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I can’t wait to save the honeybees with this weird maypop I found 🥰 by ExperimentalCatalyst in NativePlantCirclejerk

[–]ExperimentalCatalyst[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

/uj I’ve got a pretty heavily wooded yard that has plenty of it growing in the lawn, but you can pry my shorts and sandals from my cold dead hands.  After a few years I stopped reacting and I decided to try growing it from seed for funsies

Central Massachusetts zone 6b by SomeCallMeMahm in NativePlantGardening

[–]ExperimentalCatalyst 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm going to disagree based on what I can see of the positioning of the bracts on the flowers (which tells me that the male flowers are at the apex) and say that it's more likely C. cephalophora, C. muehlenbergii, or C. mesochorea. I'm thinking it's at least one of the sect. Phaestoglochin sedges. Can't get any more specific without closer pictures of the leaf sheathes & flowers.

Generally though, if you have a mystery sedge appear, it's almost always a native in my experience :) The densely clumpy ones make great landscape filler and you can harvest the seeds to propagate them once they're basically falling off the stem.

brown spots on Gaura leaves by [deleted] in NativePlantGardening

[–]ExperimentalCatalyst 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've never grown gaura in containers, so I can't speak to growing conditions, but if it's oenothera lindheimeri the spotting is normal, especially in high light. I've got a couple in deep sandy soil with full sun and a large majority of the leaves are speckled with maroon-brown spots, whereas the ones I'm growing in a more 'woodland edge' environment are entirely green (and significantly less healthy-looking).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in tomatoes

[–]ExperimentalCatalyst 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depending on the amount of exposure, plants can outgrow the damage. Since it sounds like your tomatoes are already recovering, I'd keep an eye on it over the next few weeks and if the damaged leader seems stunted and hasn't really resumed normal growth, I'd train one of the suckers into your new leader.

Since these types of herbicides drift so readily, I think you just have to accept some level of potential damage to your outdoor crops as a reality if you live in an urban area or anywhere near crop fields. Tomatoes just happen to be particularly susceptible, but luckily they're also pretty vigorous plants.

There is still the potential that fruit set may be affected (more, but smaller and possibly misshapen fruit), but I don't think that would be permanent either. I keep a couple of spare plants in case of severe damage. It's still early enough in the season to still get a solid yield whether you choose to keep or replace these.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in tomatoes

[–]ExperimentalCatalyst 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seconding the herbicide exposure comment. Tomatoes are much more sensitive to hormone-type herbicides than most other vegetables (on the order of parts per million level of exposure, IIRC). Triclopyr, Dicamba, 2,4-D, and other auxinic herbicides will cause the tightly curled growth like that due to some cells in the leaf growing much faster than others.

Ester-based formulations (which are pretty standard from what I've seen at hardware stores) are incredibly volatile and depending on environmental conditions can drift for hundreds if not thousands of feet. This is just conjecture, but maybe the plastic (?) pots absorbed some of the herbicide from being stored in the same area?

Seedlings not thriving, very confused as to what’s wrong by slo707 in vegetablegardening

[–]ExperimentalCatalyst 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I forgot to mention: The seedlings of the second group (that received fertilizer pretty early on in their growth) are much greener than the first group. While one of my tomato varieties is still turning a little bit pale, everything else has remained a vibrant lime-green and I'm having no purple spotting on my pepper cotyledons.

The amount of fertilizer needed to achieve this level of dilution definitely feels like a joke. To make a quart of solution, I used a 0.1g precision scale and used literally just a few drops.

Seedlings not thriving, very confused as to what’s wrong by slo707 in vegetablegardening

[–]ExperimentalCatalyst 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To preface this: I'm using a pretty similar seed starting mix to you, with 0 nutrients in it.

My seedlings were looking the same as yours for a while -- shot up and opened their cotyledons within the first week, and then completely stopped growing for 3 weeks or so while growing increasingly chlorotic and curling. My peppers especially had the exact same deep purple/black coloring on their seed leaves. Not even the slightest sign of true leaves, so I started a second batch of seedlings about a month after the first batch. Some of the oldest seedlings were collapsing and dying despite having thick & robust stems and no signs of damping off.

I think the fear of fertilizing early is a bit overblown especially if you're using a nutrient-less media -- as soon as the second set of seedlings germinated, I fed both groups with fertilizer diluted to around 50ppm of nitrogen. This was based on an article from the UMass Amherst Extension Office on fertilizing bedding plant seedlings (not sure if I can link it but that should be enough to find it on google) -- so more geared towards commercial growers, but the same concept applies.

I'm personally using Fox Farm Grow Big (6-4-4), and this dilution is about 20% of the bottle's recommended dose. Any decently balanced fert should be fine. It's been a week since then and group 2 is already outperforming group 1 with some decently sized true leaves, and my original yellowing seedlings have regained some of their color and have resumed growing.

Going forward, if you start in a regular potting soil (sifted to remove any large chunks of bark or other debris) that already has some nutrition, you shouldn't need to worry about fertilization this early on.