Now that the monsoons are in full blast, tomato fungal diseases are showing up with all the moisture. One of them is Early Blight. It is caused by a fungus called Alternaria solani. Early Blight is a fungal disease that attacks tomato plants starting on the bottom leaves of the plant and works it’s way […]
Someone replied to my last post on Early Blight, “Will this contaminate the soil (for next year)?” Great question. Here is more info on this subject. If you have a garden, it’s pretty much in the soil. One key is to provide a barrier between the soil and your plant, hence I add straw as […]
Early Blight is a fungal disease caused by the fungus Alternaria solani which lives in the soil. When rain or water splashes the soil up on the lower leaves, the fungal pathogen gets on the plant. It starts as some yellow mottling on the lower leaves which left unattended, then proceeds to work its […]
Early Blight is a fungal disease that attacks tomato plants starting on the bottom leaves of the plant and works it’s way upwards. The leaves start turning yellow and get blotchy. If left unchecked, it can take over your plant killing it although it won’t die immediately. Where does it come from? It comes from […]
Now that it seems the monsoons are here, we need to protect our tomato plants from fungal diseases. Here in the southwest we don’t get the dreaded Late Blight that the Northeast has experienced (not yet at least) because we are drier than most parts of the US. We don’t seem to get as many […]
Last Saturday I taught a vegetable class on Organic Pest and Disease Control for Home Grown New Mexico. It was held at Milagro Community Garden. Part of the class was how to trim your tomato plants to help thwart soil-born fungal diseases like Early Blight. Most people don’t trim their tomato plants enough in the […]
Today is cold and windy-a nice day to be inside! Every year for the past few years, I film my veggie garden usually in the fall when harvesting slows down. The garden won’t be at it’s prime but it’s when I’m not so headless. Next year I will try to film it in it’s prime. […]
With all that blessed rain comes new problems for veggie gardeners-mainly fungal diseases are on the rise. WOW! This has been a great monsoon season this year. Last year we had 2 tiny monsoon storms and then they disappeared and we went into an extreme drought. This year, we have gotten more rain than I […]
Well, we’ve had lots of showers over the past week and more predicted. The weather people say the monsoons are here with the rain and cooler temps. So, I will be taking the row covers off my tomato plants which has been protecting the tomato plants from the beet leafhopper for the last month. (You […]
August veggie gardens is the time when things get out of control in the garden. That’s when I surrender to the chaos! Growth is rampant and harvest usually goes into full blast. It’s the moment I look forward to when it’s hard to keep up with harvesting and preserving the crops. It’s hard to […]
TOMATOES ARE FREE! FREE AT LAST! Now that I’ve had 3 days with some rain and lots more in the forecast, and no leafhoppers in sight, I decided to free the tomatoes. If you still see leafhoppers in your garden, I’d wait a few more days. And of course some of you have already taken […]
It might be good at the end of the year to review what happened in your garden and/or hopefully you took some notes last season. You can refer back to it instead of relying on your memory on what worked and didn’t work for future years. If you don’t like writing it down than use […]
There are many varieties of cherry tomatoes but this year I had 7 different varieties of small or cherry tomatoes. Six were heirloom or OP (open pollinated) varieties and one was a hybrid. Open pollinated varieties will be the next new heirlooms when they get to be 50+ years old. Six are shown above from left […]
Wednesday we got two huge storms where hail was between the size of quarters and ping-pong balls in some places. I’ve never seen hail that big here in Santa Fe. Sorry for the blurry picture but our hands were shaking! Lots of damage was done in many people’s gardens, destroying or severely damaging many vegetables […]
Max and Kryptonite are done. Gone. Cut up and given away for food. A good ending to a great story. The giant pumpkin season is now done. In fact all the vegetables are done. Well almost. Gardening is never really over. Now it’s time to get ready for the next gardening season or you can […]
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