It’s Sunday and it’s another cool and gloomy day. I have been immersed in a battle with tomato diseases, both at work trying to give out informed advice and at home trying to save my own plants. My beautiful tomato bed seems very sparse now, I have removed tons of diseased leaves and stems. There is lots of ripening fruit still, but I wonder how long I can keep them going. It seems there are several diseases attacking tomato plants, I believe mine have septoria leaf spot. Besides removing diseased leaves I have been spraying with neem oil- although not as often as I should have I guess - or the neem oil doesn’t work. The experts recommend daconil- but I just can’t see growing tomatoes at home if you have to spray them as much as a commercial grower.

I guess you have to choose any more. Have home grown tomatoes by spraying them with chemicals or lose all your work just as they start to ripen. I don’t want to hear the junk about healthy soil and compost tea. Sorry, while those are great they don’t stop fungal disease. Every year I listen to the organic gurus spouting about compost tea and making your soil healthy. I want to see their tomato gardens this year. Some of the organic remedies, like the copper sprays, have higher toxicity than daconil. And the trial results I see on the New Ag network and elsewhere don’t give very good reports on all the organic products.

I think my raised bed soil is pretty healthy, my plants looked great and were loaded with fruit. They are off the ground and mulched. I rotate where I plant them each year. I have 12 different varieties of tomato and yes, some do better than others fighting off fungus but all have it to some degree. I have plants in pots and plants away from the one big tomato bed in another raised bed. Every plant has some degree of fungal disease.

I did get some very good tomatoes off the Cherokee Purple plant I planted. They are so yummy I just sat and ate them by themselves. They are quite ugly fruits and hard to tell when ripe- the turkeys had sampled one and that made me guess they were ready. The Early Girls are ok, as are the Celebrity. Celebrity is supposed to be disease resistant but this year my Celebrity is one of the hardest hit with disease. I have some Birkstone Orange, John Baer and Limmony about ready to pick.

I am starting to get cucumbers. The Alibi cuke we planted in the experimental garden and I planted here have proved resistant to powdery mildew and are very prolific. We are picking lots of Dragon’s Tongue beans from the experimental garden and the soup kitchens say they are great. We are overwhelmed with patty pan squash and we only planted a few plants in the experimental garden. We had more squash than the soup kitchen wanted or the seniors in our building.

I dug about 20 pounds of red and white potatoes from our 4 x 10 raised bed last night. We have been harvesting them several times a week for a month now too. The vines were getting fungal disease and naturally dying back and I decided to get them out before the tubers were affected. We now have all sizes from tiny reds to big whites. I also dug out some nice big white onions, the best onions we have grown in years.

Our sweet corn has been good too. The larger eared yellow I planted later is about ready to harvest. We have been eating the smaller early white corn for the last few weeks. I am no longer able to get any strawberries because the turkeys discovered them and patrol the beds each day. The apples are starting to color and they seem to look pretty good, even without spraying. They are still very sour though.

Horses were moved back to the east pasture to give the west pasture a rest. They were breaking down fences over there again too. Trying to keep them out of the pond area but Charlie kept going over the fence. Some of our hens are going broody on us, which is rare with Isa Browns, our egg production has really dropped.

Honey, the cocker, is going to have pups early next month. That was a bit of a surprise as I didn’t think she and Bubba mated - even though I put them together twice- he didn’t seem real interested. Guess he fooled me. She is going to be groomed tomorrow to get her coat cut close before she gives birth. We haven’t had pups here in about 18 months so maybe it won’t be too bad. I do love playing with pups but they are so messy. And the money will come in handy to buy propane before real cold weather, if they sell well in this economy.