A number of vegetable garden plants need additional nitrogen applied as a side dressing. Responsive to extra nitrogen are: tomatoes, peppers, greens, sweet corn, pole beans, muskmelons, cucumbers, squash and okra.
Tomatoes should receive 1 tablespoon of ammonium nitrate or urea per plant after first fruits are 1 inch in diameter and again at three-week intervals during fruiting. Peppers should receive 1 tablespoon only after first fruits are 1 inch in diameter.
Okra, sweet corn, and pole beans should be side-dressed with approximately 1/4 cup of ammonium or urea per 10 feet of row. Okra needs another side dressing after the first picking.
Muskmelons, cucumbers and squash should receive additional nitrogen at a rate of 1 tablespoon per plant when runners are 12 inches long.
Greens require about 2 tablespoons per 10 feet of row. Apply 1 tablespoon to spinach for the same row length.
Ammonium nitrate and urea should be applied to the soil and not as a foliar application. It gives best results when incorporated into the top 2 inches of soil.
Seed tips
It’s a good practice not to buy more vegetable seeds than you can use during a single growing season. But, if you have leftover seed that you’d like to store for next year’s planting, follow these storage tips.
Keep leftover seeds in a fairly dry place. The best storage temperature is around 40 degrees. If the humidity is low, the seeds can stand a temperature of below freezing. But if they’re stored in an area that is damp, freezing temperatures will kill the seeds.
Two good places to store seeds are in the attic or an unheated room upstairs. Be sure to protect them from rat and mice damage, too.
Then, next spring run a germination test just before you plant the stored seeds. This way, you’ll know if they’re still good.
To run the germination test, place seeds between layers of wet blotters and see how many sprout.
This is a quick and accurate test and will show whether it is worthwhile to use the seeds you stored or whether you should calculate your needs a little better next year.
Tree smarts
If you’re planning to build a new home, there may be many good-sized trees that you’ll want to keep as part of the landscaping. But too often these trees are damaged or killed by overfilling when the final grade is put on the lawn.
Just six inches of overfill is enough to damage many trees. This extra soil over the roots keeps the air out and smothers the tree. So, if two or three feet of fill is added, as often happens on a new home site, you can expect the tree to die.
One way to solve this problem is to build a “well” around the trees where grading is done. The well should be of stone, brick or concrete blocks and built about 12 to 18 inches out from the trunk of the tree. This way air can get into the soil around the tree roots.
The well should be porous or have holes in it so air can get through. And it should be as high as the fill is going to be. Put in pipe or drainage tile at the present ground level so that large amounts of water can escape.
Although tree wells are often expensive, most of the expense is the labor involved. You can save money if you can do most of the job yourself.
Greg Solt is a Penn State Cooperative Extension Agent in Northampton County. Lawn and Garden assistance is available from Penn State Master Gardeners, Northampton County Cooperative Extension, Greystone Building, Gracedale Complex, Nazareth, PA 18064-9212; 610-746-1970.
