Ours continues to be a year round garden, though things slow way down in the late fall and winter, with some production hit and miss depending upon how low the temperatures go.
We are still harvesting collards, arugula, kale, parsley, and cilantro from the garden. Garlic is up and growing nicely, we have about 120 plants in the ground. Basil and jalapeno plants were moved into the greenhouse and continue to produce, although much slower than during mild weather with longer days.
It is time to be thinking forward now, as will plant a few starts for the earliest tomatoes this week. Also will try some extra early pepper and egg plant starts this year, so as to push the harvest date nearer to April.
Disease with tomato plants continues to be my #1 frustration, will work on more strategies to avoid and combat that this year. Am considering building a clear roof structure to cover a few plants, so that rain never touches the foliage and plants can be exclusively bottom watered. Also may try alternate spraying of milk, hydrogen peroxide, and sulfur. Perhaps will check into some ground pre-treatment, that may help reduce bacterial contamination. Any thoughts that might help a mid southern gardener with the tomato blight/disease issue?
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hendi_alex
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 3604
- Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:58 am
- Location: Central Sand Hills South Carolina
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greenstubbs
- Senior Member
- Posts: 274
- Joined: Thu Sep 09, 2010 6:41 pm
- Location: Far Upper Alabama
Good job on the fall/winter production. I normally have mustard greens, turnip greens and collards this time of the year but took the lazy way out this year. Well, I do have a 1/4 acre field planted in purple top turnips but last time I was there the deer had hammered them. But that is ok, I planted it for them, or for me to get them.hendi_alex wrote: Any thoughts that might help a mid southern gardener with the tomato blight/disease issue?
I too have transferred some pots of pepper inside greenhouse. Also, have a few tomatoes growing but it is just not warm enough, and I do not plan to run heater except to keep things from freezing.
Now to tomato blight/disease/wilt......I wish I knew. I have been collecting large (LARGE) pots to use for tomatoes this year as I move toward container tomatoes.
A couple of years ago I built some "pier boxes" to use for tomatoes because I needed a spot with more sunlight. These worked great the first year:
[img]https://i854.photobucket.com/albums/ab104/lakngulf/G2010J2/June20_2010055.jpg[/img]
...but one by one the plants bit the dust the second year
[img]https://i854.photobucket.com/albums/ab104/lakngulf/2011_001_Greenhouse/IMG_0053.jpg[/img]
So, this past weekend I completely emptied one of the boxes and began to wash it out. Not sure how I will sterilize it, and I may just place my big pots inside the pier box. I have some tomato seed that is supposed to be more tolerant of bacterial wilt (Neptune and BHN 669). I plan to grow some plants from this seed and put some in the other box, along with some corn. I want to run a test but not donate the whole box to the project.
