Hi everyone. First let me say that this site is the best, my wife and I deeply appreciate everyone's advice but mostly the wonderful attitude and spirit this site has...ok, enough brown nosing everyone...: )
So the garden in lower Westchester is going well...except for a few minor glitches so far...
1. Deer. Waited too late to put up the final piece of 7 ft fencing and sure enough, a deer hopped over the 4 foot fence and munched the tops of some of the tomato plants, the cukes, and the squashes. But the tomato plants continue to grow and branch out, a lot of branches have blossoms and a fair amount of fruit already, so my questions is, just let them be? Will the munched off 3 or 4 or five branches make any real difference? Is it like pruning and it might get bushier? My wife was so upset she wanted me to pull op the worst ones and replant more. The squashes and cukes are all doing fine.
2. Leaf rot already? Last summer in Aug my tomato plants got hit with a quick nasty fungal thing that wiped out the entire crop of 16 plants within a month. A brownish yellow mottled rot that spread like wild fire. I had spray some anti fungal/herbicidal stuff earlier in the summer, but was gone for three weeks and I think that's when it all got infected. Do I just get a good fungal herbicide again and spray in on all summer? We did have some tomatoes but not the amount we'd had in previous years.
I'm beginning to see a few of the smaller tomato branches toward the bottom having a yellowish brown color and I'm just pruning them off. Is that the right thing to do?
The cucumber plants got a similar rot, all of the leaves turneed yellow-white and dried out and died. Again, we got some cukes but not a lot. Same question, just spray with fungal herbicide? I see one plant has a few leaves looking like this.
Any advice is appreciated. Also, does anyone know when deer season starts in Westchester County??? Just kidding.
Thanks all!
Dave
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davefromwestchester
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- Location: Hastings on Hudson, NY
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barrelslime
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Jeremy brua
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I don't know as much as most but I do know it is hard to kill a tomato. My dad had a tomato plant that somthing chewed off at ground level. What was left of the small plant layed on the ground for at least a day. I pointed it out to my dad and he said "no big deal". He jammed the stem back in the ground and now it is doing fine.
Good luck!
Good luck!
Yep, the damaged plants should do fine. They'll just take more string to support and won't get quite as big overall. Same thing happened to me this year.
I deal with the same fungus problems that you describe every season. You can read all about ways to help prevent it but after it has started taking hold, it brings headaches. I'll tell you what I do, but I have yet to stop it entirely.
Yes, pruning off the infected branches is the first step. If you just cut off the spotty leaves, you'll be back to get the rest of the branch. Then, check the weather forecast. If there is no rain for a few days, mix milk and water 1/2 and 1/2 in a spray bottle and let it warm up for a few hours to get the bacteria active. Spray the entire plant from all angles on a fine mist setting. When watering, don't get the leaves wet. Continue cutting off spotted leaves which are usually on the bottom. Re-apply after rain. Continue this through harvest.
If rain is in the forecast, I use copper fungicide. Rain doesn't wash as much of it off, but it still needs to be re-applied periodically. The reason I go for the milk first is that while the copper is organic, you don't want to consume much of it. If the plant hasn't fruited yet, I use the copper first but I prefer milk once the fruiting starts. I'm extra cautious about washing the fruits that have been copper treated.
That's it for the tomatoes, but the cucumbers have another issue. The disease was likely spread by cucumber beetles (yellow bugs with black spots or stripes). I deal with them after dark by picking them off and squishing them. They're fairly easy to catch. You should look for the eggs they laid under the leaves too, but I'm not good at finding them. You can spray the beetles with insecticidal soap if you prefer, but then you have to spray the fungicide again. You can also spray them with garlic and/or pepper mix.
Just being diligent about cutting off the infected parts and keeping the fungicide fresh gets me some harvest. Eventually, the disease will completely take over and then the plants are thrown in the trash. I don't put them in the compost or till them back in. No sense helping the fungus to spread.
By the way, some of the plants may become obviously too far gone to save. Those should be removed ASAP. Also, my experience has been with every plant affected in my small garden. In a large garden with lots of plants and only a few affected, I would remove those plants at the first signs.
I deal with the same fungus problems that you describe every season. You can read all about ways to help prevent it but after it has started taking hold, it brings headaches. I'll tell you what I do, but I have yet to stop it entirely.
Yes, pruning off the infected branches is the first step. If you just cut off the spotty leaves, you'll be back to get the rest of the branch. Then, check the weather forecast. If there is no rain for a few days, mix milk and water 1/2 and 1/2 in a spray bottle and let it warm up for a few hours to get the bacteria active. Spray the entire plant from all angles on a fine mist setting. When watering, don't get the leaves wet. Continue cutting off spotted leaves which are usually on the bottom. Re-apply after rain. Continue this through harvest.
If rain is in the forecast, I use copper fungicide. Rain doesn't wash as much of it off, but it still needs to be re-applied periodically. The reason I go for the milk first is that while the copper is organic, you don't want to consume much of it. If the plant hasn't fruited yet, I use the copper first but I prefer milk once the fruiting starts. I'm extra cautious about washing the fruits that have been copper treated.
That's it for the tomatoes, but the cucumbers have another issue. The disease was likely spread by cucumber beetles (yellow bugs with black spots or stripes). I deal with them after dark by picking them off and squishing them. They're fairly easy to catch. You should look for the eggs they laid under the leaves too, but I'm not good at finding them. You can spray the beetles with insecticidal soap if you prefer, but then you have to spray the fungicide again. You can also spray them with garlic and/or pepper mix.
Just being diligent about cutting off the infected parts and keeping the fungicide fresh gets me some harvest. Eventually, the disease will completely take over and then the plants are thrown in the trash. I don't put them in the compost or till them back in. No sense helping the fungus to spread.
By the way, some of the plants may become obviously too far gone to save. Those should be removed ASAP. Also, my experience has been with every plant affected in my small garden. In a large garden with lots of plants and only a few affected, I would remove those plants at the first signs.