What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Trish Stretton]

In accordance to my moon calendar - its a good time here now to prune to decrease activity, so.. The Avocado tree down the front of the garage got all the low hanging branches cut back. I then moved up the drive to the Pittosporums-nz native shrub and topped some of mine and my neighbours cos we agreed that we wanted them just above head height. For her, it meant less work hedging them and for me, it meant more light getting into my side.

I found out that what I thought was a native plant was actually the Japanese Aralia, which is quite detrimental to our native forests, so this got cut back to ground level. If it regrows, I will just chop and drop the leaves and use them as mulch.

I did manage to clear out the next vegie bed that I had let grow bee flowers and pull out some rogue potatoes from another bed that was showing signs of early blight!!!! argh The stalks went quietly into the rubbish bin and I washed my hands after dealing with them.

In one old chicken forage yard, I chopped and dropped all the Bears Breeches that had taken over and snipped the few odd bits odd convovulus...and then it started raining again.
This has to be the wettest Spring ever and I worry that my tomatoes will suffer from the blight again this year.
So, if anyone has any tips on dealing with this, I'd really like to know.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm sure it's too late to plant blight resistant varieties but maybe next year if it's that bad this year. At least something to consider.

It can splash up from the soil and onto the plant in the rain or from watering depending on how you water. Mulch over the soil can help keep the organism from splashing up. If you water, water gently at the base of the plant.

Trellis or cage them to get them up off the soil. Try to not let limbs or leaves contact the soil, even if you mulch. Prune them or remove lower leaves to give them more air, especially at the base. I don't mind pruning indeterminates, they just keep growing. I'm a little more reluctant to prune determinates but then I don't grow them so what do I know.

I'm sure there are other recommendations but these are what I remember. One obvious one is to not plant diseased plants to start with but they forget to tell you how you can tell. Several years back a major nursery in the eastern part of the country distributed diseased plants, a very bad year for a lot of people. My brother in Tennessee got some of them.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

I have 20 celebrity tomatoes in 7 gallon grow bags in water pans. The soil surface is quite high, and they all got leaf spot because the spores are simply airborne. Keeping the surrounding area trimmed and sprayed with antifungals is all I could suggest, and even then its probably just a matter of time. The catch 22 is that so many other plants act as host to the very pathogens I fight each year. Nobody told me that not only would I need to understand the plants I am growing in the garden, but also the cycles of all the other plants and their parasitic and sycophantic relatives. What I mean by sycophantic is that probably even pollinators act as pathogen vectors for fungi as spores cling like pollen to them. I thought bacteria borne by biting bugs bad beyond belief. I could use less nature sometimes.

 

[ducks4you]

Mulch with straw, hay or even grass clippings. Prune the bottom leaves, and continue to prune through your wet season. WE had a wet season, and I learned late about this.

Prune the suckers, then stop. Go back in a week and look again. Remove or, as the guy said, propagate them.
Prune off ANY LOW OR MIDDLE OF PLANT leaves that are damaged and turning brown. They serve NO purpose.
I Like the double-leader pruning. Other videos suggest that you develop one leader that WILL grow over 6 ft tall and Has to be supported. If you didn't build a tall and VERY stable trellis ahead of time, you will have trouble, at this point, building it. ANY stakes put in after you put your tomato seedling into the ground can damage the root system, and their roots can go up to 2 ft., at least on My property.
Here is a tall trellis:

Tomato plants get get really heavy end of season.

 

[digitS']

@Zeedman When the tractor guy first began showing up, I was mowing much of the garden. It became irrelevant and had been a strain for my lawnmowers, better suited for my postage stamp lawn. You don't use one of those wheeled weedwackers, do you?

I have no experience pruning tomatoes. It's probably a very good idea. @Dirtmechanic , the most serious pest that I suspect for most outdoor fungus are the leafhoppers. They have been everywhere in the alfalfa fields near my garden, some years. Before they settle down as "spittle bugs," they spread disease.

@Trish Stretton , tomatoes are the funniest dang things. I've only suspected late blight a couple of times, early blight just a little more frequently. Septoria is fairly common but usually doesn't cause a lot of trouble.

The funny (peculiar) thing about tomatoes is that they come to humanity from one of the absolutely driest places on Earth, we are told. Completely in the rain shadow of the Andes but near the ocean and with frequent, high humidity. If we had to try and duplicate that environment ... it would be nearly impossible.

Probably unnecessary to duplicate conditions because those are wild tomatoes or, semi-domesticated. Wide variations have entered tomato horticulture because of their popularity. Disease resistance is very important.

Try this Google search: CLICK Some of those varieties should be available to you - I hope.

Steve

 

[Zeedman]

@Zeedman When the tractor guy first began showing up, I was mowing much of the garden. It became irrelevant and had been a strain for my lawnmowers, better suited for my postage stamp lawn. You don't use one of those wheeled weedwackers, do you?

I had one of those wheeled string cutters, in hope that it would prove useful in mowing my culvert... but was unhappy with it. It was awkward to use, and basically just slung large pieces in all directions. Since the point of mowing the garden is to break down all debris so that it will decompose quickly, it was useless there too. I gave it away.

The riding mower makes quick work of chopping all debris into fine pieces, down to ground level. After that, the tiller easily turns everything under. All of the local farmers disc everything under at year's end; because of the scale of my gardening, it made sense to copy that technique - but without a disc. It has worked well for my home gardens, where the soil has improved due to all of the organic matter turned under each year. I was never able to gather enough material though, to make a meaningful improvement to the much larger rural garden. Hopefully that will change in the future, since the leaf vacuum makes it practical to collect & dump large amounts of leaves and grass clippings.

 

[flowerbug]

I had one of those wheeled string cutters, in hope that it would prove useful in mowing my culvert... but was unhappy with it. It was awkward to use, and basically just slung large pieces in all directions. Since the point of mowing the garden is to break down all debris so that it will decompose quickly, it was useless there too. I gave it away.
...

Mom has never had very good luck with any engine that needs oil added to the gas (two-stroke engines) and as a consequence they've tended to stop working. since i have been here she's not had that problem but we'd mostly switched to an electric string trimmer for a few years and then she decided she didn't like that either so we've given those away. now we're using the stirrup hoes and it is going to take some time to get her trained on using it but she's mostly doing ok. this is probably the best the gardens and yard have looked in years (in terms of what she likes). with both of us able to get things done this year we've been able to keep up on weeds and even made progress on cleaning up some tougher things so that makes the future much easier for us too.

 

[baymule]

This afternoon I plopped down in the garden and pulled nut grass. I got a thick mat of the stuff. Chickens, Sheba, Sentry and Trip for helpers. Trip stands in front of me, his ribs in my face and tries to lay in my lap. Basically I'm a dog sandwich. He hangs out on both ends and he is happy, I am smushed. I try to reach under, over him to pull nut grass and I laugh a lot. Sentry adored me, getting as close up against me as he could, his head on my leg. Sometimes up against my back, sometimes between my knees, hampering my efforts to pull nut grass. Trip would wander off, Sentry-never. For Sentry, I am the Center of the Universe. I invented food, air and water.

Sheba is wise to me. I bring food, give love and hugs and she is appreciative of that. She loves me and I love her. She was not impressed with pulling nut grass and flopped down in the shade of the tomatoes. I thought it a good time spent on chicken training-they could ignore the chickens while I didn't really watch them.....haha. Sheba started trailing the chickens and was getting intensely interested in them. I warned her with a low SHEBAAAA. She looked at me, looked at the chickens, her mind was trying to decide if the fun of chasing chickens was worth the paper feed sack beating she would get...... I could almost see her sigh and give up on the chickens. LOL

I got a wagon load of nut grass, enjoyed the dogs and it was a nice afternoon

 

[Dirtmechanic]

I love mulching and piling leaves. Since the hurricane 2 weeks ago I have 4 or 5 big piles of twigs and deadwood to burn into charcoal. This year will be the first where I mix the leaf compost and the charcoal. I have been planting with charcoal in the holes as we have moved outdoor shrubberies to better locations, and all are doing well. I thought it would help during dry times but its been an oddly wet year.

 

[flowerbug]

[i answered this on SS too ]

@baymule when pulling nutgrass are you going after the roots too? this late in the season there are likely roots with nuts on them, so you pretty much have to get after those or the nut grass will be back. so in effect, while weeding you are helping the problem, but if you want it to be more effective you have to do some rooting around.

more effective for pulling without rooting around would be in the early spring, but also as often as possible, but then you have to keep at it consistently and as the season wears on it gets very hard to keep up with such things.

i took out a patch this past summer that had been trying to take over part of a garden and had been gradually expanding because i kept topping it off but not being consistent enough with keeping after it. i sat there for a while and dug up the entire area and then went through the dirt by hand getting all the roots. since then i've had a few sprouts try to come back in that location, but instead of just taking the tops off i also dug around and found all the related pieces of roots that caused the sprouts. it has not returned this fall but next spring i expect to see a few sprouts from seeds or bits of root still hiding out, but that should be the last of it if i can manage to get all those parts out.

alas, eliminating it around here in the entire yard is nearly impossible because people kill off the cattails in the ditches using herbicides and the nutgrass comes in and takes over any chance it gets.

p.s. love puppypiles!