dubmeup wrote:
That's handy. If I get a shallow spade is less digging then!

I think I follow, I'll carry on for today with a general clean up, have a re-read of that later and get started on that approach tomorrow...although I'm still trying source some 'muck' for nowt before I go and shell out for it!

Honestly don't mind the graft, it's as therapeutic for me atm as it is hard work and I'm keen to do some root veg as they tend to be crap/pricey out here to buy.

Ah, good point. I'll have a better idea of that tomorrow then.

One thing I have noticed is a disntict lack of bugs and insects generally. There the odd few critters and a handfull of snails but it's not teeming. That good or bad?

Anyway, cig rolled, bk to it!

oioioi wrote: It's certainly good that you aren't inundated with gastropods! Andyh will be jealous
Pollinators like bees are obviously pretty essential but I wouldn't worry if you aren't seeing many at the moment. There's probably very little to attract them with the plot as it is. As you get putting things in, they will come, no doubt of that. Stick in some nice pretty flowery stuff too to help encourage them.
You'll also probably not have much there which has attracted aphids and such so that's good too. It means you won't be starting off trying to keep on top of bug attacks hopefully. No doubt they WILL arrive at some point but hopefully their predators will follow them.
Good luck with your lower back

Well, I planted a whole slew of things from potatoes to corn and melons... birds ate most of the seeds, rabbits ate most of the green sprouts from the beans and corn, and now some bugs have taken to my potatoes. My tomatoes and peppers are still in starter pots on the porch, have been for a few months, and they aren't growing
Now, I've never had a green thumb... in fact I managed to kill a cactus but there is absolutely no reason I should look at my once full of seeds garden and see a sparse, albeit, gnawed on, green patch of holey leafed plants.
The garden is fenced in, I am working on getting the gate up, bags hanging on the fence around the garden (which don't bother the birds a bit)...but me thinks I shall have to replant 90% of it (although I shall have plenty of squash *fingers crossed* if it doesn't die before harvest).
I am in the ring of fire, Satan's ass, Arizona... any advice on keeping my plants alive?

Wow! I bet you feel like it's coming at you from ALL angles. That's quite a bit to deal with.

Despite your fence, the rabbits are obviously getting in somehow. You need to find out how they are. Bearing in mind they can burrow pretty darn deep. I've suffered a similar rabbit attack and my solution was to go along the fence line, digging a deep trench and putting big locally found rocks in the trench before backfilling it. It worked and kept them out, I may just have been lucky. If you want to keep them out, you'll need to think along similar lines. The gate would also help

Birds (especially pigeons) can be a right PITA. Many people resort to the death approach which I don't support (similarly with rabbits) but if you like a bit of wild meat..... My advice would be to try and keep them off your crops either physically or by deterrent. You could employ something akin to a fruit cage using net to physically stop them getting to them. Fleece is another option for that. Or, and this does work, you could use things in and around the crops that the birds won't like. People sometimes run lines of tape stretched between poles in their plots. These tapes hum in the breeze and freak the birdies out. I've tried it and it does have an effect. On farms, I've used commercially available gizmos that spin even in a light breeze and similarly freak the pigeons. You may be able to rig up a home-made variation. Some people hang CDs on strings and report that the bouncing light scares the birds off but I've never tried that. Scaring them off is the theme.

The main bug problems I've come across with potatoes are what we down here call wireworm and slug damage. Slugs are discussed elsewhere here, wireworms are a bit trickier. They can live in the soil for years then you put spuds in and they go on a breeding frenzy. Rotating the crops is the best way to avoid adding to your population of them if you have them. Choosing resistant varieties is also wise and the earlier you can get the seed potatoes in the better (this also applies to trying to avoid blight). What kind of thing are you seeing with your spuds?

As for your non growing toms and peppers, what growing medium are they in? What is your watering routine? What access/exposure to light and heat have they got? Tell us more basically

The fence idea of digging a trench and putting stones in is a great idea... except it's Arizona... dig 2 inches down and you hit rock. Once I finish the gate, it should deter the rabbits some... if not I shall be giving the trench digging a try. I actually couldn't dig the garden out, I had to build it up over the last year and pull weeds out because without a machine to dig through the soil there was no way I would have been able to do it by hand in time.

We have quail here, pigeons are not usually around here, some doves, crows, etc... the quail are so used to us they literally stand there and stare at us like we're crazy. We hung plastic bags from the fence which blow and make noise, doesn't seem to bother them a bit. Will try stringing some bailing twine from poles and hanging things from it to scare them off.

The are the potatoes are in is a new area, have never planted them there before. Have been down on my hands and knees crawling through the rows and cannot find one worm or bug on them, so I am thinking they are in the soil and come up at night maybe. At first they just had some holes in them (not like rabbits had chewed on them, just holes here and there through them), small ones, in some of the leafs...now, it's gotten to the point that there is nothing but stem left and the remaining leafs are being eaten away as well.

The tomatoes and peppers are in a mixture, the same as the garden... it has wood ash, compost, manure (horse, dried for at least 1 year, some as a long as 2 years), black dirt, and some organic potting soil. They are in those starter pots that decompose over time and allow the roots to grow through. They are on the back porch, so they have the morning sun until it passes over the house around noon and then they have shade, outside all the time (were in the house, but the cat tried to eat the sprouts). They also get watered either once a day if needed, basically when all the water has been soaked up and the pots are beginning to dry (we water from the bottom as the pots soak the water up and moisten the soil all over). Heat? It's Central Arizona, was 93 F yesterday on the back porch, 97 today. They look like they are about an inch or so above the soil line, nice green color, but they've looked like that for over a month and a half now, just sprouts.

Thanks for the ideas!

That rock should help with the rabbits then Sounds like you really do need to sort that gate

I'm not sure the bags or bailer twine will work. I'd try flat tape. You can get it on a roll. If it's strung fairly tight it hums like crazy in the breeze.

It sounds like you may be suffering from the infamous colorado beetle on those spuds if they are getting literally stripped like that. Is there any signs of eggs on the leaves?

It sounds like you're doing the right kind of thing with your toms and peppers. Not too much direct mid-day Arizona sun, reasonable medium and good watering regime.You're giving them a proper drench when you water them yeah?. Bear in mind that peppers do take a good while to get going. Toms too can seem slow at first but then they go whooshh. Is there any sign of root at the bottoms of the pots?

No sign of roots coming through the bottoms of the pots yet. Yes, they get a good drench every time they get watered. Same as the rest of the garden. Will look for flat tape next time I am in town, thanks again for the idea

No sign of beetles or eggs on the leafs, even checked on the other side of the fence where there are a few plants and bushes and didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Flies and lady bugs is all I've noticed so far, will check again this evening when it cools down a bit outside.

Maybe to encourage the plants to get rooting down into the base of the pots you could try an approach similar to the app's carrotator. As in bottom water them. They should sense that there is water available down there but that they need to go get it. Once they've developed a good root they'll be away. That would also minimise the risk of black leg too. Black leg as we call it down here is something that toms are susceptible to and at first you don't see it even though the damage is being done in the base of the stem. Once it's in there the plant is a doomed really.

.

Calling gris and the apprentice, your input would be a great help to Stars I'm sure

Found bugs all over the potatoes last night... looked them up by what they looked like, apparently they are a "click beetle".
This is what the little buggers look like:

The only way to get rid of them that I can find is pesticides...which I don't want to use and I would rather not kill them at all. Any ideas on how to get them to move along naturally? Thanks

Ah so tiz a beetle though not the colorado. This isn't something I have suffered luckily for me so I have no direct experience to offer
I'm not even sure that a new crop with buried fleece would help tbh.
I AM now going to read through some of my books and have a chat with some others though. Maybe others here will have some more immediate advice to offer.

Well you live and learn! Apparently the wireworms that I'm familiar with are the larvae of yes click beetles.....

ALL of the wireworm damage I've seen has been to tubers and roots. I've never seen an issue with foliage

Maybe in the USA you have a variety that attacks foliage once the wireworm has grown up but I've had a look and I can't see a reference to that. All references I can find are to below ground damage when in the wireworm stage such as I've seen.

Fair to say though that even if it's something else eating the leaves, if you have a lot of adult beetles that would mean you have a lot of wireworm. Which means your potatoes would look like swiss cheese anyway if they got to form.
I suspect you may have something else which is causing the foliage damage but as I say maybe your particular type of wireworm has a fondness for leaves too once they grow up?

Are you sure that the leaves are being eaten rather than falling away? Cos it could be that the worm is eating the stem below ground and that could cause the leaves to drop and the plant to die.

Pretty sure they're chomping down the leaves, or were. Went out tonight, all the leaves off all 13 plants are gone, not laying on the ground or anything, just stripped off the plant completely. The stems of the plant are still there, still green, and covered in eggs. Pulled one of them out and dug down, looked over the 20 or so baby potatoes under there, they're tiny but whole (no Swiss cheese look to 'em that I could see). The beetles look like they've moved on, leaving the stems with a gift, 100's of eggs no idea what is going on, although I wish they would eat the pig weed around here.

Thank you for your help! I will take some photos tomorrow, maybe there is something I am missing that someone else may recognize. All I know is the buggers eggs are getting relocated with the stems of the plants to the back part of the property.

Maybe I just have a mutant form of them *shrugs*

So that batch of potatoes is history. It may be that the tubers are still too small for the worm to have feasted on or it may be that this beetle invasion is new and the worm isn't in the ground yet, Either way the plants need to be gotten the hell out of there! You don't want those eggs hatching on your plot

Remove the plants andplace them into a stout black plastic bag and seal it and leave it out in the strong sunlight to steam and destroy the inhabitants, then give the area a good lime treatment.
StarsChildren wrote:

Liming could be a good idea for many reasons, not just restricted to the subject at hand. I'd like to know a bit more about the soil type before I +1ed it though. If it's fairly neutral or leaning toward alkali anyway (chalky) liming would do more harm than good for example. Arizona being a dry State may veer toward alkali. With the thin amount of topsoil that Star's describes there's not likely to be a massive amount of acid forming organic matter in there however If the soil is veering toward acidic then yes lime would be a good thing to add.
The ideal basic soil would be fairly neutral so that you can tailor it's PH fairly easily to suit particular crops as and when you need to. Most crops prefer the soil to be slightly acidic, some more than others. Few like it on the alkaline side of the fence but they do exist.

Lime instead of chemicals would be my choice placed directly on the visible eggs to begin with and copper sulphate my grand/father used on our pastures to help prevent flukes.
Whenever we are gardening in the scense of improving we are altering natures static ways to gain more food, to leave nature to its own devices results in less produce because one is also feeding nature. A balance between both is still a happy medium, but when the balance is in the natural arena,
's favour one has to act by removing the advantage to suit the situation.
To do this we squish the slugs and more come to clean up the alterations and then I clean up the problem I created by placing juicey hybrid greens where there wer'nt any before.

Its the old addage out which there is always a solution but some things nearly have to change.

I say squish the slugs or treat the eggs to gain the happy medium.

StarsChildren wrote:

The Apprentice wrote:
And of course your greens or brassicas will benefit immensely from the bit of lime too.
You would have to spread some serious tonnage of lime on a plot of land to have any major effect on the ph level. I know for decades its a normal yearly thing to lime 1000,s of acres in the southern parst of the republic. My uncle was southern region manager for about 30 years, and this company were lime spreading since the 50,s. I.m not sure whether they are still in operation. But the south was noted for the best silage and grass based products, and there was a constant transit of ag produce moving northwards up the country.

gris

I can remember after we spread lime by hand on the grassland/pasture so the area was powdered white the clover really came on strong and sweetened the meadows and mutton nicely, the fritiliary butterflies flourished also.

We also have a liming policy around these parts still and I know the contractor so I will ask him next time we meet on how the levels work etc.

Griswald wrote:

We may have to agree to disagree that lime is something for everywhere but absolutely apprentice, the chemical route is a duffer from the start. Not the way of the wise.

Have either of you chaps ever seen this kind of total bug defoliation of spuds before?