Gardening

[vickie]

Looks like you're within lupine's agricultural zone. What seems to be the problem? Are you planting perennial or annual ones?

 

[Jenny]

Oh, I’m planting the supposedly perennial ones.

 

[snowski/swimmouse]

Well darn. I put more time and effort into my garden this year than any other and have more tomato plants than ever. But most now most have powdery mildew, one has some nasty kind of wilt, and the last has something that is making the plant, branch by branch, turn brown and die. Baking soda and water seems to have temporarily made the mildew disappear but it's coming back. Boo. I think all of this means I have to get rid of the soil they are planted in, too.

I'm so sorry @Christy! Have you considered Sevin Dust or are you trying to stay organic?

 

[BlueSkies]

Well darn. I put more time and effort into my garden this year than any other and have more tomato plants than ever. But most now most have powdery mildew, one has some nasty kind of wilt, and the last has something that is making the plant, branch by branch, turn brown and die. Baking soda and water seems to have temporarily made the mildew disappear but it's coming back. Boo. I think all of this means I have to get rid of the soil they are planted in, too.

I'm so sorry @Christy! Have you considered Sevin Dust or are you trying to stay organic?

Mildew is a fungus- so Sevin wouldn't work anyway, but there are many suggestions on the internet, organic and not, for fungicides. For the wilt and turning brow it may be best to pull the plant before they infect the others (these are probably fungal too). At least remove the brown leaves and put in the garbage. My experience with wilt/browning is it spreads from plant to plant.

 

[snowski/swimmouse]

I guess in my 40 years of tomatoes I having had your fungus experience specifically.... Are your plants in the ground or in pots?

 

[newboots]

Oh, I wish I could grow lupines! I keep trying, and all they do is die.

I have a few thousand seeds left, if you want to keep trying!

 

[newboots]

Fungus on tomatoes responds to bacillus subtilis, I read. It's one of the microbes in Recharge, an amendment that contains a number of beneficial microbes for plants. Expensive, but I think it helped my spotty tomato leaves. I found Recharge on Amazon.

 

[Jenny]

I have a few thousand seeds left, if you want to keep trying!

Do you know if they react badly to juglone? Maybe our Black Walnut has a wider ranging effect than I thought. Wonder if I've ever tried them in the front yard . . .

 

[newboots]

Do you know if they react badly to juglone? Maybe our Black Walnut has a wider ranging effect than I thought. Wonder if I've ever tried them in the front yard . . .

It's not supposed to. I'll happily mail off seeds to anyone for the cost of postage. The lupines they grew from are happy in Vermont, in soil that is nothing to write home about.

 

[vickie]

How tall are these lupines? Do they require support?

 

[newboots]

In the second and third year they get pretty tall but no, they don't need support. I cut them down after they produce their seed, and they start growing back. First year blooming is rare. The leaves are pretty.

 

[Jenny]

I’ve got a packet of seeds somewhere, too, now that you mention it. I should look for them and see when to plant. I don’t usually try seeds - too impatient - it'd be a lot cheaper to kill them from seed then continually buying new plants.

 

[Christy]

Mildew is a fungus- so Sevin wouldn't work anyway, but there are many suggestions on the internet, organic and not, for fungicides. For the wilt and turning brow it may be best to pull the plant before they infect the others (these are probably fungal too). At least remove the brown leaves and put in the garbage. My experience with wilt/browning is it spreads from plant to plant.

I know, apparently there is no remedy and we are supposed to also get rid of the soil. It was new soil, a new raised bed and new fabric pots so WTF. Growing tomatoes in the PNW is problematic to begin with but I've never had these issues--usually it's just trying to get tomatoes to ripen before the weather starts turning cooler that is the issue. And my neighbors aren't dealing with wilt. I wonder if it's possible it could have been in the bagged raised bed soil mix I used.

 

[vickie]

I read a little about lupine. Seems the one soil it won't grow in is clay. I have either clay or brick, depending on the moisture level. I have a drip line for the shrubs and perennials this year. With only the plants getting water and not the surrounding soil, I have been shocked at how dry and hard the dirt is.

@Christy -- I had the same challenge in Portland, trying to get tomatoes to ripen before it started to get too cool. I have two tomato plants this year. Guess what my challenge in Denver is? Yep, same thing. The growing season starts late here and ends early. To compensate, I bought plants that were 2 feet tall and already had baby tomatoes on them. Those tomatoes had blossom end rot, which I read is not unusual. I also read that the plants tend to adapt so the later tomatoes will be ok. I just picked the 2nd round of tomatoes today. They're much better, not perfect but edible. End of July ... 3 tomatoes. The cherry tomato plant did give me 4 or 5 tomatoes so far.

I have probably one month remaining for the tomatoes to finish producing. Or "start producing", whichever.

 

[BlueSkies]

I know, apparently there is no remedy and we are supposed to also get rid of the soil. It was new soil, a new raised bed and new fabric pots so WTF. Growing tomatoes in the PNW is problematic to begin with but I've never had these issues--usually it's just trying to get tomatoes to ripen before the weather starts turning cooler that is the issue. And my neighbors aren't dealing with wilt. I wonder if it's possible it could have been in the bagged raised bed soil mix I used.

Did you buy your plants? One year my garden was contaminated by tomato plants I bought. It took a couple years to get completely rid of the problem, so now I start my own plants. Current crop is 6 ft tall and taking over!

 

[newboots]

I read a little about lupine. Seems the one soil it won't grow in is clay.

I threw last year's lupine seeds all over the place, and one surprised me by popping up in a section of the yard that's soggy into June and clay just under a 2" layer of topsoil. Maybe my lupines have learned to take it on the chin, living up here in the cold. Two others landed on my steep, steep hill, where it's hard to grow anything in some spots. There's probably ledge under a thin layer of dirt. As dry as it has been, the two on the hill are thriving. The only other things I've been able to plant near that spot were daylilies, and even they struggle!

My plan for my clay section is to add organic material year after year, such as wood chips (I have a 3-inch layer on now), compost (if I ever have any extra) and yard clippings. Hoping, of course, that as they decompose they might mix into the clay a bit. Otherwise we could make pottery. Most of my property is not all clay, though, but some fairly poor dirt.

 

[vickie]

My plan for my clay section is to add organic material year after year, such as wood chips (I have a 3-inch layer on now), compost (if I ever have any extra) and yard clippings. Hoping, of course, that as they decompose they might mix into the clay a bit.

Most of my diet is fresh produce, so I have a lot of organic waste. Whenever I know I'm going to plant stuff, I start saving the produce waste, even just dropping it into shopping bags in the freezer. I put quite a bit of that waste into each hole I dig for plants -- the waste material might be as much, in volume, as the plant's root system.

I used to think I was feeding the plant and, eventually, improving the soil. Last year, I needed to relocate a perennial I had planted a month or two earlier. I use a spading fork to dig so I don't cut thru roots. When that root system came out of the ground, there were probably 40 fat earthworms hanging out of the dirt. It was so gross! But I realized I was feeding and attracting earthworms as much as feeding the plant.

In Portland, I saved my produce scraps and randomly dug a hole in the mulched area each week and buried the scraps. I tried that here but found I couldn't get a shovel into the dirt easily enough to make it a routine practice.

 

[Kimmyt]

One of my tomatoes came down with blight (the browning and dying stalk by stalk) and I took the whole thing out. I was bummed because I only planted two big slicers and this was one of them, and it was absolutely loaded with tomatoes that hadn't ripened yet. But I noticed a stalk on the plant next to it getting browned (my other slicer!) so I removed the brown branch, pulled out patient zero, and bought some copper fungicide and everything seems to be better now. I'll put my tomatos in a different bed next year because I realized I had a tomato in the same spot last year that died early so I think it might be in the soil.

For the powdery mildew: how do you water your tomatoes? If you water them and let the leaves get wet, especially in a damp place like the PNW, that could cause that problem iirc. (caveat that I've never had that issue with tomatos but often have it with squashes, although I don't find it really affects production so usually I just leave it). You should water at the base and also heavily prune to keep ariflow through the plant. I have always kind of halfheartedly pruned my tomatoes, but I really went gung ho on the indeterminates this year and I'm noticing a huge increase in fruit and the size of them is better, as well.

 

[Christy]

One of my tomatoes came down with blight (the browning and dying stalk by stalk) and I took the whole thing out. I was bummed because I only planted two big slicers and this was one of them, and it was absolutely loaded with tomatoes that hadn't ripened yet. But I noticed a stalk on the plant next to it getting browned (my other slicer!) so I removed the brown branch, pulled out patient zero, and bought some copper fungicide and everything seems to be better now. I'll put my tomatos in a different bed next year because I realized I had a tomato in the same spot last year that died early so I think it might be in the soil.

For the powdery mildew: how do you water your tomatoes? If you water them and let the leaves get wet, especially in a damp place like the PNW, that could cause that problem iirc. (caveat that I've never had that issue with tomatos but often have it with squashes, although I don't find it really affects production so usually I just leave it). You should water at the base and also heavily prune to keep ariflow through the plant. I have always kind of halfheartedly pruned my tomatoes, but I really went gung ho on the indeterminates this year and I'm noticing a huge increase in fruit and the size of them is better, as well.

This is helpful, thanks!

Good info about the pruning--I prune most of those diagonal stems that grown in the intersection of other branches, but what I forgot to do this year was to remove the lower branches specifically so that fungus can't easily splash from the soil to the plant. And I could have been better about pruning ALL the diagonal stems. BIgger tomatoes in an incentive!

I definitely water at the base. We had a rainy spring which I would think might be part of the problem, if my neighbors' tomatoes didn't all look so good. I also get powdery mildew every time I plant any squash, but it never seems to hurt the plant. This year I had a zucchini plant right next to my tomatoes, and it got mildew, and it now seems like a bad choice to have left it in for so long. I just pulled it.

But what I now think really doomed them was underwatering the containers. I just read that I should be deeply watering those every day until water runs out the bottom, and that in hot weather some people even do it twice a day. I am using those black fabric pots for the first time which dry extra fast. Most of the year it's too-damp conditions that we struggle with and it's always hard to remember that in summer when it doesn't rain. And I read that it is harder for mildew to stick to a properly hydrated plant, and that underwatering can also cause wilt.

 

[Kimmyt]

Yes, pots dry out super quick! I also just added some black fabric pots to my garden and I have tomatillos in them and they get dry really quick, usually tomatillos are super hardy and can handle a bit of neglect but these guys wilt if I don't water them every day. They perk right back up after I give them a deep water though, so I just have to be good about getting out there to water them.

As for pruning tomatos, this year I made sure not to have any branches on the bottom 8" or so of the plant. It seemed excessive when the plants were smaller but now both of my cherry tomato plants are over 6' tall and going gangbusters so I guess the removal of all those branches didn't bother them!