So not sure which of the 3 decided to snack on my tomato plants but yesterday i noticed one plant almost every stem as the end part and the leaf gone. An hour ago i noticed the other one, which was completely intact when i went to bed now has 3 stems/leaves missing also.

Any ideas on a dog safe organic animal repellent for until the heater gets turned off at night.

Long term plan is to move the light and put a barrier of some sort around the plants. Where they currently sit a barrier is out of the question because of proximity to the propane heater. They only sit there now because i have 30 ft ceilings and the wrong ladder to hang a hook, and the current spot had a hook up there already

Don't know of repellant. How about chicken wire cage?

Going to do that tonight. I built some freestanding barriers but they arnt fitted to where the light is now and are the wrong length but the bigger issue is i dont want them starting a fire. That would be bad. I contemplated pepper oil but im afraid it will effect the flavor. Or an organic version of the dog deterrent but once again i worry about the finished tomato

I know something was bothering me with this.  You realize that while the ripe fruit of a tomato is okay for a dog to eat, the the plant itself and immature fruit DEFINITELY is not.  See this link

Yeah that was the first scare because its poisonous... thankfully they are ok but my shepherd didnt feel to good today

I'm guessing that you, like us out here in the Finger Lakes, have a long, cold spring that is not conducive to growing tomatoes - hence the pots waiting for planting. I'm not a happy camper with mine at the moment. Also - we've had so much rain that they've never dried out enough for me to use the soluble fertilizer I normally use on seedlings. I started hardening them too early and I think their growth stalled with all the rain and the cold nights. Even tomorrow and Wed nights are expected to go down to 46° so I'll be schlepping them inside. Again. Maybe they'll perk up if I put them back under lights with heat mats...

We have a 90 day growing season nothing goes in the ground. And this year we still have snow and the rio grande is flooding and we are on voluntary evacuations. Its a weird year.
So i cant afford a greenhouse that can withstand yhe wind and temp so i usually grow up in the loft. I really wanted to do bumblebee tomatoes this year, and they usually top out between 6 to 8 feet and the loft ceiling wasnt high enough so they took over the dining room.

Usually this time of year they go out during the day and come in at night. The weather just refuses to behave

I just put my veggies in the ground last week after babying them on the kitchen table and under the porch out front. and the little shit Finn pulled out 3 of my 4 Brussel sprouts on Sat   .....I have the whole veggie garden fenced off, he got through it!

Right there with you on the misbehaving weather.  Just been constantly raining... Made the news when we had 4 straight days of dry weather forecast.  We have 4 months of frost free.  May 31 to October 1 for sure, some years May 20 to October 10.  Go to transplant date for tomatoes  this week, next week for melons, eggplant, peppers and cucurbits.  Everything looks good except for 2 trays  tomatoes I put out 2 weeks ago.  Looked like warm weather, then, not.  And they were in 1020 trays so rain couldn't drain, cloudy, cool. I need more trays with  mesh bottoms for hardening so they don't accumulate  much water.

I now have acquired enough shop lights for all shelves of my homemade light stand... Walmart had a clearance of T8 4' shop lights  good size reflectors,  exactly the 6  I needed.  Snatched those up.  And next year,  buy the contractor pack of t8 tubes Lowe's.  They have slightly more lumens than the  2 pack bulbs in the 6500K I use for seedlings.  I wish I had known that earlier.  And found the fixtures earlier, I would have been able to keep everything under lights at once.  But, I only had 2 fixtures from last year and  had to rotate something out...

Your cages  good, BTW

The light i use in winter has a 600 watt sodium halide and a 600 metal halide. Cant use them except in winter because they get hot. The new light im using now is 1200 watt full spectrum led. I also have full spectrum leds that go in hanging shoplight fixtures.

Its plenty warm out at almost 70 for them to go outside but if the aspens are having issues with the wind the tomatoes dont stand a chance.

Im pricing lumber to build a 5x5 frame to hang the light and chickenwire the plants from dogs... just not sure what to do with the table

Jenn how do the brussel sprouts do with the lack of humidity? Or does that side of the state get more humid then up in the mountains?

Lostmaniac wrote:

The light i use in winter has a 600 watt sodium halide and a 600 metal halide. Cant use them except in winter because they get hot. The new light im using now is 1200 watt full spectrum led. I also have full spectrum leds that go in hanging shoplight fixtures.

Since I'm only growing seedlings for transplant, I don't need the full spectrum lights. The 6500K T8's do very nicely for seedlings. Fortunately. Husband is grousing enough as it is about the electric bill without me using 1200 watt lights!!!

I was just bringing everything in ahead of a night of heavy rain and cool temperatures. There is a tiny lesion on one leaf that has me worried - hoping beyond hope it is not late blight. Cut the leaf off - it was already not doing well as somehow, that tray got too much light, too soon on wet leaves and the first set of true leaves are bleached. New leaves look much better. But not if I have incipient late blight...

Emily,
i have no idea, this was my first year trying them! got them at a local garden store so figured they would do ok here. i have one left, so we will see

Let me know. Ive been looking into them for awhile. I read they are really tempermental in low humidity and it makes them brittle and more bitter. Artichokes are another one i want to do but not sure i can without a full blown 4 season greenhouse

@amymeme if its food my hubby is ok with the lights. He wont let me waste electric on marijuana plants. The 2 halide bulbs can seriously heat the house in winter which means the heater is turned down and the propane bill is lower. He doesnt see a summer tradeoff tho

Lostmaniac wrote:

Let me know. Ive been looking into them for awhile. I read they are really tempermental in low humidity and it makes them brittle and more bitter. Artichokes are another one i want to do but not sure i can without a full blown 4 season greenhouse

The big thing about brussels sprouts is good fertility, consistent moisture and harvest AFTER frost. Can stay in the ground here until late November, Dec. The frost promotes sugars in the plant. Most people here top them late August/early September to mature the whole stalk at once and sell whole stalks. Without topping, for just a small family, you can harvest as you need while others mature. And, even if you don't get sprouts - the big leaves are wonderful in rough chiffonade then sauteed in olive oil and garlic.

Not happy. Going over my flats, looks like someone, who will be nameless, Mr. Bunny, ate 2 eggplant seedlings and 5 rainbow chard. The chard I needed to thin anyway but the eggplant? I just snipped off the extras yesterday

Ami? Rabbit is on the menu...

Lostmaniac wrote:

Usually this time of year they go out during the day and come in at night. The weather just refuses to behave

I'm not even going to talk about plants, everything I put in earlier this year was eaten by the rabbits, and now it's too hot to grow anything.

Wait, did I say hot? Then why do I have the heater on? this misbehaving weather dropped the jet stream down on us and I got up to a glorious 56 this AM I think we managed to reach the mid 60's today after several weeks of 90+ Our high today has been lower than the lows for the past week or so. Of course the mid-summer rains are coming along with the jet (and a low over the Gulf) so we've been hot and muggy --- and now it's just cold and wet! Some one take the weatherman out and shoot him... please!!!!

Maybe its where i live but anything above 80 is unbearable. It almost hit 72 today with crazy wind and it hailed for about 10 mins an hour ago. Then there is the flood issue we have right now that keeps making my phone beep with alert updates. Im mean really its the desert, up high why are we flooding. This is the bridge and a street in the neighborhood



I always envied the weather man. Hes got the only career you can be 100% wrong 100% of the time and still keep his job

My three tomatoes plants are dog proofed in a raised veg bed, with 1” chicken wire fencing (top cover too). Mr Rabbit is not the one. Now even the 6 green figs in the new fig tree have been eaten and it also has a protective fence; I fear the zucchini is next. All that effort building the raised veg bed with protection—and something is eating everything! What could it be ?

PollyR wrote:

My three tomatoes plants are dog proofed in a raised veg bed, with 1” chicken wire fencing (top cover too). Mr Rabbit is not the one. Now even the 6 green figs in the new fig tree have been eaten and it also has a protective fence; I fear the zucchini is next.  All that effort building the raised veg bed with protection—and something is eating everything!  What could it be ?  

Rats? I've read somewhere they can fit in spaces the size of a quarter. I live on the canyon and rats will come up and eat all my tomatoes.

If you have pictures of the chewed on fruit/veggies it would be easier to tell. It could be a rat/mouse, chipmunk, or a bird of some kind. Or it could be a variety of things doing it and not just one critter. Fruit I would be more apt to think bird or squirrel. Birds will work pretty hard at tomatoes too, though I haven't had many issues with them and zucchini. What usually gets my zucchini are bugs, though I've had bird do a number on cucumbers before.

No. Didn’t take any pics. But they were eaten half way through (the tomatoes and figs were still green); I don’t think it was birds. The figs were carried away, except for one that was left half-eaten on the ground.  So it may be mice/rats (ugh!), squirrels it they fit, maybe geckos?  Seems this year there are plenty squirrels and geckos moving  around.  We were thinking of adding a bird netting too.  Other than that, don’t know what else to do.  We have protected the vegetables as much as we can. Still hoping for zucchini .

Half eaten? One of the hallmarks of woodchucks is a bite or of everything

Amy, Jenn and Jimmy:   I had to Google what a woodchuck is.    We haven't noticed any holes on the ground, unless they are climbing over the fencing and entering through the top covering (which, in reality, is only bird netting draped over the enclosure--we were only protecting against birds from the top).   But, as our son pointed out, the top netting sometimes sags, which means something must get on it.  Which now leads me to think it could also be possums.  Mars has been wanting to go out again before bedtime (which is an indication possums are around). So the list keeps growing: possums, woodchucks, rats  or squirrels.  We are now analyzing how to reinforce and build a pest proof vegetable enclosure--if there's such a thing.