizer whenever I remember/can. I haven’t really used the liquid fertilizer because we’ve been getting so much rain. My plants get sun from about 10am to dark though, so it could be lack of sun.

I will say that my seed starts always do better than store bought plants. I have 2 big beef and 2 Cherokee purples I bought from the store. Both plants have a lot of tomatoes on them, but they are at least 2 weeks away from starting to ripen.

What’s wrong with my tomato plants? It’s 82 here today and they are wilting like it’s 100 outside. They also have been dropping flowers for a few weeks now.

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Looks like they need to be watered.

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I keep a good eye on the watering. Soil is good and moist when I stick a finger in it.

Yes, and added about 3” of mulch in bottom before I put dirt in.