Garden 2009

[piercehawkeye45]

Damn...impressive.

The weather here has been horrible, cloudy days weeks on end with little sun and rain (I water the plants daily anyways). One of my pepper plants are starting to bud but nothing else has started yet.

[glatt]

I don't have a garden this year. But for those who do, be on the lookout for "late blight." Apparently the cool wet spring has provided ideal conditions for this fungus to go absolutely nuts. It will destroy your tomatoes completely before you can pick them. Consider spraying healthy plants now, while you still can.

If you have late blight, be a good citizen and throw your plants away in a sealed plastic trash bag so it won't spread.

Late Blight Comes Early, Hitting Tomatoes Hard, Experts Say

By Adrian Higgins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 10, 2009

Plant scientists are asking home gardeners in the region to check their tomato plants for a disease that could wipe out much of this year's crop.

In spite of its name, late blight has appeared early in the tomato growing season, which runs from April to October, and threatens not just homegrown fruit but commercial crops, said Jerry Brust, an expert on vegetable pests at the University of Maryland's cooperative extension service.

If the disease takes hold, consumers might see "a little less quantity and a higher price" for tomatoes as growers spend extra on fungal sprays, said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University. So far, outbreaks have been sporadic but spread over a wide geographic area, with infected plants reported from South Carolina to Maine and west to Ohio. Late blight is the same fungal disease that wiped out potato crops in Ireland in the 1840s, leading to the infamous potato famine.

The disease is sometimes seen at the end of the tomato growing season, but after the fruit has been harvested. Its appearance now has the potential to cause widespread plant losses before harvest, said Brust, "especially if we start getting driving rains and some good storms that will pick up the spores," which can travel miles to infect healthy plants. Scientists attribute its early appearance to an unusually cool, wet and cloudy spring. McGrath, who works from Riverhead, N.Y., said that in 21 years she has only seen five outbreaks "and I've never seen it this early before."

In Maryland, the disease was discovered in mid-June when a Howard County gardener brought a sick plant to extension agents for diagnosis. Brust said many of the infected plants were sold unwittingly by big-box retailers -- he declined to name them -- raising fears that diseased plants could be widespread.

The initial symptoms are small, watery, gray or brown lesions on the leaf that quickly spread to the entire leaf. The fungus causes dark-brown lesions on the stems. The tomatoes turn brown and rot. The Maryland cooperative extension service has posted images of infected plants on its blog, Grow It, Eat It, at http://www.growit.umd.edu.

The fungus is not toxic to humans, but quickly renders an afflicted fruit rotten and inedible. Blighted plants should be placed in a sealed plastic bag and thrown out. Don't put them on the compost heap, where the spores will continue to spread, according to Brust.

The disease can be prevented if healthy plants are sprayed with a fungicide containing chlorothalonil. "That would be very helpful at that point and it would help with other foliage diseases," he said. Tomato vines are often afflicted with another disease called early blight, in which lower leaves yellow and shrivel.

Gardeners who want to spray organically could use neem oil, he said, but would have to reapply the oil weekly.

Word is getting out among farmers, McGrath said, but she is worried that the disease will spread quickly because home gardeners, many of them novices at growing food because of the recession, won't monitor their plants closely enough. "It's amazing how quickly this disease can devastate plants and that's something people need to realize," she said. "It's not like any other diseases on tomatoes that we can live with."

Hiu Newcomb and Ellen Polishuk of Potomac Vegetable Farms said they have not noticed late blight on their tomato crops. They are growing approximately 2,000 plants on their farm near Vienna and an additional 3,000 on their farm near Purcellville.

"There's not a lot to be done when you're an organic grower," Polishuk said, "so we are going to wait and see what happens."

The blight, Phytophthora infestans, also causes potato plants to collapse and the tubers to rot. Potatoes and tomatoes are both in the nightshade family.

"We are growing potatoes but they're pretty much done already, and we'll be harvesting shortly," Polishuk said.

[xoxoxoBruce]

A friend in Delaware found these in his tomato plants today.

[Undertoad]

BOUNTY

[Sundae]

Do peppers only fruit from seed?
I mean, mine are still growing, plantwise, but no flowers or fruit yet
I know you live in a hotter part of the world, but I was wondering if maybe mine might fruit next year instead?
Except I have a feeling they grow and fruit and die, meaning even if I can winter them, they won't bear me anything in future anyway.

They're far rangier than yours. Perhaps the lack of sun. And possibly too much water.

[Undertoad]

Not sure, we bought it as a plant.

[Aliantha]

Peppers will grow indefinitely. You just need to keep on harvesting the crop. You can prune them pretty harshly too and they'll spring back. They do need plenty of sunshine to bear fruit though.

Aden and I have just built our garden beds and planted them out with seedlings. I'll post some pics later.

[Aliantha]

So here is the garden Aden and I have done over the last couple of weeks while they've been on holidays (vacation).

The first pic is of the three garden beds. We elected to go with round iron raised beds for a number of reasons. Firstly, we wanted them quite high to keep the dogs out without having a build a fence around. Secondly, the soil quality here is quite poor. Very sandy. Dries out too quickly etc. So in the tanks we first put sugar cane mulch at the bottom, then about 2/3 of organic fertilized soil. We're yet to start our own composting area, but that's the next project now the garden is actually under way. We've put weed matting under the beds for dual purposes. Firstly to keep the weeds out, but also to slow down drainage and in turn save on water. You can see the garden edging at the bottom. We haven't fixed that in properly yet. We just got the pegs for it yesterday, so we'll probably do that today, then we're going to put down pebbles in between the tanks to keep the area neat and tidy.



In the first one we have snow peas, zucchini, squash, leeks, corn.



Tomatoes, strawberries, carrots (from seed), lettuce, beetroot.



cappsicum (peppers), broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce.

[kerosene]

Very nice, Ali!

[Undertoad]

More bounty, not pictured: we just brought in 7 cucumbers and one more tomato. We had too many cucumbers when we had two, now we have ten. I am preparing to learn how to brine them into pickles. We have enough dill...

[xoxoxoBruce]

The eggs in post #33 have hatched... so have the tomatoes.

[DucksNuts]

Those big yellow mouths look like sparrows to me

[xoxoxoBruce]

I think you're right, the eggs look like the sparrow eggs on Google images.

I wonder which one is Jack?

[Sundae]

Beautiful! And from experience of egg casings, I'd say sparrows are likely - I saw a lot like that growing up, and there are more sparrows here than anything else.

Thanks for the advice re the peppers. I'll hold onto them and hope for more sun next year.
I can winter them in the second shed. It has a window.
They have tiny buds now, but I'm not too hopeful.
I'll stake them up properly, just in case.

Thing is, I can't remember which plant is which.
One is chillies, one is peppers. One looks close to fruiting, the other like it's not even bothered. I'm hoping the larger of the two is the jalapeno. Seems unlikely

Ali - your beds are so space age! And support all the cliches sold to emigrants back in the middle of the last century - the soil being black gold and all that

[skysidhe]

nice shots guys.

Your walkway seems so cool and inviting warch.