Garden Center Blog
Patricia Dumas
July, 2012
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What's Not to Love?
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The
temperature is up, your spirits are cool, and the tomato garden is whipping out
early tomatoes by the dozens. Tomatoes
adore their beloved heat. Even tomatoes
grown in a bit of shade will savor the heat of a humid day and ripen their
fruit for you quickly.
As
I ponder my good fortune to have a lush veggie garden, I took notice that after
all our heat, humidity and rain, that a couple of tomato plants in my plot had
the dreaded “early blight” In short,
early blight is a soil-born fungus that attacks tomatoes as well as other
plants in the vegetable garden. It’s always been around, passed on from year to
year, with sometimes disastrous results.
Leaves wilt and yellow almost overnight.
Hope of the big juicy “one” flies out the window. Many times, the plant
has to be pulled and racked up to home agricultural experience.
Certain things can be done to prevent, and or
stave off the worst effects of this disease if you catch it early. But,
sometimes you just have to pull the “bad apple” from the rest of the pile. I hoped to avoid that.
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| Verticillium Wilt on Tomato Plant |
For one, planting with plants that say VF or
VFN on the label is a good start. The VF
stands for resistance to Verticillium Fusarium Wilt, and the VFN stands for Verticillium,
Fusarium and Nematode (type of tomato worm) resistance. Both are tomato diseases. Many, or most of the hybrid tomato plants
seen on the market today have disease resistance built into them. The heirloom tomatoes don’t. But, that doesn’t mean you’ll get the disease
if you like to dabble in the old fashioned varieties. While heirlooms are
beautiful and their flavor is out of this world, they do run the risk of
catching what’s roaming around in your garden. Like anything, as gardeners,
we take risks every day, experimenting and planting things that would make the
risk worthwhile.
If
you’ve planted your tomato plants with good spacing, a dry mulch on top, and
don’t water or sprinkle overhead, you
should have good luck. Planting with
mulch below your plants helps protect this soil-borne disease from splashing
its spores on your plant and the mulch dries quickly.
So,
what do I do now, mid-season? Of course
I didn’t take my own advice and panicked.
Then, I took to the internet looking for help from every forum and
agricultural extension from Rutgers to Ohio State. This is what I did:
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Watering
hay-mulched tomatoes from ground level with a soaker hose.
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I
put black garden fabric under the tomatoes so the bare soil with the nasty
organism would be covered. Not only does this protect the plants from “splash
up” of the fungus onto the leaves, but helps to solarize the soil; ie., heating it up over time and killing harmful
fungus. Then I noticed that in the part of the garden that I had laid a dry
salt hay mulch down had NO disease at all. I covered the remaining area with
hay and hoped for the best. The dry hay
on top of the black sheeting will hopefully keep the soil from splashing the
disease around. Cutting off the
diseased leaves, and any leaves touching the ground goes a long way to keeping
this disease from taking over your garden. A weekly spray of Serenade Fungicide was in order as well. Serenade is an organic solution, that if
sprayed weekly, cuts down on fungus in the garden. Not a total cure, nor a miracle worker -- but
a start. If the disease is caught in time and controlled, your tomatoes won’t
suffer. Consider this an experiment. It
will make you a warrior in your garden. Being that warrior and realist at
heart, I chucked the two diseased plants that just wouldn’t stop wilting, and
hoped to prevent it from spreading to the others.
I
also quit spraying my garden overhead with the hose. Nothing wakes up disease
in the tomato garden better like a dripping wet mass of leaves and stalks.
As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure -- and I’ve learned my lesson. In the past, I had years and years
of disease-free tomato gardens. With
more varieties of plants coming our way, the slithering buggers will somehow
reach our gardens sooner or later. Being
philosophical helps. And Sickles Market
ALWAYS has Mr. Sickles Sr.’s tomatoes if I go broke in the garden.
So
far, so good. It’s been 3 days since
I’ve seen wilt on any of the plants, and I’m crossing my fingers. Rack it up to experience. All things in life get taught in the garden.
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| Starling feeding on Japanese Beetle Larvae |
As
for insects, I always say, feed the birds and your garden will thank you. Spray
a little, be natural a little. We just
don’t realize how many insects one bird can eat. They devour bugs and prevent
harmful insects that attack the garden. I’ve got Catbirds, Chickadees, Robins, Wrens,
Woodpeckers, and Starlings galore in the garden hunting insects all day long
for their young. The secret is to get them first with suet and seed. They
attract birds in the summer like a magnet.
The chicks follow and you’ll see a splendid show right outside your
window while handing over your insect problem to the birds.
You
know those squawking black Starlings you see by the dozens in your yard
waddling along pecking in the grass? They are not native, and were brought over
in the 1850’s to attack the Japanese Beetle population in Central
Park. They still do that
extremely well. Although they have become a nuisance to our native Bluebird and
other cavity nesting birds, inviting the Starling to your yard with Suet will
encourage them to dig in your yard for Beetle grubs all year long. By accepting
the inevitable imbalance of nature, you’ll
get free, safe insect protection.
All things have a purpose: even a homely, noisy bird in a brave little
tomato garden.
Patricia
Dumas
