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Taking a year off, diseases, what to do?
Steve Peek wrote:
songbird wrote: Steve Peek wrote: .... Spray with copper, start early and spray often. I've had very good success on my heirloom tomatoes with this method. copper is a poison to many creatures. i would not advise this at all. All metals are poisonous in extreme amounts. I believe copper is still listed as organic by OMRI (organic materials research institute). copper is poisonous in small amounts to some critters. please read up about it before suggesting it as a frequent fungal spray. spraying often as a preventative is going to cause it to build up in the soil. in time some will run off or soak in to the water table. if the person you recommend this to is near the ocean it is even worse as to the amount of harm even a small amount can do (Boston is near the ocean). just because some institute lists it doesn't mean it's suitable for frequent and general use. if everyone in the midwest used a lot of copper it would severely damage the Gulf ecosystem (even more than the dead zone already is doing). fungal problems can be controlled in many other ways that don't involve poisons. tomatoes are not greatly suited for wet and cold climates. eastern seaboard USoA can get some cold storms. if you are going to grow tomatoes in that area grow short season and smaller sized firm fruit varieties and accept that losses will happen. later in the season get the fruit off the vine before it gets damaged by frost. etc. when the plant isn't particularly suited, be prepared to accept some losses from time to time. spraying preventatively is an admission that the plant or conditions are unsuitable. wasteful and damaging in the longer term. certainly you cannot keep spraying copper on your gardens and expect it to not cause trouble eventually. some plants are metal accumulators. do you know which of these are? are any vegetables that you eat? i like being green, but i don't want to be green that way. :) songbird |
Taking a year off, diseases, what to do?
songbird writes:
I use a deep cover of salt marsh hay in the beds, cedar mulch on the paths. I rarely water the plants and only do so either by hand at the roots, or with a sprinkler early in the day, so the full sun will quickly dry them. ah, ok, i see... there is a likelyhood that the cedar chips are harboring the fungus. when did you start using wood chips? have you ever changed them? \ Every couple of years, and this year they were fully replaced. My paths had a lot of weeds, so for the first month or so in the spring I went over the paths with a root cutter every few days, then put in the new mulch. This was before putting out the frost vulnerable plants. do you mulch the tomatoes heavily too? Yes, with the same salt marsh hay. i would not do that. lightly, after the ground is good and warm, ok, heavily, no, not needed. tomatoes are dry and warm weather lovers. heavy mulch defeats both of those things. Interesting. The tomatoes start getting sick in July, with lower leaves drying up, upper leaves, and tomatoes, getting spots. The tomatoes on the counter seem to have the pox after a while. Loads of small black/brown spots on the surface. It does not really affect the taste. This year I got about a quarter of a decent year's yield. hmm, we lost some leaves due to fungal problems but didn't have much change in results (in fact it was a great year for our tomato crop). we grew beefsteak. A couple of years ago it was early Late Blight, but that does not survive our winters. Also that year the rot often started inside the tomato, not on the outside. blossom end rot? No, I have seen that. This is different. hm, ok, not something we have seen here. this past year was the first we'd seen BER and that was due to the long heat wave we had. I grow mostly heirlooms, several brandywine variants, a couple of plums types (one for cooking, one for fresh salsa) and two hybrid cherry types. I have tried a few blight resistant types, but they just did not taste very good, and did not seem to do much better against disease. The last two years my cucs just did not grow. This year one of the hills did, the other did not. This year my basil leaves started turning a yellowish green and tasted very bitter. I ripped out the whole crop after just one batch of pesto. Onions, peas, beans, carrots all have done reasonably well. I have had varying amounts of an internal rot disease in my garlic (German Extra Hardy stiffneck). Last year it cost me half my crop, and the garlic I stored did not last past January --- it usually lasts until April or May. This year I got most of the crop, time will tell how long it lasts. internal rot observed when first harvested or internal rot after being in storage for a while? Both. weather, lifting too early or too late, curing temperature, ... all can change storage quality. another thing, if you are after a long storing garlic is to pick up some of the soft necked garlics with the taste that you'd like but also the increased storage life. for rot in the ground, improve drainage (raise the bed), make sure the soil is warm before mulching and don't mulch so deeply. that way the mulch will protect the soil, but not become as much a breeding ground for fungus. if the bulbs are rotting in the ground then i would raise the beds to give better drainage. I am sorry I cannot be more specific. I guess I want a reasonable generic fix. If such exists. Something that will improve the odds of minimizing common diseases. burying topsoil deep. that will change the spore count of the common fungal diseases. then practice more careful watering and leave more space for airflow (especially for tomatoes as those seem to be the ones you are having the most trouble with). I probably do plant them too close. I carefully train them up poles, but after they get 7' tall I cannot help them leaning over and touching each other. by the time they get that tall it is late season anyways. anything you pick green can ripen off the vine. i'd not even worry about any rots showing up that late. the plants are shutting down and more succeptible to rot anyways, why fight the battle they are quitting? this season we had tomatoes up until last week. a month and a half longer than last year. we picked all the green tomatoes before the hard frosts damaged them and kept them in the garage in the open air on a table. some ripened right away, we canned them, others came along and got used one way or another. the last few were not as good as the regular season tomatoes and had some spots of rot, but we cut around that and was ok. some tomatoes went bad completely, it happens, worm food or compost or buried. last year we put newspaper over them and they all rotted. i think a lot of them were also frost damaged, which won't help much of anything. if you dig it and turn it this fall and then leave it undisturbed then the sun UV will take out a lot of the spores. mulching will isolate them and keep them from splashing the plants, but i would not mulch until after the soil is well warmed and the plants are in and growing (as it cools the soil). I have decided to give the land a rest for a year. What should I do? THe soil is still very fertile. I grow tomatoes, peppers, basil, peas, beans, cucs, zucs, carrots, lettuce... I rotate, but I am not sure the garden is really big enough for that to be a big effect, and it is only a four year rotation. Should I grow stuff that is completely different? Solarize? Just turn the soil every few weeks to get it exposed to the sun and elements? Thanks in advance, Depends on the problem(s) Definitely plural, but sadly, non-specific. yes, you are right that rotating in such a small garden is likely to not gain much for disease control (but you still need to do it for nutrient balancing as different crops use different nutrients). Yes, I always plant a 2nd crop of beans after the garlic and onion harvest. That really fixes up the depleted soil. :) i've been very fond of dry beans this season. i'm still writing up my season bean report, i put in about 15 kinds, but as i'm still shelling soybeans i am not going to be able to finish it until they are shelled and weighed. My garden is where the 1879 horse barn was build. It was torn down in the 1920s, and for 70 odd years the owners piled their fall leaves there (for some reason there was a basement to the barn). I have really fertile soil. It is just too bloody diseased. Thanks for the advice! you're welcome. i hope my comments above supply further fodder for the noodle. :) Absolutely! songbird -- Andrew Hall (Now reading Usenet in rec.gardens.edible...) |
Taking a year off, diseases, what to do?
Billy wrote:
about copper. thanks, useful information in there. songbird |
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