Drew Lawson wrote:
songbird writes:
....
the tomatoes here get some kind of blight each
season but they still bear fruit and we get enough
so i've never treated for it.

Untreated, the varieties I grow just keep losing leaves until they
die.

that's what happens here too, but it is usually
late enough by the time the plants are done anyways.
perhaps planting more would work where you could
get the earliest crop and then just be done with
them before they get worse? the reason why we don't
go for other varieties is that we get between 20-40lbs
of fruit per plant so we get enough even with the
blight. it doesn't look pretty but i'm good with
how it goes.


i would not use copper sulfate for long as the
copper can build up in the soil.

It is a pretty light usage. A pound of powder lasts me a couple
years.

i tried babying the grape vine one season with it
to see if it made any difference. decided that once
i found a major flaw in the plant to just remove the
vine instead of continuing the spraying. i still
have the copper sulphate granules on the shelf with
the few tablespoons removed from the package. being
someone who has a hard time throwing things away i
should get rid of it but haven't yet.


have you tried finding more resistant plants?
i have here but Mom is very fixated on what she
wants to grow so i gave up.

I doubt that modern hybrids would have any problem with it, but I'm
hooked on my Black Plum tomatoes. And my wife fully endorses the
resulting pasta sauce.

yeah, i understand that...


the troublesome weeds here are horsetail and
sow-thistle, but i've found out they can be
removed by manual methods and smothering once
you've got the worst of them cleared. you just
have to be sure to keep after any new ones that
may show up before they get going again.

I am a magnet for invasive weeds that spread beneath the surface.
I used to believe that mulch could cure everything, but bermuda
grass and creeping thistle have convinced me otherwise. Still,
mulch makes it easier.

we have pretty hard clay soil for subsoil so
when the sow thistle gets going it can take
quite an effort to track it down to remove it.
the larger thistles aren't much fun either but
at least their roots are larger and easier to
find all the pieces.

mulch makes a lot of things easier. i
like how when the wood chips we use finally
break down they turn into the dark humus that
goes well in the veggie gardens. if i'm
lucky enough i can get enough to use in the
worm buckets as they'll recharge that and i
also mix in some garden soil to help give
the clay something more to bind to along with
all that organic matter. it makes for some
really nice fertilizer at the end of a year.


songbird