The news hit like a sucker punch. Late blight has arrived in Massachusetts. My tomatoes are beautiful and the thought of losing the whole crop again is horrible. We attended our sustainable living group’s fair on Saturday and fortunately, there were a couple of plant experts there. They are recommending that we spray. There is a copper treatment that can be very effective if the rest of the field management is good. There was also a lot of talk about a spray made with oil soap, peroxide, baking soda and water and that’s what I’m going to try. Good field management involves a daily inspection of your susceptible plants, removal of bottom leaves, deep mulch and keeping people out of your fields. The recipe for the spray is as follows:
6 t baking soda
6 t peroxide
3 t Murphy’s Oil Soap
1 gallon water
Spray on dry leaves in the very early morning and after rain.
They are recommending 4 inches of mulch but the problem with mulch is that the cutworms live in it. We have had a problem with cutworms this year. Bruce has been going down at night with a flashlight and disposing of them. Whenever people say that they will “just” grow a garden if things get bad I have to laugh. There is no “just” about growing food.
I have new respect for the phrase “slaving over a hot stove”. I made zucchini relish yesterday. I was soaking wet by the time I had finished a triple batch but I have 15 beautiful pints on my counter. They are so pretty, I hate to put them in the basement.
The Sustainability Fair was so much fun. We had the usual wonderful food, terrific company and amazing music. I love to contra dance but I seem to tire a tad more quickly than I used to. I know that what do might seem a bit corny to some people but the day didn’t cost any money and most people could walk or ride bikes to get there. Corny or not, it was my kind of fun.
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July 26, 2010 at 8:35 am
Thank you for saying “just” grow a garden. The answer for anyone and everyone to just about whatever is to put in a garden. And “they” all make it sound so easy. I am trying, but there is no “just” in gardening. It takes knowledge, a huge amount of oversight, and, I think, some luck. This blog intimidates me a bit because I always feel I am not doing enough. But I keep trying. And definitely, keep reading.
July 26, 2010 at 8:51 am
I hope your tomatoes are going to be OK!! Ours in the south are burning up in the heat right now, I have to bring mine in a few days before I normaly do so they won’t split open in the brutal heat wave we are having. I spent my weekend orginizing our dehydrated food, to hot to can down here right now. I think your day at the fair sounds like great fun, wish I could find a place of like minded folks to hang out with and learn from others.
July 26, 2010 at 9:05 am
I noticed blight hitting a one of my tomato plants. Will try your suggestion tomorrow. I made my first pickles and dilly beans yesterday! It took me 2 hours to search for all of the proper equipment, including visiting 5 stores before finding a water bath canner. One store said their stock was due in 3 weeks. My cucumbers are coming in at a rapid rate. This is my second year with vegetables and I made 3 new raised beds. Being a farm girl, I didn’t think my suburban lot was big enough, but I am rethinking the whole yard now. I enjoy your blog immensely and wanted you to know that I too have started canning.
July 26, 2010 at 10:05 am
Our tomatoes, while not quite ripe yet, seem to be doing OK in MN. However “something” ate all of our brussel sprouts. Last years crop turned out so well. We are really sorry about this year’s disaster. Our raspberries are coming back in small quantities and have great hopes for next year. I wish gardening were easier and yielded to a sure set of directions and /or formula!
July 26, 2010 at 11:14 am
I,too,always loved that line”We’ll grow a garden”. Yeah,well we’ve been gardening for 40+ years and every year is a new experience. To think you can just till up some land and suceed is foolish.
At least we haven’t had blight yet…hope your new recipe helps. DEE
July 26, 2010 at 12:17 pm
so far, so good with our tomatoes. Thank you, thank you for posting that recipe! I went into town to try and find the copper spray but couldn’t find it.
I think by the end of the week I’ll be getting green beans and I’ll be able to make my dilly beans.
July 26, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Damn, damn, damn!!!! I went to the garden after posting this morning and found blight. Lots of blight. 4 hours, a sore back and wilted spirit later, I am taking a break from the spraying, pruning and bagging of the leaves and stems that are affected.
July 26, 2010 at 2:51 pm
So sorry you have blight! This is pretty much my first year for veggie gardening (only had a few plants last year as the raised boxes weren’t ready), I’m impressed with what has grown out there and just love being able to go out and pick what is ready for dinner. But boy oh boy, if we had to live on what I have grown we would starve. Waiting for it to grow and ripen, to be ready to eat and hope you have enough to put some by for later, takes a lot more room than I have in my back yard! Good thing I have stuff I have canned that I have bought, I don’t think only 3 acorn squash will last us all winter long.
July 26, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Oh no! I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?
July 26, 2010 at 11:43 pm
I’m not even sure what blight is. The problem I’m having is that as my Tomatoes are getting close to ripening, the bottoms look like they are rotting. We’ve gotten only 3 ripe tomatoes so far. All three Tomatoes we’ve picked so far were like this. All we’ve had to do is cut a small sliver from the bottom of the Tomato and all was good. There are a couple more Tomatoes getting ready to ripen and they are showing the same signs.
We did get some nice size Cucumbers and Zucchini this past week. So, that is at least some good news.
We did know that learning to garden would be a learning curve, which is why we are doing our experimenting and learning while we still can. Hopefully, we still have enough time to work things our and gain experience.
As times get tougher – and they will – there are going to be a lot of people getting very hungry, all because they were over confidant in their ability to grow a garden. The fact is, I’m sort of concerned that hunger might even be in my future if we can’t get a handle on growing a garden.
True, I know I can always purchase fresh vegetable at the grocery store today and can them. But the problem is, what we can today, tomorrow, of for as long as we are able, that simply remains a finite source of food when it is no longer easily available. When the grocery store shelves are nearly bare, or even totally empty, the canned, as well as stored dry foods, suddenly become a terminal supply. That is, without the ability to replenish the food stores, you are going to eventually run out of canned food. Learning to grow a garden may well extend the food supply beyond the crisis event.
The other extreme is that many of us men with the survivalist ego tend to think that we will be able to simply head out and take Dear, Rabbit, Squirrel and other local game. The fact is, there will be so much competition for the local game that it’ll only be a matter of weeks before the supply of these creatures are extinguished.
Gardening seems to be the most practical means of surviving where, the likelihood of producing sustenance with certainty is nearly assured. Even then, a bad year may well be really bad for the small gardener. Kathy’s and other testimonies bring this to bare.
But if we don’t keep trying to learn how to become successful at self sustained living, then we will surely find ourselves lining up with the hordes of destitute, attempting to get our rationed allotment of food stamps and limited dole of second rate food rations.
We need to develop skills that provide guaranteed (as much as possible) results. That would be learning to grow your own crops, raise Rabbits, raise Chickens, raise Geese, learn to use snares for small game, learn to use Trout lines, and learn to take the occasional Deer, Elk or other large game.
We will need to learn many other skills, as well. And what we can’t do ourselves, we must be ready to barter our gains for services with those who have complementary skills that we lack.
My skills lay less in the gardening, though, I am proficient in the out of doors and basic primitive survival. But then, will physical skills like repairing electronics and other such stuff be of any real value when there is no food available to begin with? No, my skills may not mean much in a real loss of social structure. The best hope for everyone is to become self sufficient!
July 27, 2010 at 10:19 am
The tomato problem someone asked about sounds like blossom end rot. That happens when there isn’t enough calcium in the soil. I don’t really know much about what to actually do about it, but I’m sure if you do a google search for ‘blossom end rot’ you should get some good information from .edu sites and garden forums.
I like to plant a variety of crops in my small garden space every year. Everything from roots to leaves to fruits as well as flowers and herbs. Every year there are things which do superb and things which kind of flop. And it is seldom the same thing from year to year. With the exception of a particular variety of radish which makes leaves and then bolts every year I’ve planted it. (I successfully grow other varieties of radish, but I’m feeling a bit stubborn and want to figure out the ‘trick’ to this one).
The frustration I have with the way “growing food” or “gardening” is often presented is that it’s portrayed as “so simple a child could do it” and pictures are almost always of super-tidy gardens with lush gorgeous plants and photogenic produce at every turn. The reality is that weeds will grow, plants will do odd things and the “fruit of your labor” will rarely be uniform or blemish-free, that bugs and weather and diseases and human error will damage some of what you grow, in other words— there will be mistakes and failures in the garden. It won’t be perfect. And that is NORMAL.
Your garden will evolve over the years and as you learn about your ground and your seasons and the growing of certain things, your mistakes will change. Your garden will probably start looking more like a photo shoot, but there will still be failures in your garden. Any gardener who says otherwise is probably not being fully honest.
I have found it to be very rewarding, even though frustrating or depressing at times. (Last year I had a huge slug problem and they ate up several herb starts I’d oh-so-carefully grown from seed. *cry*)
July 27, 2010 at 11:29 am
TO CK Livingston – your tomatoes have “Blossom end rot”, usually caused by a lack of calcium in the soil but sometimes by poor watering practices. There isn’t enough calcium in the soil for the plant to fully develop the fruit, it also occurs in cucumbers, melons, etc. My husband and I used to have a farm, garden & pet supply store, and here is some advice we’d give gardeners.
You need to supplement with calcium, check at a local garden center for a liquid calcium concentrate (mix with water according to label directions) that you can spray on the plants and water the remainder into the base of the plants. One or two applications usually does the trick. Other sources of calcium: cheap calcium tablets from the drug store, ground up and watered into the soil at the base of the plant…gypsum powder, mix into the soil (best prior to planting) and water in…calcium chloride (the crystals used in basement/closet DampRid type products), dissolve 1-2 Tbsp into a gallon of water and water into the base of the plant.
To solve the watering issue, make to water slowly and deeply, let the water soak in 5-6″at least or so between waterings.
July 27, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Oh no, Kathy!!! It’s still so early in the season. Thank you for writing the recipe, I will check my plants carefully and keep the sprays in mind. After last year, I couldn’t stand another year of blight.
July 30, 2010 at 3:12 pm
The other thing with “just have a garden” is that there are some start-up costs as well, especially if your ground is crummy. We ended up with raised beds because the clay was just too atrocious and our yard too small to amend it very well.
The first year failed because we were newly in the house and the empty flower beds were covering the clay and sun issues. The second year we did raised beds, but after battle squash bugs, vine borers, and powdery mold, we decided no more summer squash. And the peppers were bitter.
This year, one of our dogs is eating the red tomatoes. So far, the butternut squash is bug and mold resistant. But the pole beans have not put out flowers yet.
If we were to really have a crisis, our garden is easily raided due to the proximity of our neighbors. We’d probably leave the beagle out overnight and sleep in the family room next to the deck. I don’t know that would be enough, but I have to start with some plan.