Basics i found out the hard way...

[KellsSimon]

Hi all,
had some learning and thought i'd let you know if your interested.
If anything like this or any other good learning has happened to you, i'd like to know! It might just save me from more death and destruction in the veg plot!
I just lost a few courgette plants to Scariad Fly larva. These are tiny little maggot type things, that came and ate all the roots off of my courgette plants.
I had been growing them in peat pots, then, when the roots were starting to poke out throught the pot walls, planted them out.
Once in the ground they carried on growing for a bit then stopped, slowly turned yellow, limp floppy, outer leafs died off and they looked like they weren't long for this world..
so i dug them up to see what was going on, and these evil little wrigglies had eaten all the roots off more or less, and were now tunneling up into the stem of the plant! Real Horror show!
I did manage to save some of the plants and some beans that had started going the same way by washing off all the soil from the roots (well away from my veg patch!) squishing any wrigglies and re-planting them in a new spot, a grow bag and some plantpots respectivly . It will check their growth, but hopefully they should survive to crop, fingers crossed.

It turns out, (by asking the great and good grapes) that the Scariad fly lays its eggs on wet compost... and for big healty plants it's no big problem as they have loads of root and can loose some, but my little babies couldn't cope with it. It takes three ish weeks for their eggs to hatch, so they got infected when just in their pots, being loved nurtured and kept well watered...

So the answer is NOT to water our seedlings from the top, but to soak them from the bottom. this means there is no moist compost for the fly to lay eggs into on the surface.
Don't know if anyone else doesn't know this... but i would save you from my courgette depression!

Is their any thing you've found out that you think we should all know as newly germinated gardners? Then post it! (like why i've only got 4 spring onions germinated out of many...)

Best of luck,

[snohare]

Well, you've already discovered one of the most basic rules i.e. water from below. I think everyone learns that one the hard way, but your lesson was more exotic than most !
Except in really hot conditions, don't just water, feed as well. (As a Scottish gardener, I don't get heat waves, so my expertise here is limited. )
Leave your water out to warm up in the sun before using it on your plants - the extra heat will make all the difference to how fast they can carry out chemical reactions.
Always put as much humus (rottable organic matter/non-pathogenic fungi) into your ground as possible - without it, you have a desert.
Feed the soil, not the plants. Soil is everything.
Plant according to conditions, not the calendar.
Keep parsnip and carrot seed damp once sown - use moss, mulch or swell gel to keep the moisture in next to them or they won't germinate.
There is no such thing as a "cold climate" tomato - there are only tomatoes that will ripen within a shorter growing season. Frost will still split their tomatoes and turn their leaves to mush !
Crushed eggshells, salt and used coffee grounds all help keep slugs and snails away. Garlic "tea" will help feed plants and keep the bugs away.
That's it, I'm out of ideas. Oh dear.....

[KellsSimon]

Cheers, Snohare,
thanks for the advice!
one of the things I really like about the vine is the huge sharing of knowledge and ideas,
as if I had to find out everything by my own mistakes...
I have set up an old black dustbin to act as a water butt, so hopefully this should help to pre-heat the wet stuff a little.
I have been to my local costa coffee to get their old used coffee grounds, but by the tme I'd bought a large americano and a slice of cake, it was no longer the cheap solution I was hopeing for...
But still good coffee.

Any one else with any ideas out there?

[geoff]

When I told friends and acquaintances that I had recently got an allotment, a Wise Old Gardener advised me that "a bottle of whisky's not a bad thing to keep in your shed....."

[SMS6]

and yet nature always waters from the top.

[percy charlie]

if like me you grow in pots you have to water from the top but there is some solutions. cover the compost with a layer of straw, or my favourite for things like goose gogs shove a piece of pipe or two into the soil a few inches below surface aimed slightly towards the roots and water through this, i leave the pipes in so not to keep disturbing the plants.

[SMS6]

if like me you grow in pots you have to water from the top .

Why? I would have thought it easier to water pots from below than it is to water a raised bed or the open ground from the bottom You just have to stand your pots on something that will take the water

[Two_Sheds]

Always water your containers and pots by standing them in a tray of water. You want to be watering the roots at the bottom, not the leaves at the top.
(You should also have a saucer under each container, to conserve water ~ but don't leave them sitting in water or the roots will rot). It's quite a tricky thing, getting it right. You sure know when you've got it wrong though!

[KellsSimon]

Mmmm..
Whisky yep, i am glad i'm not watered from the bottom.

[littlewin]

thanks for the tip about the compost - didn't know that !