Keith E Cantrell
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Re: Tennessee 2021 Garden

I really like blueberry cakes. My daughter is also a great fan of berry. The recipe shared by you is something similar to what I normally do. I too add very little amount of sugar. But I normally mix slightly by adding berries into the batter.

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Gary350
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I picked 4 cups of berries. We made the cobbler recipe & left out the sugar. We added sugar little by little until it was starting to taste good, we left out 50% of the sugar the recipe calls for. Grease bowl, pour in 1 quart of berries, pour in the batter then baked it 75 minutes until top was brown. 90 minutes later we went to grocery store to buy ice cream also stopped at a restaurant for lunch. I though traffic seems a little bad at 11:10 am but when we came out of the restaurant traffic was parked bumper to bumper barely moving. It took 20 minutes to drive 3 blocks. We finally arrived at a grocery store then tried to get home. Where on earth has all this traffic come from I can walk faster that traffic. It took an hour to drive 3 miles home on the back roads. Ice cream is soft lets eat cobbler. It is so good I'm glad we left 1/2 the sugar out. Horrible traffic turns out to be, University Graduation Saturday & Nascar Car Grand Prix racing in Nashville TN, all motels & AirB&B are sold out for 76 miles in all directions of Nashville. TV says, 140,000. people from out of town & other countries are hear for Grand Prix races. I think we stay home until Monday.
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Gary350
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Saturday family from India drive 30 miles 1 way to come got all 20 lbs of our ripe tomatoes. They freeze tomatoes whole then throw frozen tomatoes into what ever is being cooked. Sunday morning I see 4 tomatoes starting to get ripe.

Saturday rental store was closed new sign says, closed Sat & Sun. Corn stalks were dried out and very light weight but now they weight 1000s lbs after 2" of 45 minute rain yesterday. Yesterday 10% chance of rain every day for a week but today forecast is 50% chance of rain every day for a week & 94°. Our house AC stopped working Fri it was fixed Sat at 4:30 pm, we are spoiled. LOL

Mexican family came got 5 gallons of tomatillos Friday. I cut down all the plants.

Not much going on in the garden except tomatoes & sweet bell peppers. Rainy season seems to be here I'm not sure if I can mow corn stalks with the lawn mower. Corn stalks might have to lay there until June if we get no more dry weather.

I ordered flower seeds from OH & CA the ETA is 2 weeks.??????
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applestar
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corn stalks are sugary and I find they break down relatively quickly if crushed/flattened with a sledge or rock, but take a long time if stalks are left round.

Maybe look up “sugarcane juice extractor diy”? One cleverest I ever saw was made with 2 large tree bamboo secured with a fulcrum/hinge on site. It was made in such a way that they just had to lightly lift and then weight of the bamboo would crush the sugarcane — one person to work the bamboo, 2nd person to steadily feed the stalk through….

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Gary350
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applestar wrote:
Sun Aug 08, 2021 1:18 pm
corn stalks are sugary and I find they break down relatively quickly if crushed/flattened with a sledge or rock, but take a long time if stalks are left round.

Maybe look up “sugarcane juice extractor diy”? One cleverest I ever saw was made with 2 large tree bamboo secured with a fulcrum/hinge on site. It was made in such a way that they just had to lightly lift and then weight of the bamboo would crush the sugarcane — one person to work the bamboo, 2nd person to steadily feed the stalk through….
Corn stalks were light as balsa wood after they dried in the sun. Now they are full of rain water & heavy. This is hard work for me, after 2 minutes of work I need to rest 10 minutes. A tank of corn stalks & water & wine yeast would be interesting to see what happens.

I picked another gallon of Raspberries to making juice to make concentrate to flavor the finished wine in 2 more weeks. Wine from scratch is too much work. Wine from kits are easy. I think this will be my last year to make home made wine. I should sell all my wine equipment & supplies about 2 months before Christmas.
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Gary350
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It was a relief when the people from India took 20 lbs of tomatoes I have not looked at the garden in 4 days. We had a lot of rain it was mud for several days & now it is dry as desert again. House AC stopped working Saturday evening I worked on it every day to barely keep temperature in the house to 80° until Monday. AC man got AC working it quit again 3 hrs later. I kept spraying water to melt the ice then AC would run sometimes 2 or 3 hrs. AC man ordered a new part then had it repaired and running at 10 pm last night. We have AC again it was 98° today. Today I cut 1" off the bottom of inside house doors to get better AC air flow through the AC unit & house. Today about 6 pm I see I forgot to water my seeds they all died.

Here is pictures of today's harvest, tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, Tabasco peppers. I only picked 1 tabasco pepper there are about 10 ready to pick. Wife will cook something with the 2 sweet bells tomorrow. We have eaten all 480 small garden onions, now we have to buy grocery store onions.
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Gary350
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9 more ripe tomatoes today, my son is on his way he wants tomatoes for dinner.

Wife made dinner with our garden sweet bell peppers, onions, cooked with sausage, sliced tomatoes & coleslaw. Tomatoes are so good. I will have left overs for breakfast tomorrow morning.
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Gary350
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The evening routine give each plant 1/2 gallon of water. It is too hot to trim tomato plants it can wait until tomorrow morning it has been about 75° at 7 am. Heat index today 109°
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Last years homemade Raspberry wine has aged 1 year it is time to start drinking it. This is the best sleeping medicine ever with 3 kinds of Gouda Cheese.
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Cicadas have been so loud for 2 weeks it is driving us crazy we are both ready for this to be over. Something ate the leaves off of the pacan trees but not the peach or apple trees. I am trying to clean up the garden and 40 minutes later I am completely exhausted from this heat. Temperature is 76 and fells like 100. I removed onion bed boards & stakes, looks like I will be a prisoner in the house the rest of the day.

Onions were fun to grow & it gave me something to do but next year garden will be much smaller, 3 rows of corn & 1 row of tomatoes and nothing else. I feel like I aged 10 years in the past few weeks. Grocery store onions are $2 a bag and last 2 weeks. Not much $ saved growing our own onions but I probably need the exercise more than the onions.

We would like to go to the river 7 mile drive and get wet but garbage mountain land fill is leaking toxic waste into the river & our drinking water, someone almost died last week from swimming in the river from toxic poison being adsorbed through the skin. Now there are signs everywhere along the river telling people to keep out of toxic poison water. I am trying to talk wife into a day trip to the mountains 45 minute drive to spend the day in the water under the water fall. She says it is too hot. I said lets kayak the Caney River she said, it is too hot. Kayak rental is $45 each water is low & slow we can take picnic lunch and fall out of kayak as many times as we want to keep cool, again she says, its too hot. LOL. Going along is not as much fun.

Today is my Good Luck day Friday 13th.
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Sun was up an it was very hot for a while then it turned very dark & over cast. It don't not feel as hot as it was 3 hours ago so I mowed corn stalks with the lawn mower. After it dries I will mow it more to make smaller pieces. If I can get corn in a pile it can compose all winter.
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I have never seen so much rain in August this is usually our drought season with only 1/2" to 1" of rain for the whole month. It has been raining about 1" every day, it rained 2" a few days ago, before that it rained 4" in 1 hour. We have rain in the forecast every day for another week. Tomatoes are splitting open from too much water. I think tomatoes need to be picked early before they split open but how to know when to pick them? Tomatoes are not totally ripe then next time I look 12 hrs later tomatoes are split open. Not much happening in the garden except tomatoes & peppers.

I am starting to think about planting a fall garden of cold weather plants, broccoli, cauliflower, green cabbage, red cabbage, savoy cabbage, bib lettuce, romaine lettuce, maybe plant seeds in rows about 6 weeks before first frost. I wish now I had not bought seeds last years fall crop just sat there all winter not growing until April 20 then plants were in the way of other crops.
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10 lbs 13 ounces of ripe tomatoes at 6 pm today, wow hard to believer this. Yesterday it only looked like we might have 2 lbs of ripe tomatoes tomorrow. We had slow rain all night, slow rain & overcast most of today, rain stopped about 2pm but it is still over cast. After dinner I went to the garden with NO basket, what in the world happened in 24 hours????? Did all this rain force slightly pink & green tomatoes to get ripe over night??? I have never seen this before. 3 cherry tomatoes are split open. All the other tomatoes are good.
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I somehow missed your posts from 13th — You might be able to inoculate your pile of shredded corn stalks with mushroom plugs. Oyster mushrooms would grow in almost anything… possibly Nameko too … and I think there should be some others that are not substrate specific that would grow.

Searching for these words yields some interesting results — “ corn stalk substrate for mushroom”… Another proposed species was Winecap mushrooms.

Tomatoes — with some varieties, the fruits that will easily continue to ripen off the vine will readily come off the stem when lifted upwards. They will either pull off the calyx or else the stem joint will break. This is almost the universal sign of ripeness for most fruits.

By the time this happens, the fruit is only getting water from the umbilical stem connection to the plant. So there won’t be significant difference in flavor if picked, and every chance that they will split from excessive water if not harvested.

NOTE — I’ve noticed some varieties won’t come off even when fully ripe— or more precisely, the required force can’t be applied when the ripe fruit is soft.

Another usual test for harvest-readiness I use is the way the skin feels. Green is glossy, slick and hard, blushed to semi-ripe is matte to velvety but still firm. When the bottom of the fruit becomes velvety and slight pressure feels like there is a “give”, it’s ready. If there is heavy rains expected, I pick at velvety to *almost* “give” stage — it doesn’t actually depress but it’s not hard either.

I rinse the fruits thoroughly freely swimming in a bucket of water 2 to 3 times (lift out and change water — first bucket usually turns yellow from all the pollen and the typical tomato leaf exudate) then air dry and keep out of direct sunlight in the kitchen in paper towel lined baskets and colanders or baking cooling racks — AIRFLOW AIRFLOW AIRFLOW.

They will be fully ripe in 2 to 3 days, and stay unblemished for up to 5 days or so.

Any tomatoes with skin-deep split or healed split scar, accidental poke, etc are wrapped in paper towel or paper napkin. Skin-deep split often heal over as long as it wasn’t too badly split. Sometimes hot fruits (was in sun) and overly dehydrated fruits (not watered too long) will skin-split in the water bucket. Expect these to deteriorate faster — eat or process in 2 to 3 days at most — sometimes soft spot will form/develop from fungal contamination in the split. Unwrap and check at least once a day or morning & evening.

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Gary350
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applestar wrote:
Tue Aug 17, 2021 5:24 am
I somehow missed your posts from 13th — You might be able to inoculate your pile of shredded corn stalks with mushroom plugs. Oyster mushrooms would grow in almost anything… possibly Nameko too … and I think there should be some others that are not substrate specific that would grow.

Searching for these words yields some interesting results — “ corn stalk substrate for mushroom”… Another proposed species was Winecap mushrooms.

Tomatoes — with some varieties, the fruits that will easily continue to ripen off the vine will readily come off the stem when lifted upwards. They will either pull off the calyx or else the stem joint will break. This is almost the universal sign of ripeness for most fruits.

By the time this happens, the fruit is only getting water from the umbilical stem connection to the plant. So there won’t be significant difference in flavor if picked, and every chance that they will split from excessive water if not harvested.

NOTE — I’ve noticed some varieties won’t come off even when fully ripe— or more precisely, the required force can’t be applied when the ripe fruit is soft.

Another usual test for harvest-readiness I use is the way the skin feels. Green is glossy, slick and hard, blushed to semi-ripe is matte to velvety but still firm. When the bottom of the fruit becomes velvety and slight pressure feels like there is a “give”, it’s ready. If there is heavy rains expected, I pick at velvety to *almost* “give” stage — it doesn’t actually depress but it’s not hard either.

I rinse the fruits thoroughly freely swimming in a bucket of water 2 to 3 times (lift out and change water — first bucket usually turns yellow from all the pollen and the typical tomato leaf exudate) then air dry and keep out of direct sunlight in the kitchen in paper towel lined baskets and colanders or baking cooling racks — AIRFLOW AIRFLOW AIRFLOW.

They will be fully ripe in 2 to 3 days, and stay unblemished for up to 5 days or so.

Any tomatoes with skin-deep split or healed split scar, accidental poke, etc are wrapped in paper towel or paper napkin. Skin-deep split often heal over as long as it wasn’t too badly split. Sometimes hot fruits (was in sun) and overly dehydrated fruits (not watered too long) will skin-split in the water bucket. Expect these to deteriorate faster — eat or process in 2 to 3 days at most — sometimes soft spot will form/develop from fungal contamination in the split. Unwrap and check at least once a day or morning & evening.
Big Beef & the 1" cherry tomatoes are very good about releasing from the stem when ripe. I have seen some varieties that won't release when ripe. I check tomatoes every day, lift. pull, twist tomato a tiny bit they release very easy when ripe. I hate to pull tomatoes too soon they will be larger & riper tomorrow. When 98° hot weather comes the larger tomatoes slow down & the cherry tomatoes speed up. I am glad I saved these cherry tomato seeds 30 yrs ago I have not seen these for sale in 20 years. I always plant these cherry tomato seeds directly in the garden soil they are my backup tomatoes for hot weather and flavor is very good.

One year the garden had a plague of 1000s of mushrooms not sure what caused that but that might be good for shopped up corn stalks. Maybe today I can rake the chopped up stuff away to a pile then finish mowing the rest of the corn stalks. I have 35 gallons of wood ash in buckets it works good to speed up compose. Last year I composed 100 gallons of sawdust all winter with wood ash & nitrogen then tilled it into the garden in May. When we lived at the other house we had a mountain of maple tree leaves from 52 trees wood ash & nitrogen made excellent potting soil if it over winter. Online says, corn stalks are full of nitrogen they are good chopped then tilled into the garden soil. Last year I used the lawnmower to blow chopped corn stalks into the garden it also blew 1000s of chickweed seeds in the garden, I'm not doing that again.

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More tomatoes about 5 lbs. 2 days ago these sweet bell peppers were green and 1/2 this size. Wife made garden chili with our, tomatoes, garlic, bell pepper, onions, & 1 Tabasco pepper. Wife said she has a bag of onions in the refrigerator.
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I think I will abandon the idea of planting a fall crops of, broccoli, cauliflower, pak choy, green cabbage, red cabbage, savoy cabbage, bib lettuce, Romain lettuce, chard, last years test crop survived our 15° winter plants sat there in ice & snow for 6 months not growing, then freezing weather turned to 90° in 4 weeks and all plants bolted. Rather than toss all these seeds in the trash if I plant them now our TN weather forecast for next week is hot and no more rain. 2½ months of growing season before 1st frost TN bugs will have a feast if I plant seeds now. It is not possible to have 3 months of 70°f weather in TN. Pak choy did the best last year if bugs don't eat plants then maybe I can plant them??? I'm not sure if bugs eat lettuce but we still have a month of 95° weather??? I would love to have a 34' row of broccoli & wife would love a 34' row of cauliflower but bugs probably won't allow that. A 34' row of pak choy will bolt May 15 what can I use with 70 plants all harvested the same day??? If we start having typical TN fall weather 2 months of drought will not be good for these plants.

Last years crop.
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Gary350
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I hurried out to the garden to pick what I could before the storm hits us. Another 6 lbs 13 oz. of tomatoes.

Pics of today's tomatoes and yesterday.
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1½ gallons of Enchilada Sauce. We Enchilada sauce to use up 10 lbs of garden tomatoes. 12 years ago a Mexican lady told me how to make Enchilada sauce so I found a YouTube video to refresh my memory. 2 years ago I canned New Mexico chili Peppers in Quart jars marked Enchilada to make Enchilada sauce with later. Recipe makes 12 pints.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmVLLFQaEzk

36 garden ripe New Mexico Peppers about 6" to 7" long = 3 quarts of chili puree
1 Jalapeno pepper
10 lbs of garden whole tomatoes with skins
2 large onions
20 garlic cloves
6 tablespoons of oil
6 tablespoon of oregano
3 tablespoons of cumin
4 tablespoons paprika
2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar

Cook spices, oregano, cumin, paprika, in hot oil 45 seconds.

Bring, peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, to a boil turn off heat let is rest 1 hour.

Puree, peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, oil spices, salt, sugar.

This canner only holds 9 pints. I have a 10 gallon canner we have not used in 12 years it is probably too large for 12 pints. I'm not sure if this should be water bath cooked or pressure cooked so we do pressure cook to be safe.

I picked another 3 lbs or ripe tomatoes today.
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Gary350
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I picked another 8 lbs 2 oz of tomatoes today. I gave 15 lbs of tomatoes & several Tabasco chili peppers to the neighbor he likes to make salsa. Mexican neighbor came to get Tabasco peppers & tomatoes also.

Wife made Enchiladas for dinner using our Enchilada sauce. I chopped a sweet red bell pepper & mashed an avocado.
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I picked no tomatoes Saturday during the flash flood rain. I picked about 8 lbs of tomatoes Sunday before dinner. Wife made spaghetti sauce for dinner. Monday I picked a lot of bad split open tomatoes but we have about 3 lbs of good tomatoes. There are several sweet bell peppers on the plants but I am not picking them until we have a use for them. Peppers will keep better on the plant than in the kitchen. Tabasco pepper plant has a lot of nice looking peppers but I have no use for that many. I gave a lot of tabasco pepper to 2 different people.
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Another 8 lbs of tomatoes today. We are running out of things to do with tomatoes. Wife made, pizza sauce, chili, spaghetti sauce, tonight Lasagna, tomorrow pizza again.

Pizza sauce, Spaghetti sauce, Lasagna sauce, are all the same, 1 quart of whole tomatoes with skins & seeds boiled down to about 1 pint.

About 1/4 of a bottle of DOLLAR TREE Italian Seasoning, 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper, cook about 1 minute in 2 Tablespoons of hot olive oil, puree into already cooked tomatoes.
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Make stewed maters with some of them. A goober of butter, small shot of garlic powder, a dash or 3 of hot sauce, set no low. Simmer & smash em as they break down. Better than mater soup! Good stuff!

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This morning it was 71° and felt like 90° when I mowed grass & weeds in the garden. This evening 96° & feels like 115° I picked about 2 lbs of good tomatoes and about 6 lbs or bad tomatoes. Lots of rotten tomatoes & tomatoes with worm holes. Today soil is dry but still wet enough to pull up all the row marker stakes. Then I tilled the garden soil trying to get ride of grass and weeds. When garden is dry as desert no grass & weeds grow but all this rain has made a nightmare of grass & weeds. Tomatoes plants need work but I am not doing it I am tired of the garden, we already have too many tomatoes. Sweet bell pepper plants have lots of small green peppers and 1 large ripe red pepper. Tabasco pepper plants are loaded I hope the Mexican neighbors want more hot peppers & tomatoes.
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Every time I think we are out of garden onions I find more. Today I found 1 onion among the garden garlic. Today we made garden pizza with, garlic, onion, tomatoes, sweet red bell peppers. Red bell peppers have the best flavor on pizza we loaded the pizza with it. We ate most of the pizza the rest will be breakfast tomorrow morning.

I found 3 ripe cherry tomatoes today. I removed several rotted tomatoes and wormy tomatoes. We have several tomatoes in the kitchen and plants are loaded with more green tomatoes than I can count. Birds are not doing their job eating worms & bugs.

I learned today that Tabasco peppers turn, orange & red color. I already knew when peppers turn from green to yellow they are Fire Hot. Stems almost fall off on there own when peppers turn red.
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I decided to add up my notes to see how many lbs of tomatoes we have picked so far this year. Total = 243 lbs from 12 Big Beef plants & 8 cherry tomato plants. I would never have guessed that, wow that seems like a lot of tomatoes. I was picking about 10 lbs of tomatoes every day for a few weeks. I gave 10 lbs to my son several times. I gave 10 & 20 lbs to people across the street 3 times. I gave tomatoes to the Mexican neighbors several times. Lady east side of the street got 5 lbs several times. People from India wanted 25 lbs we searched the plants until we found 25 lbs. We canned 24 lbs of tomatoes and ate several tomatoes. I sold some tomatoes to keep them from going bad. I wrote down even numbers like 10 lbs instead of 10lbs 1oz.
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Something has changed since we had the 15" rain. 80% of the tomatoes are rotten & garden is full of bugs & long brown worms. There are brown stink bugs & very short green body bugs that look like green stick bugs. There are 3/8" long skinny body bugs with long legs that run fast they are dark color that appears to be a red brown color. What can I use to spray for bugs??? I gave plants calcium yesterday. For now I will give plants a hard water spray to blast bugs away.

More tomatoes & a few sweet bell peppers today. I keep finding pepper plant limbs laying on the soil they don't seem to be so heavy they broke them self off the plant.
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I have the impression that when a hurricane remnant storm system pass through, they tend to bring and drop off southern pest insects that got caught up within the system. There are almost always warm-hot weather pests that proliferate… sometimes they are new unknowns.

These pests can also be disease carriers and infect plants they attack.

The heat and humidity and excessive soaking also promotes fungal and bacterial diseases. One of the most devastating for solanacea causes wilting of 1/2 side of the plant.

These conditions also promote hatching of insects. Those little bugs might be newly hatched nymphs.

Right now MY biggest issue is Downy mildew has cropped up on cucurbits and seems to have started infecting basils.(MOST years I never see this — only the milder powdery mildew)

Also the SPOTTED cucumber beetles have arrived and are wilting cucumber and melon leaves they feed from. I always find the spotted pests inside or near a crumpled leaf. The leaf footed stinkbugs have arrived also.


If I don’t realize and fail to cut off the first leaf on a branch vine, the entire vine dies off leaf by leaf. If the disease reach the main stem, that’s the end of the plant.

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Yes, when there is a deluge of rain preceded by calm winds before and after the storm, stuff happens. The high humidity and water logged plant cells cause a lot of problems. Tomatoes and papayas show it the most with the swelling of fruit from the rain and then the contraction and cracking after. It makes fruit mealy when the fruit is swollen, but with papaya, it will get better after 3 days and the fruit will not be as mealy. Tomatoes crack and anthrachnose and other fungal diseases show up on the fruit as well as mildew on the leaves. Downy mildew is usually associated with cool moist conditions, while powdery mildew with warm moist conditions. I usually have to fungicide as soon as the rain stops, but it does not always save the plants. I also get edema in plants like geraniums and the roses get black spot and sometimes powdery mildew as well. I never thought about the winds and rain blowing in insects and disease, but stressed plants would be ripe for colonization.

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imafan26 wrote:
Sat Aug 28, 2021 4:21 am
Yes, when there is a deluge of rain preceded by calm winds before and after the storm, stuff happens. The high humidity and water logged plant cells cause a lot of problems. Tomatoes and papayas show it the most with the swelling of fruit from the rain and then the contraction and cracking after. It makes fruit mealy when the fruit is swollen, but with papaya, it will get better after 3 days and the fruit will not be as mealy. Tomatoes crack and anthrachnose and other fungal diseases show up on the fruit as well as mildew on the leaves. Downy mildew is usually associated with cool moist conditions, while powdery mildew with warm moist conditions. I usually have to fungicide as soon as the rain stops, but it does not always save the plants. I also get edema in plants like geraniums and the roses get black spot and sometimes powdery mildew as well. I never thought about the winds and rain blowing in insects and disease, but stressed plants would be ripe for colonization.
I have mold & mildew problem solved. I mix 1 teaspoon of copper sulfate, 3 teaspoons of baking soda, ¼ teaspoon dish soap with 1 gallon of water then spray plants. It took me a while to learn the correct mixture but this works great, after staying on the plants & it dries to the plants it does not wash off easy by rain. After a 30 minute rain inspection shows copper sulfate is still on the plants. It takes about 3 good rains 30 minutes each to wash copper sulfate away. I bought 10 lbs of copper sulfate many years ago this will last me for another 70 years. 1 lb of copper sulfate is plenty to make your own 10 year supply of mold mildew mixture.

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Gary350
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This is my mold & mildew mixture. 1 gallon of water, 1 tsp copper sulfate, 3 tsp baking soda, 1 squirt of dish soap. I have 10 empty 1 gallon jugs I fill all 10 with water then make mold mildew spray, it costs me 50 cents, much cheaper than those $25 bottles of factory made mold mildew spray that makes 5 gallons.
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imafan26
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where do you get the copper sulfate? I usually use wettable sulfur instead, but I can't even find that easily.

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Gary350
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imafan26 wrote:
Sat Aug 28, 2021 4:57 pm
where do you get the copper sulfate? I usually use wettable sulfur instead, but I can't even find that easily.
I buy my copper sulfate at TSC = Tractor Supply Co in the garden section. I see several people selling copper sulfate on Ebay here is a link to 1 with free postage.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/233641651875?v ... OSw5ZBWJ~3~

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Gary350
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After dinner I went outside to pick tomatoes when it came an amazing 10 minute lightning thunder storm with no rain. When sun came out I walked out and started picking tomatoes when the sky split open an we had an amazing very hard 20 minute rain with no lightning & no thunder. That was crazy a 10 minute gap between the lightning storm and rain. Now garden is mud. Maybe I pick more tomatoes tomorrow. I might have ½ lb of good tomatoes several are split or have bad places.
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Gary350
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This morning I put on my mud shoes and picked 2¾ lbs of good tomatoes. I also picked several bad tomatoes. I think I should be picking tomatoes about 3 days before they are ripe as long as it continues to be this wet. No rain in the forecast yesterday and we got 1" in 20 minutes. We have 5" of rain in the forecast for Tuesday. I hope the Mexican neighbor is outside after lunch I have 8 lb of tomatoes for him, his mother loves these ripe tomatoes. Sweet bell pepper plants have a lot of peppers I see a large 1 that is about 50% red. Red color peppers have a much better flavor than green we have been eating them every day.
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Gary350
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That fire hose water blast I did to the tomato plants the other day did the job, there are no bugs & no worms on any of the tomato plants. I trimmed tomato plants there were too many limbs & leaves to find rope tomatoes. I found 1 more good ripe tomato this is the first tomato this nice since the 15" rain. We made Quesadilla for dinner, cheese, Tabasco peppers, beans, tomatoes, pulled pork, more cheese.
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Gary350
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Rain has stopped for the moment, I put on my mud shoes and went to the garden. Bugs have returned in full force an now we have Gnats = Nats too. I picked just as many bad tomatoes as good tomatoes. Holes in tomatoes are full of stink bugs. I blasted the tomato plants with water again, I probably need to blast plants twice a day to keep bugs away. Tomatoes in the kitchen have Nats too. More rain on the way. We have another 3¾ lbs of tomatoes.

It sure is nice to have sweet bell peppers every time we want 1. First frost is 2 months away we will have peppers until Nov and sometimes have had peppers until Jan if I cover plants with tarps every night. If I was 20 years younger I could still cover plants with tapes for 2 months. This pepper should be completely red color in a few more days.

This OLD laptop computer is getting ready to self destruct, black spider web lines across the screen get worse every day.
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Gary350
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I sliced & diced some Tabasco peppers to put in cheese dip it has been marinading in the refrigerator for 2 days. Today flavor is amazingly good, not just spicy hot but good flavor too. We have chicken marinading with sliced & diced Tabasco peppers I can hardly wait to eat it. I don't like Tabasco sauce in a bottle it is usually fire hot with no flavor, I wonder if Tabasco sauce in a bottle is Tabasco peppers or Cayenne peppers. I ate all the Mexican chips now I'm eating ruffle potato chips. Dips is full of diced tomatoes too.
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Gary350
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6 hours later I picked tomatoes again before the hurricane rain arrives. It is very interesting that yellow/orange color tomatoes can turn ripe red color in 6 hrs and split open. These 1 lb 4oz tomatoes go to the neighbor also the street, split tomatoes will be good today but not tomorrow. Neighbor across the street makes salsa this is about 40 lbs of tomatoes total I have given him he should have a good winter supply of salsa. I hope this is enough Tabasco peppers for him I'm not sure how fire hot he likes salsa. Its funny Mexican neighbors behind our house call tabasco peppers, Fire Peppers. LOL
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Gary350
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Rain has finally stopped for 15 minutes. I walked out to check the tomatoes & no ripe tomatoes. I count 306 green tomatoes on 12 plants. Mud is very bad I will problem loose both shoes if I walk in the garden. Sunflower plant fell over & not sure what happened to the sweet bell peppers they lost a lot of leaves and some limbs are broken down. Today is 9/1/21 about 2 months away from first frost.
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Last edited by Gary350 on Wed Sep 01, 2021 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.



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