FUNGUS, AND BUGS, AND NO BEES! OH MY!

A garden nursery can be plagued with as many problems as you can imagine. There are many environmental factors that give rise to growing challenges in a garden nursery, not the least of which is weather. A cloudy, extremely cold, wet winter will affect a garden nursery, as will an overly wet, or dry spring and summer. Unfavorable weather, and its impact on a garden nursery will be discussed in this article, along with the lack of bees, addition of unwanted bugs, and fungi.





No Flowers, No Fruit! Oh No!
In garden nursery plants like tomatoes, pepper, and snap beans, a drop in blossom and failure to fruit is associated with poor pollination that results from cold night temperatures (below 55 F) or high temperatures (above 75 F). This seriously damages the flowers and they drop without pollinating. To remedy this problem, balance the temperature in your garden nursery by adjusting the hours of shade and sun and water regularly to prevent drying in hot temperatures then your garden nursery plants will rival any green house nursery plant.

Wind In My Ears.
Corn plants grown in a garden nursery also suffer from inefficient pollination and the result is partially filled, or poorly filled, ears. Hot and dry weather conditions are largely responsible for this problem. Regular watering is necessary if your garden nursery is prone to dry soil conditions or it is an overly hot, arid growing season. Closely spacing the individual plants in the garden nursery helps in pollination of your corn plants by using wind to deliver pollen from one plant to another. This is an extremely effective technique in a smaller garden nursery.

The Bitter End?
Cucumbers are especially famous for having an unpleasant, bitter taste. More than one factor accounts for this: heat, dry conditions, and disease. Water the plants regularly during dry conditions. Keep control on diseases by not over watering and causing fungus to form in the plant; a main contributor to bitter taste. Selecting varieties of plants that are more disease and fungus resistant will lessen the instances of poor tasting produce. Sweet Slice and Burpless Hybrid are two good examples of garden nursery vegetable plants. A garden nursery, unlike a garden green house, is an open area that is subject to all sorts of unwanted environmental factors. Strong, disease resistant plants and consistent care are the keys to success and great tasting veggies.





Buddy, You Might Want To Get That Checked
This physiological illness of the plants in a garden nursery is characterized by the development of brown or black spots on the blossom end of the fruit. Later, these affected tissues become the den of secondary organisms to destroy the fruit. Tomato and pepper are the easy targets of this condition.

The root cause of blossom-end rot is deficiency of calcium on account of wide moisture changes in the soil and also by excessive fertilizing with nitrogenous compounds. The condition can be remedied by care in fertilizing and by mulching and watering the plants in dry conditions.

Fruit Cracks?
Sometimes, tomatoes (especially large tomatoes like Beefsteak) grown in a garden nursery are affected with radial and concentric cracks at the stem end of the fruit. This condition is the result of growth that is too rapid during ripening, typically due to excess rainfall or watering in an otherwise dry period.

Exposure to high temperatures and direct sunlight also has a role in cracking the fruit. Preventing the condition requires uniform supply of moisture to the plant and mulching and watering during the dry season is helpful if you are careful not to over-irrigate. Or, just keep your tomatoes out of the stand up comedy clubs.