23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Your plants have Bacterial Speck IMO but the treatment for all the leaf diseases is the same - strip off affected foliage ASAP, cease any overhead watering/sprinkling, and spray with fungicides on a regular basis to slow the progression of the disease till you can get a harvest. There is no "cure".

And yes there are a number of ORMI approved fungicides available although their benefits are questionable when compared to chemical controls.

As already mentioned you can learn much more about all this over on the forum for growing tomatoes here.

Dave

Thanks for the tips! I will head over there. Now I am not sure which one I have. I swore I had septoria leaf but don't have a pic to post. Removed and disposed of all affected leaves and I am going to start spraying the only acceptable fungicide by my picky community and hope for the best :).

Great story. You have a right to be proud of your success. It always makes me chuckle hearing people rave about how delicious fresh home-grown produce harvested at peak is. I have come to expect such quality every year during harvest time, it is a normal thing for me and my fellow gardeners. Think about what so many people are missing out on. Such is life in the modern urban society I guess, really rather sad when one thinks about it.

I apologize for going off-topic but regarding the food shelf idea, I offered to give excess produce to my local food shelf. They said I had to fill out a pile of forms and agree to spot health department inspections. I could also be held liable if anyone got sick from what I donated, potentially even if the produce was contaminated after it left my control. I also would have to pick everything myself and drive it the one hour round trip to where the county food shelf is located. The simple fact is that people want free food, no strings attached. Most do not want to put forth any effort to acquire it. Heck, I was even told not to bring shell peas because nobody wants to have to shell them before using.

Forget all that. What extra that I do not give away to family, friends, neighbors, and/or local elderly gets tossed on the compost pile, with a clear conscience and no regrets.

Congratulations on your success!
-Tom

I'm already feeding the neighborhood on just 4 tomato plants

The small side shoots aren't worth it IMO. Pull those and start new plants for fall. For future reference, even in your zone, broc will usually have bolted or be close to it by mid-late June. It just gets too hot for them.

Dave

Summer side shoots aren't worth much, but the same plants can produce prodigious side shoots when fall comes - some as big as the original main head. I always pick varieties for their side shoot production and leave them in place for fall.

If all I ever got from broccoli were the single heads, I wouldn't bother growing them at all.

I'm jealous of the golden raspberries too - heck, everything! I do have some squash ready, our raspberries are about done (except for fall ones blossoming now) and I think the blueberries are too. Tomatoes and peppers are just starting to flower.

Awesome. what a nice variety too.
kim

I live in Orland park, and I got it from the horse stable on 130th and lagrange ave

My mother (who has horses and a garden in ground) and I (who uses her horse manure in my containers and raised bed) have both found that composted manure cannot really stand alone as an additive to native soil. It is great to include in the mix but you need real compost in there too. I don't know the science behind it all all but we have had similar experiences. The first year everything looks good and the second year when the soil gets depleted and only manure is added, everything is stunted and yellowish. I think there is some nutrients missing.

I enjoyed reading that article - or was it an advertisement? In any case, it was informative and funny.

I like the fact that the scarecrow works on other critters as well, and that it is not harmful to the animals.

I've had deer predation in my garden this year. A neighbor used to keep a couple hound dogs kenneled next door. A year after the neighbor left, the deer arrived.

So, one solution to deer is obviously a big dog or two. I couldn't do that in this location, so I read everything I could find about deterring them. Smell is their weakness.

Deer respect male urine as a boundary. Apparently there's a hormone in it which they can smell.

Also, all the spray deterrents with good ratings seem to have albumin as the main ingredient. That's egg white. So I mixed up some egg with water and a little dish soap to make it stick. I put it in the sun for a couple days to get good and stinky.

In the end, both urine and rotten egg spray were effective. (Urine is much easier) I found tracks for a while with no eating, and now, no tracks either.

Have to reapply after rain though.

I like the venison solution too, but they never come around during hunting season!

Jeff.

I killed 3 of them 2 were but to but mating i assume. I was not able to find any eggs. Ill keep my eyes out. Thanks.

There are two stink bugs making love...hahaha

They should keep growing fine if you set them back upright, and then really stake the cages well. This happens to me almost every year, it is very windy where I garden. I use large cages but it takes me a long time to go around and stake them all.

Those 3-ring cages, IMO, are "good for nothin".
At this stage there isn't much you can do. Jus try to support them as much as you can. I would also consider some pruning to lighten them up a bit.

I wait until the silk turns brown and emits dust when flipped with a finger.
At that point, I will fold back the shuck a bit and see how the ear is progressing. When I can get an ear to emit a milky white liquid when pierced with a fingernail, I pick.

Trial and error is the surest method. After a while you can tell by the way the ear feels in your hand.

What is the likely hood of over watering some things before getting it figured out?

What is the likely hood of over watering some things before getting it figured out?

It's possible of course but with careful monitoring for the first week or so you should be able to ID any problems and fix them. And it will take some experimenting to get the time on and frequency set (most run them too often and for too short a time).

But an emitter can always be replaced with a slower one or traded with another faster one somewhere else. Drip tape can always be moved, spliced or Super glued shut and re-cut later if needed.

Don't misunderstand me - no system is ever perfect. Tears and holes happen, emitters get plugged, hard water is hard on the system. And no system can be just "set and forget" no matter how small it may be. But when compared to other methods it benefits both the plants and the gardener.

Dave

Dave,
You said "Personally I think there are many other organic fertilizers available that have a much better documented track record than these two."
Can you list a few of these other ones?

Lots of discussions here - and on the Organic Gardening forum - that the search will pull up.

Just a few brand names:

Neptune's Harvest
Maxicrop
Earth Juice
Worm's Way
Espoma
Bioform
Alaska Fish
EB Stone
Foxfarm
etc.

They all make several different products.

Then if you need individual nutrients or micronutrients there is always Bat guano, Alfalfa Meal, Bloodmeal, Cottonseed Meal, Crab Meal, Greensand, etc.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Gardening forum

But for future reference "proactive [preventative] bug control", regardless of the spray used, is never recommended. Not only because it doesn't work - the control has to be sprayed on the bugs - but because it almost always kills more beneficial bugs and harms more plants than the bad bug would have done in the first place.

Proactive fungicide use does have a place in the garden since they are primarily preventatives, not cures. But even then only under certain conditions and only when the spray used is actually a fungicide.

But YouTube, as a source of information, should always be viewed with a skeptic's eye until that info can be verified by other sources.

Still you learned a valuable lesson for the future. :-)

Dave

Thank you. I really did learn a lot from my post so I'm glad I asked the question. Now, I have two quart jars of really smelly "Linda's bug juice" I need to throw outside somewhere. Phew! Thanks again for your help, I did learn from the post.

I'll just go with the lowest dosage then. Wasn't sure if it should be even lower but don't want to spray. I don't know what's on my stems either but since I've seen the moths and haven't removed any eggs (just SB eggs) I figured I'd better inject.

DD thinks it's funny that I'm going to give my plants shots.

I used one teaspoon in a 16 oz. cup of water. I got 18 gauge blunt tipped syringes from amazon. They are not medical grade and are sold for craft applications (precision glue and paint jobs, for example) but they are still sharp enough to pierce a squash stem. They can become clogged with plant tissue, however, so I made the entry hole with one needle and then used the other for the injection. Once the needle enters the inside of the stem you will realize how hollow even a healthy stem is because there is no resistance to the injected solution. Protect your eyes and any bystanders if you decide to do this. I had a needle splat off the syringe and found it in the garage. On the plus side, I dissected my squash stems because they finally petered out and I had to pull them; I found some evidence that a borer may have entered at one time but no borer itself, the stem and leaves were still healthy and the rest of the stem was not affected. I used a three pronged approach to the SVB this year: spotting the eggs with insecticidal soap to smother them whenever I found them; soaking the stems with a Bt solution sprayed until runoff every three days; and injections once a week. I think the injections were probably the most effective measure. I had squash for as long as the weather permitted but when it heated up past 100 degrees, they were done (and so was I).