"Julia Altshuler" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:

Lia, I planted kale indoors and outdoors in early April. Both sprouted in
under a week. These were Burpee seeds, ordered directly from the company.
You might want to do the same. Perhaps your seeds were mishandled before
they were sold. What kind were they?

Although it's getting kind of hot for growing kale right now, you can
shade them easily. Buy some dark colored window screen the suspend it
over the seedlings with sticks or whatever works. Plastic clothes pins
are good for this.


It is possible that the seeds were mishandled, but I'm leaning towards an
explanation that has to do with the cold wet weather. I threw away the
packet so I can't tell you the brand name, but it was the same as the peas
and radishes. It could have been Burpee or one of the other well known
brands. What's the right temperature for growing kale? The temps are
getting up into the 70s in the day and down to the 50s at night now, but
earlier it was only getting as high as 50 in the day.


This may all be a moot point. I needed the space and put a basil and 2
tomatoes in some of the space previously devoted to kale.


Now I'll change the subject and ask the question I ask every year. Does
anyone have any new ideas on how to defeat the squash vine borer? Last
year I gave up on the organic tricks (tin foil on the soil, netting) and
decided to fight dirty. I used poison, and the buggers STILL destroyed my
plants before I got a single squash. I started wanting zucchini, then
switched to waltham butternut because I understood it was borer resistant.
Hah! They're planted in a half barrel filled with soil from the garden
center. You'd think I give up, but each year I think of how lovely it
would be to have home-grown squash and get optimistic again.


--Lia


OK, Lia - one subject at a time. :-)

1) Kale: If it grows in hot weather, it won't be awful, especially if you're
picking young leaves as you mentioned. Mature plants will get really tough,
but they're still useful (and delicious) in soups. So, go ahead and plant
some now. I have no idea what the right temperature is for sprouting the
seeds. Outside, my soil was pretty chilly. Indoors, I had my trays on gravel
with heating cables underneath. They both sprouted at about the same time,
give or take a few days. I suspect the problem was your seeds. So....

2) Don't take chances with seed. There may be other sources for great seed,
but for almost 30 years, I've been using Burpee, and ordering most of them
directly. I don't know what they do differently, but whatever it is, it
always performs better than anything else I buy. The seeds you bought
might've sat in a hot UPS truck for 2 days. Or, maybe they were beat up at
the store. I was at a home improvement store a few weeks ago and there was a
lady running the outdoor plant area. She told me in no uncertain terms (and
using language like a sailor) that the staff had originally put the entire
seed display in the outdoor area where they keep the fertilizer and bricks
and fence materials. She said it was exposed to direct sunlight and
dampness, until she had a talk with the manager. So, you never know. Order
your seeds directly. You get one or two chances a year to make things work.
Why mess around?

3) Space: Go to www.bn.com and in the search box, enter "square foot
gardening". That's an ancient book which explains how to pack a lot more
production into spaces much smaller than the seed packets recommend. Great
book. It *almost* doesn't matter what you've planted already, with
relationship to whether there's space left for kale. There probably is
space. Look at how weeds grow in a farm hedgerow - right on top of one
another. Buy the book. And, tuck the kale plants in any empty space you can
find. Don't forget to plant some seeds in August, to mature in October and
later. You can harvest it when there's six inches of snow around the plants.

4) Squash vine borer: Forget the poisons - you've already noticed that they
don't always work. In his book "Crockett's Victory Garden", Jim Crockett
says that sometimes you can pick out the borer with a small knife, and then
mound up the soil around the hole, and the plant will be fine. This has
worked for me in some years, not in others. I think it depends on how
quickly you notice that the plant is wilting. We expect some plants to sag a
bit if the weather's really hot, and/or the plant needs water, but with
squash, you can't assume anything. You have to get down on your knees and
look underneath at the first sign of trouble.

This link provides some helpful information on dealing with the bug:
http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/squashbore.html

The primary means is obvious: Don't plant cucurbits (squash, melon,
cucumbers) in the same place each year. The bug overwinters in the soil, so
move the plants around. And, in northern states, it says only one generation
is produced each year. So, what might help is to plant more seeds after you
put the first plants in the ground. The second crop will probably reach
production age after the borer is gone for the season.