I never till in fall AFTER it has gotten cold - only to till garden debris
and to make the garden look a little nicer.

Some years I did not till and it did not make any real difference.

The idea is to bury the existing "soil" where the tomato's lived so you
cover the bacteria as well.

Also worms will leave if you till in the spring when they are coming up into
the soil
and
I dont want to do too much work...
and
Its quick and easy

Tomatolord


wrote in message
. ..
In article , Tomatolord
wrote:
The dreaded wilt is a soil borne disease - you have 3 options

1 - plant in a different area every year - sometimes not real practical

2 - solarization - like you said black or clear plastic but it has to be
over the summer so you will lose one year

3 replace all soil with leaf mulch each year - which is what I do and I
never have the wilt problems - just lay down a layer of leaf mulch from
the
raleigh recycling center off of buffaloe road - DO NOT till it in, just
plant right into the mulch


I have been curious about this method. Do you till in the mulch in the
fall or do you just never till your tomato area anymore?

tomato holes - can be from the stink bug - they stick there mouths in
and
suck out the juice, they look like triangles with legs. Birds can peck
at
the red fruits as well, so put a few red christmas balls around after a
few
pecks at those things they give up on the real ones.

Peppers are doing great!! mine are by the road side and they get plenty
of
heat and sun and they are sort of decorative as well.

dont know about the cukes

And our fig is doing well - the 5 year for it now

Tomatolord


"Siouxzi" wrote in message
...
Sigh... last year we had a wilt problem, but this year it's horrible.
We got a fair crop of nice tomatoes, but there are still a lot of
fruit on the vines, and most of the plants have gone completely brown
and wilted... or nearly so.

I've planted a lot of different heritage varieties and a few
commercial ones. The Lemon Boys are most prolific, but they've
succumbed also. Hardly got any brandywines. :^(

1) What shall we do next year? Will the wilt virus be even more
plentiful in our garden soil, and attack all our plants even more
effectively?
Would it help to cover both raised beds with black plastic?--can you
kill the pathogen with heat?

I'm ready to try anything--I can't bear the thought of no or few
tomatoes next year. We've finally got a scaffolding system that works
fairly well, and an idea of how many plants we can handle... I'd like
next season to be the best yet!

2) Also, most of the tomatoes have holes pecked or bored in
them--usually one hole per tomato. What's up with that? I don't recall
this being a big problem last year... is it birds? It has ruined so
many fruits--they get damaged before they're ripe, and usually rot
sets in so that it's mush by the time it's ripe enough to pick...

Our cucumbers suck big time. I don't remember the variety, I think
that they were advertised as "burpless" (like I care!). But the grow
fat and round with thick skins and prickles, they taste bitter when
they're small and green, but then they rapidly turn bloated and
yellow, and with huge unpalatable seeds.

3) Can't we grow those nice long, crunchy British seedless cukes? If
so, how?

Thanks, and hope your garden is looking better than ours. We are
hardly getting any peppers either. Something's going on... but we are
getting tons of those little tiny sweet tomatillos--I love them. And
our fig tree has really taken off this year--looking forward to ripe
fruit in a few weeks!

Sue





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