2013 Diseases, diseases and more diseases

Almost all warm weather veggies I have planted already have at least one disease. All of the following diagnosis were made by the county extension agency.

Tomatoes -
Bacterial Spot - remedy to spray with copper fungicide
Bacterial Speck - remedy to spriay with copper fungicide

Cucumber and Cantelope -
Downy Mildew - remedy to spray with copper sulfate

Squash -
Powdery Mildew - remedy to spray with baking soda solution

Watermellon -
Looks to be the beginning of cucumber mosaic virus (not sure as they cannot test in this office) or it may be nutritional.

Artichoke -
Powdery Mildew and possibly Ramulaia Leaf Spot

Typical, typical of the southern gardener (at least this southern gardener)

Oh, my! Sounds (almost) depressing!
How many things - total - do you have planted? Are all the remedies organic?

Nicola wrote:Oh, my! Sounds (almost) depressing!
How many things - total - do you have planted? Are all the remedies organic?

A little depressing but I have all these diseases every year (except this is the first year for artichokes) so I am used to battling them. This is the first year I have gotten the specific dieases and remedies confirmed by the county extension office.

I have already harvested most of my cold weather crops. Now I have the following planted and growing at this time.

8 squares of different types of herbs
18 squares of sweet peas
8 squares of carrots
8 squares of okra
24 squares of beans (red and green chinese noodle beans, bush green beans, and dragon tongue beans)
16 squares of potatoes
8 squares of bolting lettuce
16 squares of garlic and onions (dying prematurely)
4 yellow crook neck squash
3 wiskey barrels of cucumbers
2 wiskey barrels of watermellons
1 wiskey barrel of cantelope
24 tomatoes (8 diseased, 8 maybe, 8 no disease)
24 squares of strawberries

This weekend I will be planting sweet potatoes, peanuts and corn in my non sfg 4' X 32' bed.

I already had the copper fungicide. It does not say OMRI but it says for organic gardens, so maybe.
I have not yet purchased the copper sulfate (or Bordeauz Mixture) so I don't know about that. But when I left my diseased samples at the county extension office, my note to them said that I would like organic remedies if possible, so we will see.

Hi yolos. I am so sorry about all the diseases your are being plagued with. Sigh. I hope the extension office can help.

I noticed you mentioned sweet potatoes. I have seen on this forum that it is too late to plant regular potatoes. Are sweet potatoes a different story? My mother-in-law loves them. I'd like to plant something special for her if I can.

Thanks.

Windmere wrote:Hi yolos.
I noticed you mentioned sweet potatoes. I have seen on this forum that it is too late to plant regular potatoes. Are sweet potatoes a different story? Thanks.

Sweet potatoes love the hot weather. No it is not too late to plant them. Depending on the variety, they mature in 90-120 days. The only starts I have seen for sale in this area is the Beauregard. They mature in 90 days. The skin is rose colored and the flesh is orange. I bought mine yesterday at Swint's in Jonesboro. I had to go down there cause it was the only place I could find peanut seeds.

You have to have room to grow them though. I planted mine in the front row of a 3 x 8' bed. The vines were trained toward the back of the bed where I had a cucumber trellis. They vined from the front of the bed, thru the bush beans, and then headed up the trellis.

I grew some in cement mixing tubs last year. Planted 5 to the tub in mid June and got 8 good sized potatos and a whole bunch of small tubers that I was able to use in soups and stews. I think I would have gotten a better harvest but the starts were root bound and already starting to form small tubers when planted. The harvest was a tangled mess. This year I got my starts early and not root bound, so we shall see.

My DIL is Filipino and wanted the plants for the purple leaf shoots to use in some of her asian dishes so we were not unhappy about the root harvest.

This year's plants next to the garlic tub.



last fall


Kay

yolos wrote:

Windmere wrote:Hi yolos.
I noticed you mentioned sweet potatoes. I have seen on this forum that it is too late to plant regular potatoes. Are sweet potatoes a different story? Thanks.

Sweet potatoes love the hot weather. No it is not too late to plant them. Depending on the variety, they mature in 90-120 days. The only starts I have seen for sale in this area is the Beauregard. They mature in 90 days. The skin is rose colored and the flesh is orange. I bought mine yesterday at Swint's in Jonesboro. I had to go down there cause it was the only place I could find peanut seeds.

You have to have room to grow them though. I planted mine in the front row of a 3 x 8' bed. The vines were trained toward the back of the bed where I had a cucumber trellis. They vined from the front of the bed, thru the bush beans, and then headed up the trellis.

Thanks for your response yolos. I was thinking of going to Swint's to exchange a packet of Picotee Blue morning glory seeds belonging to my daughter. We planted them and they came up really deformed. I keep tending to them for her... but they are in terrible shape. On the other hand, the morning glories from the dollar store (.25 a packet) are doing beautifully.

Thanks for the tip. Swint's is a great resource. I enjoy visiting them.

Update on my diseases and now pests.

Bacterial Spot and Bacterial Speck on Tomatoes
I am using copper fungicude every 10 days. On the first 8 tomato plants I planted, the treatment has slowed down the spread of the disease but not eliminated it. On the rest of the tomatoes planted later in different parts of my yard, I think I got those in time because I have not seen any more diseased leaves. It is interesting that the paste tomatoes look to be cured but the Big Boy, Better Boy, and Early Girl are not responding to the treatment. The Brandywine is holding its own.

Downy Mildew on Cucs and Cantelope
I was supposed to use Copper Sulfate or a Bordeaux Mix (copper sulfate and hydrated lime). But I could not find copper sulfate so I used copper fungicide. It does not appear to be spreading. I will wait to see.

Powdery Mildew on Squash and Artichokes:
I never got around to spraying the baking soda solution but the powdery mildew seems to have taken care of itself (if that was what it really was). Maybe all this rain has helped.

Rumulaia Leaf Spot on Artichokes:
The extension office was not sure if this is what is affecting my artichokes. I googled looking for a cure but could not find a simple remedy. They are getting worse so I think I will cut them down to the ground and see what happens.

If the above is not bad enough, I now have some other problems:

Early Blight (I think) on my potatoes.
I get this every year and I don't like to spray anything on root crops so they are dying. Hope I get some potatoes.


Leaf Miner on Beans:
I planted these Chinese Noodle beans 14 days ago and they are already infected with Leaf Miners. I will be spraying with neem as soon as we get a couple of days without rain.


Ants farming Aphids on Tomatoes:
I will spray the aphids with neem or insecticidal soap whenever the rain stops. And then start looking for the ants home and take care of them.

yolos...I'm so sorry you're having such a hard time Sounds like you're really trying to get thing under control. What idea do you have for the ants? I've tried everything I can think of, and they seem to come back with even MORE of their "friends". I don't care about the ants per se, but it's the aphids they're farming!! some of my plants get black with aphids. I've tried spraying with water, organic sprays (does NOTHING), the borax/sugar mixtures, and stakes, boiling water on the holes...

southern gardener wrote:yolos... What idea do you have for the ants?

I have been researching it and have a lot of different directions. The quickest temporary solution seems to be to sprinkle cinnamon around the plants. Here are a few other ideas I have found.

Boric acid and sugar
Boric acid and syrup
Cornmeal and sugar
Boric acid and peanut butter
DE
Cut out an 8" circle of construction paper, smear vaseline on it, cut a hole in the center and slip it around the base of the tomato.
Put a cloth soaked in bleach or amonia over the ants trail.
Plant geranium, garlic, aster, calendula, chrysanthimum, mint - these deter ants.

I am looking for a permanent solution so I will probably try the Boric acid and syrup as soon as I can find my recipe.

What do you mean, the ants are "farming" the aphids?

from what I understand, the ants bring the aphids up on the plants, then the aphids emit some sort of sweet discharge or something that the ants eat. The ants sort of tend to the aphids somehow to "milk" them of that sweet discharge, meanwhile, the aphids suck on your plants. Usually, if you have ants in your garden, you have aphids, at least so far in my garden anyway...

+1 to Southern Gardener explanation of ants farming aphids (or so I have heard).