What's Up for April in 5a?

Dietryin wrote:I went out this morning to check on the garden and my strawberries plants are moldy! I did an web search for photos and I believe they have white powder mold growing on them. Some sites said to spray the plants with a baking soda mixture.
What do you all think? Any suggestions?


Baking Soda Mixture:

To make: Mix 1 tablespoon baking soda, 2 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil with one gallon of water. Shake this up very thoroughly. To this mix add 1/2 teaspoon of pure Castile soap and spray. Be sure to agitate your sprayer while you work to keep the ingredients from separating. Cover upper and lower leaf surfaces and
spray some on the soil. Repeat every 5-7 days as needed.

The above recipe calls for pure Castile soap, which I do not have.....can I just use liq dish soap?

I had powdery mold on my zucchini last year, and had some mold problems
on my tomatoes as well (last year or year before). I tried the baking
soda thing, but really ran into problems with it. It seemed to do quite a
bit of damage to the "healthy" foliage.

It is entirely possible
it was "user-error" but I know it didn't work well for me. If I recall, I
was able to bite the bullet and get an anti-mold organic solution from
the garden center. It was pricey, however. Worth it for the peace of
mind of not killing plants.

This morning I went through each plant in the strawberry patch with a
fine tooth comb. I washed each leaf, cut and removed any signs of moldy
berries. I removed about a pint of berries I then applied the Baking soda spay to each plant. My next
step is mulch the strawberries with straw. I read this was good for
them to keep the berries off the ground. I'll let you know if it works.

well...the weather really took a toll on a lot of my plants. All four swiss chard plants are laying down. A majority of the stems are bent in half, but they're sprouting new leaves. I guess I'll see how long they last.

I've already had to replace (with seeds) four black-seeded simpson plants, four ruby red lettuce plants, 6-8 carrots, all four arugula plants, four spinach plants, and one broccoli plants.

The wind was just too much for everything last week.

All the peppers, squashes and herbs are still inside. I moved them to vermiculite (in casserole dishes, ha!), because all the seed pods molded....definitely won't do the seed pods next year.

Next year, I wouldn't do any seedlings for carrots or lettuce.

Oh well...live and learn.

- first time SFGer...obviously.

[quote="L&K-IL"]
The wind was just too much for everything last week.



We are going to get more t-storms this week. Maybe they won't be as bad as last week.

Good luck from a first time sq.ft. gardener in Northern IL.

yeah...just checked the weather forecast....low of 38 on Friday night.
that stinks....might have to cover the little sprouts.

Well, I did some work tonight after I built my third (and final for this season) 4x4 yesterday.

I finished planting my second bed with two squares of tomatoes (1 Sweet 100 and 1 4th of July). My first bed is done already until the radishes start coming out next week or the week after.

My third "summer" bed has three tomato plants in it after tonight, one green bell, one red bell and one brussel sprout.

Prior to this year, I've had to plant everything in a series of raised beds built at the base of a retaining wall in the backyard. Not ideal due to size (each section about 18" by 6'). I filled one with early variety sweet corn tonight and one with two sets of zucchini starts. This will be the first time for either in those beds, so I hope they do okay. I did three rows of corn in that bed about 6 inches apart, so it could be tight.

My wife snapped some pics, as my almost 3 y.o. was helping tonight. The little guy watered and kept troweling in shovelfuls of worm castings/mushroom compost. I didn't have the heart to tell him to stop, so the beds got an extra dose of compost tonight.

Man, I love gardening.

Looks like Frost tonight in 5A for the Central Iowa area anyway. I'm considering covering everything up all afternoon and night, since it isn't all that warm right now. I figure maybe it'll keep them a little warmer and growing for this 24 hour period. What do you think? Cover all day or just tonight?

Well, finished off the third and final b4x4 tonight.

Added one tomato, three squares of melons, two more brussel sprouts, two pepperoncini plants, and another leaf lettuce.

Also slipped transplants of red lettuce and swiss chard into my other two boxes where I didn't have a plant come in from seed.


Then tonight, after doing some landscaping and bringing up a bag of mulch, I droped a bag on my very first SFG 4x4. Likely killed one square of lettuce that had been coming in as well as broke my only nice-looking cabbage and got the mulch into a couple of other squares causing troubles.

That sucked--everything else was good on the planting front--thai basil goes in tomorrow.