Your vegetable garden questions answered

... 'what should I do to improve my soil preparation?', and other vegetable garden questions.

I regularly receive vegetable gardening questions from visitors to easy-vegetable-gardening.com, although sadly I can't answer them all I aim to utilise the more popular vegetable garden questions to build more pages of useful content and new offerings to help you.

I will also post answers on this page and make suggestions for more information.

Look out for an answer to your vegetable gardening question or perhaps a new offering to help.

Some of your vegetable gardening questions answered

Learn with help and trial and error what suits your situation best.

Most RECENT answer to your vegetable garden question first;

-Q1- Do red/ yellow/orange bell peppers turn that colour on the plant, or do you pick them green and they change colour in the house?
-Ans-Peppers grow green first and given time, warmth and light ripen to yellow/ orange/ green depending on type and time you leave them. They will ripen on the plant or in the house where ripe fruit can help, but care must be taken they don't dry out or rot.

-Q2- Why have my potato tops (leaves) turned from green to brown?
-Ans- There are several diseases that can kill potatoes, but this sounds most like Potato blight which rapidly infects foliage and can seemingly turn it brown in days. When this happens act first and remove foliage and burn it to stop spread and also infection of the tubers which would otherwise rot.

-Q3- Some of my tomatoes have black on the bottom even though not ripened yet - what can I do?

-Ans- Black/ dark brown lesions on tomato leaves or fruits is a sign of early blight. Remove and burn all infected tissue as it appears to slow spread of the disease. however, realise this disease can spread very fast and you may loose the whole plant in days. Tomatoes will not ripen but just go black-brown and rot.

-Q4- Why are my corn stalks so many different sizes in one bed?
-Ans.- Although buying a modern F1 hybrid can stabilise most characteristics of crops, there is still some genetic variation. Combine this with different local soil conditions (nutrient levels, stoniness, seedbed, soil and moisture) and it should be no surprise you see differences in Corn or any other crop. This is normal biological variation - annoying, but interesting. I would suggest you need to improve the soil further with soil loosening and plenty of compost.

Q5- Can I put garden waste into the raised bed now, ready for spring time?
-Ans- My preference is to compost such waste first and then add the compost to the soil later. However, there are two ways you could try what you suggest a) make an old-fashioned 'bean trench'; in light to medium soils/ or soils that drain, dig a trench in the bed and fill with well chopped green garden and vegetable kitchen waste, mix in some soil and cover with 7-10cm soil from the next trench fill and cover... to await spring planting of beans or peas after 2-3 months. Or b) make a mulch of chopped green garden waste over the bed, say 5cm deep, for the worms to incorporate over the winter, prior to planting in spring. You may find that you need to mix in the garden waste into the top 10cm soil if your worm numbers are low or the soil in drier. Take care not to put too much on the bed otherwise it could impede seed sowing and growth, although would be OK for transplants.

-Q6- We have sandy soil how can we best improve it? or ...
-Q7- We have loose fine light soil in a coastal area - how can we improve it?
-Ans- Lots of organic matter regularly added each year is key. This can be added in any form such as well rotted farm yard manure, garden compost, mushroom compost, mulches and green manures/ cover crops. This will help build up the soil, improve structure, retain nutrients and water and prevent the soil capping or drying out too readily all aiding production.
*** Look out for more information in the e-book coming soon ***

-Q8- What additives do I put in new screened topsoil?
-Ans- What the soil needs is organic matter, as Q2/3 above, to help rebuild the soil structure lost in the screening process. Dig this in in the autumn and allow the worms and soil life to rebuild and add structure to the soil.




-Q9- How do I remove grass without tilling (cultivating/ digging)?
-Ans- I do this all the time, as I prefer to save the effort of digging and to protect the soil structure at the same time. Firstly if weeds are small you can just pull them out, but assuming they are established you have two alternatives. Organic growers can cover the area of ground with a tarpaulin/ old carpet/ thick plastic sheet to cut out the light. Over 6 months this will kill out the grasses. Alternatively can carefully spray the grasses with a glyphosate based weed killer being careful not to treat any plants you want to keep.
*** Look out for more information in the e-book coming soon ***

-Q10- Why are vegetable harvests so variable?
-Ans- There are many many reasons, but here are just a few;

• poor soil conditions -> poor rooting -> poor growth
• too many weeds, out compete crop for water and nutrients
• nutrient deficiency
• planting too late
• insufficient rainfall/ moisture/ irrigation
• poor weather - cool/ cloudy/ wet seasons with lower rainfall and temperatures bring poor growth
• late frosts
• disease and pest attack

For more information;

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  vegetable garden soils and their preparation
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  vegetable garden weed control.

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