GardenBanter.co.uk - do better for next year-- asparagus, watermelon, tomatoes, lettuceseeds, grapes

My biggest two problems are asparagus and watermelon for next year for
this year was failures in both.

Asparagus-- harvesting is fine and great. Trouble is when mid summer
rolls around and the asparagus
stalks are falling over to the ground and a hassle in trying to mow
around. So what have to do next year
to solve this problem is once the harvesting is ended, I place a big
enough tomato cage over the spears
so that they grow into the wire cage and the cage keeps them upright
throughout the summer.

Watermelon-- here the problem is to contain the melons and able to
weed between them so the
plants are not drowned out by the weeds. I have tried my old trick of
using old sheet metal and
surrounding the plant where the melon grows on top of the sheet metal
and no weeds penetrate
through. This year I just did not use enough sheet metal and now the
melon plants are spreading
into the yard itself and the weeds are getting too high. So I have the
proper technique but just
a lousy application this summer. I should pick my first melon this
week, and it is supposed to
be the hottest week of this summer according to the weatherman.

Tomatoes-- I do not know what causes the lower half to turn brown and
black. Heard that it is the
water that causes it, but not sure. Anyway, most of my tomatoes are
unusable due to a black spot
on the bottom.

Lettuce seeds-- I like to collect as much of the seeds I need for next
year myself. In case we have
say a bird flu pandemic, that I am as self reliant as possible. I like
a mixed variety of lettuce and I
grow them as well as the spinach in pots and after I cut some leaves
for many weeks I let the plants
go to seed and collect the seed. However I did not count on
grasshoppers and they chewed up
my lettuce that I decided to harvest all the lettuce before the
grasshoppers ate them. So it looks like
no seeds this year and will have to go to the store and buy another
packet next year. To solve the
grasshopper problem I can't think of anything and will never use
chemicals as mine are organic grown.

Grapes-- the problem here is these big ugly brown or tan beetles.
About the size of my thumb. They
can chew up all the leaves unless I vigilantly kill them every day.
They have a habit of sensing when
they are being pursued and of falling to the ground to run away. They
have wings. I do not know their
name, but they destroy grape vines with their eating of the leaves.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies