What is blight, Johan?
Blight is bladmögel / rost / mjöldagg (leaf mold / rust / mildew).
Kind of a collection name for those things
I had the same thing happen along with blossom end rot. blossom end rot is typically a calcium defiency. I added calcium. I suspect the other is fusarium so I added bacillus amyloliquefaciens, which does fight fusarium and some other organic fertilizer with various other bacteria in it. They donât look good, but they arenât dead yet. (it might be too late, I donât know) This was just in potting soil that was used last year for flowers. and in a container on the back porch, because I donât like tomatoes and my mom never went out to the garden to harvest them, and I when I am at her place, harvesting tomatoes is at the bottom of the list.
bacillus amyloliquefaciens has also demonstrated an ability to attack mosquito larvae as well.
I will spray the plants with a mixture of baking soda, neem oil, dish detergent and apple cider vinegar. I have seen it recommended different places. A tablespoon of each to each gallon of water. I doubt it will work. I have tried copper sulfate before with little result and even some kind of organic store bought fungicide for too much money and that did nothing either. I did get late blight about 5 years ago and almost over night all my plants leaves turned black. That was worse. Iâm wondering if it was because I weed wack between the rows and it throws a lot of soil dust up on the plants. It has been exceptionally humid the last couple weeks of July as well. Actually the potato beds have a lot of yellow in the leaves as well but since they were planted 9 weeks ago I figured they may be reaching the end of their growing season. Only thing more risky that going to Vegas is planting a garden. Time to plant out the greenhouse.
Usually if it is a fungal, you will see concentric circles on the leaves where the spot is, and you may need a magnifying glass or a cell phone with a camera.
IF it is fungal, try and identify exactly what it is. You can also burn leaves with that mixture.
I personally would look at this:
Organic Bio Fungicide â Arber?
It mixes at 1oz (4 capfulls ) to the gallon so it can treat your whole garden.
Walmart still has it listed for delivery for 9 dollars, although it isnât in store anymore. Then hope it sticks in the soil. And actually I threw some in the worm bin.
Spent nearly three hours in the garden this morning to overhaul 30 tomato plants. Trimmed every dead limb and spotted leaf off and then used a pump sprayer to saturate all the leaves with the homebrew mixture I listed earlier. I know if the problem persists because right now each plant has no blemished leaves. Hopefully it will hold off further damage long enough to at least get a decent harvest. Many of the plants have put on a lot of fruit the last couple days and temps and humidity are supposed to drop some in a few days so that will help.Still have another 26 plants in that area to do this evening when the sun drops back. Cautiously optimistic. The other 40 of so tomato plants were all planted in weed cloth and Iâm seeing only a little damage on them. I wait a few days and then do another youtube suggestion of spraying the plants with H202 and baking soda solution. I donâ't have any non-coated aspirin handy but I guess thatâs supposed to trick the plant into defense mode when mixed in with the peroxide/soda. If nothing else Iâm learning stuff. Started scrapping all the unused leggy plants in the greenhouse and getting ready to start planting root crops in there. If I donât report back it will because the deer flies have made me a buffet.
I was watching a video about controlling aphids. I found out that is an indication of too much nitrogen. And the guy tells a story about trying to help this couple get rid of aphids, in their lemon tree, and it ends up the guy took his morning piss around the tree, so it was getting 360 doses of nitrogen a year, and he goes oh that is the problem. A fruit tree only needs about 20 doses of nitrogen a year, spread the love.
I will file that under something I learned today, that I donât necessarily need to know.
The brussels sprout is 1m tall, but no balls, strange.
Melons seem to be working in the greenhouse, so are the peppers, last of the corn, is there anything else good that can be planted now, this late?
My potatoes have been doing pretty well, starting to get some spots on one variety, the neighborâs potato leaves are gone.
Outside You can plant kale, broccoli. Peas, Swiss Chard. Probably a lot of other stuff I donât grow. Anyway those are the fall crops Iâll plant and I think my climate is similar to yours. You should still get outside cabbage but you can definitely grow it in the greenhouse.
How are things going with your crops Johan, would be fun to see.
I will take some pictures tomorrow Jan.
Misty morning here today, pictures taken at 06.30
The hydroponic greenhouse is doing really well, tomatoes has had their lower branches cut and we harvest strawberries every other day (did that yesterday so not many on there now)
Lettuce and red beets are also doing really well there and so does the cauliflower however they have not yet shown the head. One of the strawberries died most likely damaged in transport so we put in a left over cucumber plant instead and even though it was late it caught up and have passed the cucumbers in soil in the other greenhouse
Potatoes are also doing well but they are smaller this year (good thing we planted three times as much) and have blight but it has not increased in the last two weeks so I will not cut the stems just yet.
They are both for us and my dad plus we give some away sometimes.
In the other greenhouse it is more like a rainforest, cucumber leaves everywhere doing well, the bell peppers are slow so no harvest there yet but they are coming and the same thing with the tomatoes.
Our pumpkin patch and the butternut squash are not doing so well for some reason, we did not think that pumpkins would ever fail but it seems that that it is the case here this year.
My wife gave me a blind taste of cucumbers yesterday to see which I thought were best out of the soil planted ones and the hydroponic ones (same variety) and it turns out we both thought the hydroponically grown one have more taste and crunch to it and the soil ones are a little more watery, I would have guessed the other way around since the roots stand in water solution all the time.
All in all the hydroponic is going to be upped next year, no weeding, no pests, raised up and no grass/weed on the ground, great tasting produce however I have no idea of nutrients in it. The main drawback is the cost of nutrients but I guess that the upsides comes at a price. As we all know, there are no free lunches.
It seems to be growing very well at your place, do you also think the tomatoes are ripening slowly this year?
Learn to make your own nutrients. Keep a rabbit or two. Their waste makes an excellent nutrient rich tea. Itâs also why I prefer fish in my system to add nutrients to the water
Yes, it seems to be slow this year, I thought as it actually is a ânormalâ summer weatherwise that this year stuff would grow well.
Thanks, I will look into that, this year is more of a testrun to see if we liked the system so bought nutrients was the way to go
I love what you are doing and Iâm totally impressed Johan. Your pictures are making me feel like a slacker. I am going to get busy planting out the greenhouse hopefully this week or at least get started. Mostly root crops since they are easier to keep heated and under lights. Are you doing any kind of vermiculture? I canâ't recommend it enough. I mixed two cupful of worm castings in my planting holes and set the roots from my starts in it and they took off like crazy. It provides instant available microbes for the plants while the other fertilizers are converting to actual nutrition a plant can uptake. Being almost fanatical about self sufficiency I have also been unhappy about being dependent on manufactured hydroponic nutrients but I have done a lot of reseach and to the best of my knowledge no one has yet found a suitable home brew nutrient solution that works real well. Considering what you can grow and not have to buy, the investment in something like Masterblend is well worth it. I have probably stocked up more than Iâll ever use but I donât plan to ever stand in line at some government center to get my allotment of bugs.
Thank you Tom
Well, from the walkaround movies you made a couple of weeks back and what you do and make I definately wouldnât call you a slacker.
I have looked into it during summer but I have not convinced the one incharge yet although I havenât put my back into it yet either, I will try to convince her later. We canât start everything at once either, then it will be cutting corners soon and I am done with that, it never works out.
My wife has seen that many have problems with their hydroponic systems and she believes that we have the masterblend (and rainwater) to thank that it went so well for us plus the fact that there is no half assed mixing the solution.
Starting a worm farm here takes about a hundred dollar investment if you want to start out with a decent number of worms. I think about 4000 red wigglers is a good starting point. Then just some totes and the materials for some sort of stand that gets things up to a comfortable working level and some screen to make sifters from. Once started they only require about an hour a week for maintenance. They do need temps in the 50 to 80F range though.
50-80f, then it is good to have them under the kitchen counter but 4000 red wigglers, that takes quite some digging in piles of manure if one wants to save $100
I looked what the price was here for red wigglers last month, donât remember how much but I thought it was a hefty pricetag for worms.
I have a 5 gallon bucket system. And just started with some leftover red wigglers from the bait store. They basically lay an egg or two every 30 da.ys. They donât double very fast. You do want nice sweet smelling soil and/or compost to add to get it .some good bacteria, and I used a couple of different sources. and sprinkle sand in every once in a while. And you need to be a little careful about too much moisture.
I added lids between the top two buckets with a hole cut into it, to prevent bugs from getting in/out, and I hot glued screen on both sides of the air vent holes for the same reason.I didnât want fruit flies multiplying but they got in with the banana peels (which you can microwave for a short time to kill them before adding them.). I know my system is not as good as Tomâs, and I should upgrade to storage containers but it was cheap. It mostly sat in the corner for a year plus waiting for the worms to multiply. If you give them more optimal conditions, they will multiply faster. Otherwise it is like this.
Something else you could at are black soldier flies, and they donât bite or anything but they eat basically everything.
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