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songbird[_2_] · 04-06-2013, 06:48 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible

wrote:
songbird wrote:

sorry this seems so frustrating to you, but
there's a lot of things that the rest of us
don't know about what you are doing and so in
order to try to help it is important to find
out as much of the history and methods you are
using. when i ask a question i want a specific
answer to that question. if you think you're
repeating yourself you might not be getting the
point i'm after. already below you've revealed
a few things that i didn't note from before so
they can help longer term.

patience...
the more complete you can be the more it helps.

onwards...

have you ever been able to grow tomatoes there
at all? you say you've planted different varieties
but have you tried cherry tomatoes or smaller
varieties?

have you ever tried growing tomatoes (patio or
cherry tomatoes) in a brand new pot using potting
soil and not using water from the tap?

for an experiment get a bucket, put a few
holes in the bottom, fill it with potting soil
and put a patio or cherry tomato plant in there
and keep it watered using distilled or spring
water (i.e. don't use tap water or water from
the lake). fertilize it lightly only after it
gets growing for a month.

if you can keep that plant alive then at least
we know it's not you...

Everything is fertilized with 10 10 10. The peppers
(bell) do not have very thick walls and I thought I had
read that this would help. There is a lot of irrigation
to the garden, so am I wasting my time and effort? The
burning issue concerns me too. Would early morning be
enough to combat that?

it may be still too early to pick them, try
giving them a bit more time to develop.

if your soil is not holding moisture well and
requires a half hour of watering each day that is
a good sign that your soil could use some added
clay and organic matter. this also would help in
holding nutrients for the plants. also top dressing
lightly with a mulch (once the soil warms up after
the spring) will help hold moisture.

i still think this will help overall for your
garden apart from everything else.

I have had the soil tested many times at through
the cooperative extension office but it has been a few
years. I don't remember the exact results but there was
never anything that stood out and the 10 10 10 was their
recommendation.

if nothing stood out they should have
left it alone, but anyways...

have you had the water tested? is it
city/treated or well water?

The water comes out of the lake we live on and is acidic although I
do not know the actual number. It is an irrigation system that waters
around 10 pm and then again around 5 am.

your soil is sandy loam? the soil tests
should tell you what type of soil it is
and how much clay (the percentage). if clay
is too low then you're low pH water will be
leaching nutrients from a sandy soil.

test your water. find out what you are
up against (at the rate of 30 minutes at so
many gallons per minute) each day.

i'm not sure if irrigating at different
times would help too. is your irrigation
system buried so that the water isn't being
heated up at any point along the route
from the lake to the garden?

is it being stored in a tank that is
in the sun or does it come straight
from the lake to the garden? (to
adjust pH some folks run acidic water
through a crushed limestone gravel bed,
this works well for a while, but the
gravel can eventually get a coating on
it which then decreases the adjustment
so after that it needs to be stirred.
a much, much easier approach is to use
earthworms and limestone grit. the worms
use the pieces of grit in their gizzards
to grind things up. along with their
calcium secretion glands they are very
good for maintaining pH.

are you watering using hoses that are
laying in the hot sun all day? if you
spray that directly on plants fresh out
of the hose that's not a good thing...
when i water i always flush the hose
first until the water runs cooler and
then use...

The soil is fairly sandy and slightly
acidic due to the pine trees near by.

use a little agricultural lime (powder acts
fastest, grit lasts longer) in your garden. if
you make your own compost add it to the compost
heap. how much you need depends upon how far off
your pH is from neutral. if you are 6.5 to 7.5
that is fine for most garden plants (other than
those well noted for needing acidic conditions).
don't add a lot all at one time, but over the
course of a few years you should be able to
gradually increase the pH. however, if your
soil is mostly sand and has little clay or
organic material to hold the moisture it can
be leached away quickly once stopped. that is
why i recommend adding a little clay and organic
material to help hold things in place and to
give the rest of the soil community more to
work with.

important...

I have never been
able to figure out what is in the soil that causes my
tomato plants to develop wilt but they do every year. In
fact I took some dirt out of the garden, put it in a pot,
planted the tomato plant and it too has wilted.

diseases can be a problem for some plants.
do you start your own seeds? have you tried
different varieties? do you do crop rotation
or are you planting tomatoes and peppers in
the same soil year after year? if you are
starting your own seeds you could be using
infected seeds/trays/pots/starting mix, tools,
watering can, hoses or location. if your
starting process is flawed then it all follows.

ALL of the above. I start my own seeds, I have tried everything
from seeds from actual tomatoes, cheep ones from Wal Mart, disease
resistant seeds from a mail order place in Florida. All of my utensils
are correctly used.

have you ever lifted a plant and looked
at the root system? compared a healthy
plant with a wilted plant? perhaps you
have root knot nematodes (sandy soil ...)?

it may not be wilt. just curious what you've
examined and if you've sent a wilted plant in
for diagnosis? if so, what was the exact name
they gave?

what do you do for soil organic matter? do
you add compost? do you grow other crops in
the area and turn them under?

Yep rotate every year. Have not turned them under, especially the
tomatoes because of the wilt.

ok, how are you rotating? how large an area?
have you ever double dug an area?

if you have another area far enough away that
has never been gardened put a tomato in that
spot and see what happens (even if it doesn't
get enough light you can still examine the
root structure later on or see if it wilts
in the same manner).

Organic matter is just fallen leaves and not
much else.

not much actual nutrition in fallen leaves.

your soil is crying out for a more balanced
diet.

I cover the garden is black plastic for the winter (November -
February)to kill the weeds but whatever is there gets tilled in.

is wilt a fungal, bacterial or viral disease?

if it is a fungal disease then covering the
ground for that long a period of time and not
encouraging bacterial populations is not going
to help...

the sun sterilizes the surface of the soil
(UV rays). earthworms will also help change
the bacterial and pH characteristics of a soil.
also growing plants will help. if you can switch
to planting a mixed cover crop for those months
and then turn it a few weeks before planting the
garden i think you'll eventually be in for much
better results.

once you learn more about what is going on (is it
a fungal disease, bacterial or viral) then you can
also adjust your practices to encourage the other
factors to reduce the problem.

We are
homebrewers so any spent grain gets put in the garden but nothing else
compost wise.

again, another very limited nutrient material.
perhaps also too oriented towards fungal (like
covering with plastic for months at a time will
accomplish).

if you can afford fertilizer you can afford a
bag or two of alfalfa pellets or alfalfa meal.
top dress your garden with that and lightly mix
it with the top few inches of soil. mulch lightly
over that. in combination with added clay (if you
don't have enough) some agricultural lime (probably
needed) you'll greatly increase the bacterial and
fungal counts. if you do this along with adding a
bit of composted cow manure and other known good
quality compost then you'll help to add more
competition to disease organisms. this is best
done a few weeks to a month before planting.

I have tried it and it just doesn't seem to work for me.

"I have tried it" what is "it"? compost or
cover crops or ?

there's a lot of history we don't know about
yet. we have no idea how long this garden has
been going, if you've ever been able to grow
tomatoes there, what the light situation is
like, etc.

i'm trying to find out.

if you answer
each question i ask (bear with me, but each
question is important because it gives me a
better idea of what you are doing).

already we are getting a clearer picture of
what's up...

we've grown tomatoes for years and had some
problems with fungi (after flooding and heavy
rains), but not wilt. we also rotate plant on
a minimum three to five year cycle (tomatoes
first on new soil, then peppers, then beans,
peas, beets, greens, then cover crops like
buckwheat or alfalfa or trefoil. if we've planted
the same crop two years in a row it is because
i've turned the soil deeply enough to not worry
about diseases.

also, mulching lightly to reduce rain and
watering splashing of soil on the leaves. some
people even remove the lower leaves of the
plants once they get growing to keep disease
problems from having an easy start. i don't go
that far...

I do. I remove all the lower leaves on everything.

do you use any mulch, covers or what?

But back to the peppers, I put a tablespoon of the Epsom
Salt around the base of each plant and I sware the plants
are greener. How often should or can I do this? The garden
is watered twice a day for 15 minutes. The plants are just
getting flowers.

i dunno, around here both magnesium and
sulfur are at reasonable levels and we amend
enough with other materials that they shouldn't
be getting depleted.

you could be picking them too early. when we get
thin walled peppers it is those at the end of the
season when the temperatures are lower and the light
is not as strong. they are still edible up until
the frosts get them, but the flavor isn't as good
as prime time.

you could also try different varieties.

Again have done this too. The ones I have had success
with have been from seeds harvested from grocery store
peppers, believe it or not.

likely California Wonder (the most common green
bell pepper found in stores).

Thank you for your time and information. I just feel
like I have been doing this long enough that I should be
growing perfect produce

you're welcome. i enjoy problem solving and
perhaps others can learn something too. i don't
consider it a waste of time, but it speeds things
up if you answer each question even if you think
i should know the answer already. not everyone
reads the backstory or the past articles and
someone far wiser than i may see something
obvious that i haven't...

as for growing perfect produce. well i can tell
the bugs which plants to eat and they listen. just
joking... every year i learn more and i've been
growing houseplants and gardening for more than 40
years. the more i learn the more i appreciate what
a fine world we have.

getting back to your problem with tomatoes...

i think i would lay off using the brewing
leavings and instead use those in a compost
pile (to reduce the yeast populations and to
introduce a wider variety of bacteria and
fungi to the compost, which then gets added
to the gardens). i would add a little lime
to the compost pile, and use dirt and
composted cow manure from a different site
to innoculate the pile.

you want to encourage a wider population of
soil creatures than what you currently have.
many of them will help fight an imbalance, but
you want to get these soil creatures from a
whole different location and source than what
you have now.

if you want a prime example of how this type
of process works look at the problem of c. diff
in people. it's a very nasty bug of the digestive
tract. very resistant to drugs. yet they can
treat it in a fairly inexpensive manner by taking
a healthy person's poop and putting that in the
infected person's digestive system (simplifying
the description, but that's about what they do).
c.diff almost killed my aunt. before this
treatment was made known, she was not really ever
fully recovered... now they know a lot more and
more people are able to be treated.

garden soil is a whole community much like the
digestive system. if you can find the imbalance and
correct it that is good, but you might also need
to give it a boost with a new community of
organisms to provide competition with whatever
is causing disease.

a few things you are doing is pushing your
soil community towards the fungal life, but
also certain types of fungi (yeasts and those
that thrive in low light and warmth) does
that sound familiar? like the understory of
a tomato plant in summer humidity?

stop smothering the soil for months at a time.
plant a mixed cover crop and turn it under about
a month before planting. at that time add some
lime, new compost from a known good source
(innoculated with soil from a known good area
not at all close to yours). if you can get
native earthworms (not composting worms) to add
at the time you turn the cover crop and add the
lime (add the lime first and water it before
adding worms) this will help things a great deal.
clay too. don't forget that if your soil is too
much sand. a little bit goes a long ways.

another thing, is that earthworms (not composting
worms) don't tend to hang out in poor sandy soils.
they like a little clay and they like a little grit
and they like green stuff up top and cool enough
temperatures below. give them grit, green stuff and
a bit of clay and they will work for free to help
you keep your pH up. they are great garden helpers.
a light layer of mulch after the ground has warmed
up enough to plant will also help give them a bit
of protection from the heat and drying out. composting
worms are ok too, but they are more up top creatures
and what i would want to encourage in your situation
is actual soil dwelling worms.

songbird