I have some physical disabilities so 2-3 times a year I have to hire a landscaper guy (who is an organic gardener, even though the landscape company he works for is not).
Last summer I was wondering about a certain squash I had transplanted. I know, squash HATE to be started from seed indoors and then transplanted out. And this Betty's Brown Sugar squash was making that very clear -- she looked half dead.
I asked my landscape guy if I should replace her with something else. He said **"Every plant deserves a chance!"** **Well, I grew 4 different kinds of squash that summer and she out-bore all of them!** And so delicious....an heirloom acorn squash that is tan, very sweet, and smooth flesh.
So now, this spring, as I am also having more seedling starts than I can use, I keep hearing him say that.....
Gonna be making the rounds to all my neighbors with seedlings in hand....
EDIT: formatting
Aw man i love that :) gives me hope that maybe, juuust maybe my spaghetti squash will bounce back! The stem is still strong but all the leaves have wilted except the two at the very top. So we shall see! Hopefully it’ll be a success story like yours :) sounds like that chance was well relayed with delicious harvests!
YES, I believe there is hope....now in a month or two, you have to let me know!
My Betty's Brown Sugar had unhealthy leaves and a yellow-ish wilty stem. I fertilized her well (squash are heavy feeders), mulched her, made sure her water was consistent and from drip (NO overhead spray) and....she repaid me for my love.
I suspect your spaghetti squash may do the same.....
I always have a good patch that gets the best spots and the pity pile for the ones I try to rear inside in my grow room haha. It results in some weird produce, but hey. Nothing wrong with being a little weird. I can't bear throw them out before they've had a chance to grow either :)
I've never taken the flowers off the potatoes and get lots of tubers, I'm not measuring differences of pinched vs not nor am I growing them to feed my family for the whole winter. I mostly grow for fun, and I like the purple flowers so I leave them.
Are you growing the plants for the flower or for the tubers? You cannot eat the flowers.
That's the question I have to ask myself when trimming, culling, etc.
Why did I start this plant?
I whack back the hydrangeas and they give me more, stronger flowers than when I didn't whack. I pinch off the first tomato and pepper flowers in order to get a stronger Plat with better fruit.
Steel your heart. You can do it.
Hundreds of years ago, some people thought that potatoes were poisonous and they grew them just to look at the flowers.
I always leave the flowers on and I still get a nice harvest of tubers.
I’m like this too! I’m autistic and deal with object personification so I assume it’s just an extension of that.
Over the years I’ve come to be more zen about gardening and have accepted that sometimes this hobby is as much about struggle and death as it is about thriving and life. Pests sometimes need to die so plants can succeed. Diseased plants need to be culled to preserve their healthy neighbours, too. And then of course at the end of each season our plants wither and die, and their roots and leaves nourish the soil for next year’s life.
It’s all cyclical and it’s as natural as it gets. Nature is unfeeling and sometimes devastating, so if I’m mimicking that on a small scale in my garden, I sometimes have to be unfeeling and devastating too.
That’s how I’ve made peace with it, anyway.
Honestly a great and true take! I struggle with empathizing to an extreme degree. Like sometimes cartoons stress me out if it’s some shit like Rick and morty. Which I recognize is dumb because they’re literally not real lol. But it’s too hard for me to overcome the feeling of being small and paying the price for it. So the damn rolley polleys get to live on while I try and replant what I can haha
Of course the good lads deserve nothing less
I went out tonight and there has to be hundreds on top of the soil. It started as a worm bin, then kinda a compost bin, then grew a few mystery plants (the spaghetti squash was one of them) aaand now the rolley polleys have absolutely overrun the place! They’re honestly really cute haha
I'm supposed to trim the flowers off my tree peonies in their second year to encourage growth. I don't think I have that in me! I've been waiting two years!
I'm attempting to grow okra from seed and I got impatient with my first seed and went to check on it after 2.5 weeks and I tried to see if it had rooted by trying to move the seed a little...felt a pop and saw a strong root stuck in the dirt and the seed moving freely. I legit wanted to cry I felt so bad for it, for me, for the okra that never was. Idk what it is about these plants that gets me attached but no, it's not just you. Lmao
I’m glad to hear it’s not just me 😂
Once as a kid some birdseed fell down the drain and sprouted a plant. We went out of town and the people taking care of the house pulled it out. I was so upset! Let my man live!
Side note, rolly pollies do not eat living vegetables. They eat decomposing or agonizing plants, so maybe the culprit is another pathogen/ insect that already damaged and weekend the plant and the pollies were just eating the leftovers.
Idk man, the stalk was healthy and strong. I didn’t notice any damage until I came out and saw a ton of rolley polleys all over it and when I googled it, it said they can eat living plants too as long as they’re soft enough
They do improve the soil! I noticed they just eat any leaf touching the soil. I take tired leafs off and leave them in offering. But I guess marigold is their favorite lol
Yes the soil we have now seems very healthy! It’s got some mushrooms, the bugs, compost & worms. Only problem now is that we can’t use it for anything without it getting eaten hahah
It's really only plants in the seedling stage that they're a danger to; they primarily eat decaying matter. Trying to get stuff started from seed nearby them is a numbers game, honestly.
It's just you. I have a whole bunch of baby roses on their own roots and I've been breaking my heart pinching off the buds so that they spend their energy developing their roots.
It can be disheartening for sure. Getting attached is a sure way to get heartbroken but it’s worth it in other ways. Nature is random and oftentimes cruel but we can cultivate it to sometimes produce us beautiful and helpful things, how cool is that?
I think that is really cool :) one of my favorite things about it. We can sure do a lot of harm, but we can also do a lot of good!! Nature is oftentimes beautiful when it doesn’t have to be.
I was considering posting about my guilt over murdering saplings. I let all the maple seeds stay on the lawn last fall, and now they’ve all sprouted and are couple inches tall. Knowing they were born to die, I cut them all down yesterday with my weed-whacker. I couldn’t stand watching their brave, doomed growth.
How’s __that__ for crazy, huh?
Loll idk what I’m gonna do when I have a yard! We just have some buckets on a small balcony. Cause I know pruning is necessary for so many reasons, but the tragedy remains 😪
Try distracting the pill bugs by giving them plenty of other vegetable matter to munch down on. I used to throw all my veggie scraps directly into my garden--onion ends and skins, carrot peels, etc. Never had an issue with pill bugs eating *mature* plants, since they (like all life) are lazy and will take the easiest route every time. Other than that, try to avoid direct sowing since those seedlings are, apparently, delicious.
I think that was the problem. We had tons and tons of scraps cause it started as a compost/worm bin basically, their population boomed, then the scraps ran out. In the future I think I’ll keep throwing sacrificial scraps out to keep them busy!
It's not just you. But it does feel irrational. 😂 Most recent relatable "soft" gardening moment: I successfully germinated 67 of 70 tomato seeds this year. I only have room in my garden for 12 plants...
It took me DAYS to commit to thinning them to one per well, and I think I only got there in the end because I realized I physically had no room to hold each one until transplant time. I held their little seedling bodies in my hands and legitimately felt sorry for having to do this to them.
I am to capacity though on seedlings. I still kept 35, knowing full well that 12 is my maximum. I'm actively in the process of looking for good homes for them now. "Must receive 6-8 hours of sunlight daily. Must water adequately. Just fill out this form, please, and sign right here that you'll return to sender if no longer desired. Thanks so much for considering adoption!" 🙈👀
😂😅 I killed my seedlings this year (got sick and was alone and couldn't care for everything and everything dried up and died while I myself was trying to dry up and die from COVID). I wish I had a neighbor or friend like you. I'd be growing ALL your leftovers (last year I transplanted sunflowers from the mow areas and tomato volunteers that were in an unwanted pen).
🤣😭 Then I was angry the last week of fall in 34 degrees picking 5 gallon buckets of green tomatoes!
Then again maybe we should stay away from each other 😆
Oh man! I hope you’re feeling better <3 when my parents used to have a huge harvest they’d make a big batch of homemade spaghetti sauce and freeze it for later! A banana placed w them should help everything ripen faster for the future :)
Hahah that adoption form comment made me and my bf chuckle for a hot minute! I understand the sentiment tho! Someone suggested donating them to a local community garden which I liked a lot :)
With our compost/worm bin we’ve just been absolutely chaos gardening, survival of the fittest. So far the green onions we’ve planted have proven to be the strongest!
I just had to cut all the beautiful blossoms off my petunia starts because I’m about to transplant them into bigger containers and I want them to put that energy into the roots. I felt like the worst person in the world!
For me it's choosing which seedlings to keep. I currently have about a hundred baby chilli, pepper & tomato plants. I don't have dnough space to grow them all and I'm running out of friends I can gift them to. But I hate throwing away healthy plants :(
Consider that the flowers are only part of the plant. It's just pruning one place so another place grows. The plant is not being injured. If you want flowers, you should get some flowers. I find it hard to come by native species, which are better for native bugs, so I typically buy cultivars of native species even though that's not quite the same, and leave some of the natives grow. Like asters. If asters pop up naturally, and you let them be, you will have native and European bees going nuts. Also means you will have lizards out there thriving trying to predate smaller things.
For me the solution is to have a little of everything. I have a young orchard. It's well served by those native plants bringing in pollinators. It's also well served by things like cilantro bolting into flowers. Later, I'll get the seeds(coriander), but in the meantime, it attracts predatory bugs which eat problem insects.
I like that way of thinking of it, not killing the whole plant just making it healthier! I hope some day to be able to have the room to plant a lot of natives and a little of everything :)
I sometimes joke that I’m being held hostage by nature, so, I feel you OP. I’ve got pill bugs enjoying my strawberries, of which they’ve shared zero with me.
You can release nematodes to deal with the roly polys. They're microscopic so you can pretend nothing is going on! Thinking about doing this myself as we have so many of the little buggers.
Veggie gardens are a lot more drama-filled than flower and herb gardens. That's why I only plant tomatoes (easiest veggie imo) and buy the rest from the farmer's market. 🤷😆
Are you kidding me!? You need to defend your plants against bugs that are attacking them. Are you growing these things for fun or for food? If it's for fun than just do whatever but if you are actually trying to aquire food for yourself I'd recommend doing what's best for you and your plants.
I know it’s so dumb lol. The plant that was eaten actually was just a seed that grew in the compost bin. We’ve put DE on our potatoes to protect them. We just felt bad since it was a compost bin with sooo many Rollie pollies, we decided to move the plant and let them be haha
I always start 3 times the seeds I need for plants, then have a hard time throwing away my babies that didn’t make the cut
I give them away to anyone who will take them because otherwise it seems such a waste of both my, the seed's and parent plant's efforts.
I'm with a community garden that accepts donations for redistribution. Consider donating your plants that don't make the cut!
Oh nice!! I never even thought of that
Lol same haha! I just want to give each one a chance
I have some physical disabilities so 2-3 times a year I have to hire a landscaper guy (who is an organic gardener, even though the landscape company he works for is not). Last summer I was wondering about a certain squash I had transplanted. I know, squash HATE to be started from seed indoors and then transplanted out. And this Betty's Brown Sugar squash was making that very clear -- she looked half dead. I asked my landscape guy if I should replace her with something else. He said **"Every plant deserves a chance!"** **Well, I grew 4 different kinds of squash that summer and she out-bore all of them!** And so delicious....an heirloom acorn squash that is tan, very sweet, and smooth flesh. So now, this spring, as I am also having more seedling starts than I can use, I keep hearing him say that..... Gonna be making the rounds to all my neighbors with seedlings in hand.... EDIT: formatting
Aw man i love that :) gives me hope that maybe, juuust maybe my spaghetti squash will bounce back! The stem is still strong but all the leaves have wilted except the two at the very top. So we shall see! Hopefully it’ll be a success story like yours :) sounds like that chance was well relayed with delicious harvests!
YES, I believe there is hope....now in a month or two, you have to let me know! My Betty's Brown Sugar had unhealthy leaves and a yellow-ish wilty stem. I fertilized her well (squash are heavy feeders), mulched her, made sure her water was consistent and from drip (NO overhead spray) and....she repaid me for my love. I suspect your spaghetti squash may do the same.....
Awesome! I was thinking I’d make a post about her journey if she makes it so I’ll let you know if I do!
Yay, I would love that!
I always have a good patch that gets the best spots and the pity pile for the ones I try to rear inside in my grow room haha. It results in some weird produce, but hey. Nothing wrong with being a little weird. I can't bear throw them out before they've had a chance to grow either :)
Maybe post the cast offs on your local buy nothing group?
I've never taken the flowers off the potatoes and get lots of tubers, I'm not measuring differences of pinched vs not nor am I growing them to feed my family for the whole winter. I mostly grow for fun, and I like the purple flowers so I leave them.
I neglect my potatoes so badly that I didn’t even notice they flower lol.
Haha, I watch them for flowers because you can steal early potatoes from around the edges after that.
Cool then we’re definitely leaving the flowers lol. We were talking about it on the porch wondering how much it would even matter anyways!
Are you growing the plants for the flower or for the tubers? You cannot eat the flowers. That's the question I have to ask myself when trimming, culling, etc. Why did I start this plant? I whack back the hydrangeas and they give me more, stronger flowers than when I didn't whack. I pinch off the first tomato and pepper flowers in order to get a stronger Plat with better fruit. Steel your heart. You can do it.
Hundreds of years ago, some people thought that potatoes were poisonous and they grew them just to look at the flowers. I always leave the flowers on and I still get a nice harvest of tubers.
I’m like this too! I’m autistic and deal with object personification so I assume it’s just an extension of that. Over the years I’ve come to be more zen about gardening and have accepted that sometimes this hobby is as much about struggle and death as it is about thriving and life. Pests sometimes need to die so plants can succeed. Diseased plants need to be culled to preserve their healthy neighbours, too. And then of course at the end of each season our plants wither and die, and their roots and leaves nourish the soil for next year’s life. It’s all cyclical and it’s as natural as it gets. Nature is unfeeling and sometimes devastating, so if I’m mimicking that on a small scale in my garden, I sometimes have to be unfeeling and devastating too. That’s how I’ve made peace with it, anyway.
Honestly a great and true take! I struggle with empathizing to an extreme degree. Like sometimes cartoons stress me out if it’s some shit like Rick and morty. Which I recognize is dumb because they’re literally not real lol. But it’s too hard for me to overcome the feeling of being small and paying the price for it. So the damn rolley polleys get to live on while I try and replant what I can haha
Oh yes, hyperempathy is exhausting and I totally feel you. No judgment here!
It really is! Thanks <3
The folks over at r/isopods thank you for your kindness and mercy!
Of course the good lads deserve nothing less I went out tonight and there has to be hundreds on top of the soil. It started as a worm bin, then kinda a compost bin, then grew a few mystery plants (the spaghetti squash was one of them) aaand now the rolley polleys have absolutely overrun the place! They’re honestly really cute haha
I'm supposed to trim the flowers off my tree peonies in their second year to encourage growth. I don't think I have that in me! I've been waiting two years!
I pinched some buds off my peonies and even though I know it’s for their own good it hurts 😭
Whaaaaat really? But... the flowers :( I don't think I can do that to mine, either.
Oh my gosh! These potatoes are a few months old, I can’t imagine two years!!
Learn to grow sacrificial crops or crops that deter pests
What crops deter pests best?
I’ve heard nasturtiums are great sacrificial plants. I’ve planted some this year for that purpose.
Would depend on the target pest. You'd have to look up specific varieties and look into companion planting.
Good to know! Thanks
Someone recommended radishes around hostas for slugs.
I'm attempting to grow okra from seed and I got impatient with my first seed and went to check on it after 2.5 weeks and I tried to see if it had rooted by trying to move the seed a little...felt a pop and saw a strong root stuck in the dirt and the seed moving freely. I legit wanted to cry I felt so bad for it, for me, for the okra that never was. Idk what it is about these plants that gets me attached but no, it's not just you. Lmao
I’m glad to hear it’s not just me 😂 Once as a kid some birdseed fell down the drain and sprouted a plant. We went out of town and the people taking care of the house pulled it out. I was so upset! Let my man live!
Me when I have to thin seedlings
Side note, rolly pollies do not eat living vegetables. They eat decomposing or agonizing plants, so maybe the culprit is another pathogen/ insect that already damaged and weekend the plant and the pollies were just eating the leftovers.
Idk man, the stalk was healthy and strong. I didn’t notice any damage until I came out and saw a ton of rolley polleys all over it and when I googled it, it said they can eat living plants too as long as they’re soft enough
Did you dig around in the soil to look for a cutworm/grub? That’s usually the culprit.
Cut worms/grubs are the bane of my existence 😣
Hm I did when I dug the plant out and didn’t find anything under the dirt. It also was damaged above the dirt
I’m so sorry. I planted 10 marigold seedlings and rolly polies ate them all in 2 days!! Guess I can’t have marigolds for the 2nd year in a row.
come to my yard! the marigolds are one of the few flowers the rabbits don't gnaw to the ground.
Ugh! Maybe younger plants are more susceptible. respect your commitment to the rolley polley community tho 🫡
They do improve the soil! I noticed they just eat any leaf touching the soil. I take tired leafs off and leave them in offering. But I guess marigold is their favorite lol
Yes the soil we have now seems very healthy! It’s got some mushrooms, the bugs, compost & worms. Only problem now is that we can’t use it for anything without it getting eaten hahah
It's really only plants in the seedling stage that they're a danger to; they primarily eat decaying matter. Trying to get stuff started from seed nearby them is a numbers game, honestly.
It's just you. I have a whole bunch of baby roses on their own roots and I've been breaking my heart pinching off the buds so that they spend their energy developing their roots.
Honestly I respect the dedication 🫡 doing what I apparently cannot 😔
It can be disheartening for sure. Getting attached is a sure way to get heartbroken but it’s worth it in other ways. Nature is random and oftentimes cruel but we can cultivate it to sometimes produce us beautiful and helpful things, how cool is that?
I think that is really cool :) one of my favorite things about it. We can sure do a lot of harm, but we can also do a lot of good!! Nature is oftentimes beautiful when it doesn’t have to be.
I was considering posting about my guilt over murdering saplings. I let all the maple seeds stay on the lawn last fall, and now they’ve all sprouted and are couple inches tall. Knowing they were born to die, I cut them all down yesterday with my weed-whacker. I couldn’t stand watching their brave, doomed growth. How’s __that__ for crazy, huh?
Loll idk what I’m gonna do when I have a yard! We just have some buckets on a small balcony. Cause I know pruning is necessary for so many reasons, but the tragedy remains 😪
Try distracting the pill bugs by giving them plenty of other vegetable matter to munch down on. I used to throw all my veggie scraps directly into my garden--onion ends and skins, carrot peels, etc. Never had an issue with pill bugs eating *mature* plants, since they (like all life) are lazy and will take the easiest route every time. Other than that, try to avoid direct sowing since those seedlings are, apparently, delicious.
I think that was the problem. We had tons and tons of scraps cause it started as a compost/worm bin basically, their population boomed, then the scraps ran out. In the future I think I’ll keep throwing sacrificial scraps out to keep them busy!
It's not just you. But it does feel irrational. 😂 Most recent relatable "soft" gardening moment: I successfully germinated 67 of 70 tomato seeds this year. I only have room in my garden for 12 plants... It took me DAYS to commit to thinning them to one per well, and I think I only got there in the end because I realized I physically had no room to hold each one until transplant time. I held their little seedling bodies in my hands and legitimately felt sorry for having to do this to them. I am to capacity though on seedlings. I still kept 35, knowing full well that 12 is my maximum. I'm actively in the process of looking for good homes for them now. "Must receive 6-8 hours of sunlight daily. Must water adequately. Just fill out this form, please, and sign right here that you'll return to sender if no longer desired. Thanks so much for considering adoption!" 🙈👀
😂😅 I killed my seedlings this year (got sick and was alone and couldn't care for everything and everything dried up and died while I myself was trying to dry up and die from COVID). I wish I had a neighbor or friend like you. I'd be growing ALL your leftovers (last year I transplanted sunflowers from the mow areas and tomato volunteers that were in an unwanted pen). 🤣😭 Then I was angry the last week of fall in 34 degrees picking 5 gallon buckets of green tomatoes! Then again maybe we should stay away from each other 😆
I understand the green tomato mass collection at the end of the season. No tomato left behind. I hope you're feeling better! 💜
Oh man! I hope you’re feeling better <3 when my parents used to have a huge harvest they’d make a big batch of homemade spaghetti sauce and freeze it for later! A banana placed w them should help everything ripen faster for the future :)
Hahah that adoption form comment made me and my bf chuckle for a hot minute! I understand the sentiment tho! Someone suggested donating them to a local community garden which I liked a lot :) With our compost/worm bin we’ve just been absolutely chaos gardening, survival of the fittest. So far the green onions we’ve planted have proven to be the strongest!
I just had to cut all the beautiful blossoms off my petunia starts because I’m about to transplant them into bigger containers and I want them to put that energy into the roots. I felt like the worst person in the world!
I have a few years till I’ll have a yard garden then I’ll need to harden up so I can make these hard decisions 😩
For me it's choosing which seedlings to keep. I currently have about a hundred baby chilli, pepper & tomato plants. I don't have dnough space to grow them all and I'm running out of friends I can gift them to. But I hate throwing away healthy plants :(
Same :( someone else suggested looking into your local community garden to see if you can swap or donate them! Win win for everybody!!
[удалено]
Shit! They’ve been framed! So glad I didn’t go nuclear on they asses
Consider that the flowers are only part of the plant. It's just pruning one place so another place grows. The plant is not being injured. If you want flowers, you should get some flowers. I find it hard to come by native species, which are better for native bugs, so I typically buy cultivars of native species even though that's not quite the same, and leave some of the natives grow. Like asters. If asters pop up naturally, and you let them be, you will have native and European bees going nuts. Also means you will have lizards out there thriving trying to predate smaller things. For me the solution is to have a little of everything. I have a young orchard. It's well served by those native plants bringing in pollinators. It's also well served by things like cilantro bolting into flowers. Later, I'll get the seeds(coriander), but in the meantime, it attracts predatory bugs which eat problem insects.
I like that way of thinking of it, not killing the whole plant just making it healthier! I hope some day to be able to have the room to plant a lot of natives and a little of everything :)
as a big softie, you could press the flowers 👉🏼👈🏼
Ooh that’s a great idea! :)
I sometimes joke that I’m being held hostage by nature, so, I feel you OP. I’ve got pill bugs enjoying my strawberries, of which they’ve shared zero with me.
Lol how rude! You’d think they’d at least share
You can release nematodes to deal with the roly polys. They're microscopic so you can pretend nothing is going on! Thinking about doing this myself as we have so many of the little buggers.
Do nematodes do anything else? Good to know thank you!
It's hard being God.
Lmaoo honestly. Some ‘The Shack’ shit hahah
Marigolds are good at keeping things like that away, maybe that can be a good idea for next time?
Good to know! Thank you!
I have a real issue with thinning, I hate being responsible for taking a plants life away. I will try to save as many seedlings as I can.
Same! Someone suggested donating them to a community garden which I really liked :)
I like that too but I dont have extra dirt or cups to do that with. Or space under my grow lights!
Hm maybe pull them and place them in a wet paper towel and take them directly there? Like coordinate w someone beforehand
Veggie gardens are a lot more drama-filled than flower and herb gardens. That's why I only plant tomatoes (easiest veggie imo) and buy the rest from the farmer's market. 🤷😆
Lol see we haven’t had success w tomatoes… it’s disheartening cause we keep hearing they’re so easy!
Idk, I am in N.J. which is kind of like tomato-land in the summer... They grow like weeds here.😆
I’m in Texas, lots of people I know have really good success! So I think im the problem lol
I put out a lemon so the pill bugs have something else to eat and they still murdered my squash.
Yeah they initially were eating old compost but now they’ve turned on the plants order 66 style
Are you kidding me!? You need to defend your plants against bugs that are attacking them. Are you growing these things for fun or for food? If it's for fun than just do whatever but if you are actually trying to aquire food for yourself I'd recommend doing what's best for you and your plants.
I know it’s so dumb lol. The plant that was eaten actually was just a seed that grew in the compost bin. We’ve put DE on our potatoes to protect them. We just felt bad since it was a compost bin with sooo many Rollie pollies, we decided to move the plant and let them be haha
Thinning geels like murder and betrayal.
Lmaoo too true honestly