A few beginner tips
- Subject: A few beginner tips
- From: r*@dos.nortel.com
- Date: Fri, 16 Jul 99 14:31:20 EDT
Stuff I've recently learned (advice to newcomers for next year):
-pay attention to the now fast-growing vines on a daily basis; if they get
to growing "up" too much, gently train/hold them down to grow along the ground.
If you just let them go, they'll get too heavy after 5 feet in the air,
and snap in half.
-the vines seem to grow "up" more readily if there's stuff for it to
"hang on to", so keep the ground around a growing vine clear, including
clear of other plants/vines. Keeping the ground raked flat might also help
it to stay along the ground. It's easy to train the plant to grow up
a narrow garden, but tougher to keep the vines down when there's so many
nearby leaves to climb up on.
-there are some Ziploc "vegetable storage" bags that work nicely for
protecting tomorrow's flowers from the bees. They are perforated with
tiny holes for air ventilation.
-If you have a unchangeable-size garden, set aside a lot of extra dirt at
the START of the season to bury vines with. Once the plant gets established
(like now), you literally won't be able to scrape up a bucket of dirt off the
surface without hitting small white pumpkin vine roots; they're everywhere,
porpoising up and back down into the ground. I've added perhaps 25 40-pound
bags of composted manure to the small garden, and I don't know
where it all went to; I have no dirt to spare!
-keep up on the vine-burying as the vines grow. Before you know it, that
thin secondary you didn't take the time to bury will be 16' long, with
2' leaves and flip itself over with the next wind, splitting the vine.
-rabbits can easily get through 2" hole chain-link fence. It doesn't look
like they'd fit, but I guess they're all fluff, and they do.
-a garden "soaker hose" seems to work REALLY fine, deeply soaking the dirt for
2 feet in each direction along its length.
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Rick Inzero
near Rochester, NY
rdi@cci.com
Did I see bees? I did.
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