gardenbre3: June 2010

I decided to put in a couple of hours at the allotment before the big three day rainstorms hit. I brought a tray of peppers and eggplants that I'd not found room for on the roof knowing I had space in the original tomato patch to plant more veggies and I filled the red tarp with edamame, eggplants and three different peppers (jalapeno, buran red and cayenne - I think) ... I even found some healthy looking derelict tomatoes hanging about in cups (I honestly have no recollection of bringing them - they were obviously given to me - I'm thinking at the swap - I really didn't think I took more tomatoes - what was I thinking (oh just one more wouldn't hurt - there were at least 6 though - oh six more couldn't hurt! huh?) ... I finally got the little Zapotec in (it's one I grew from seed that wasn't doing so well but then it picked up - it likes lots of heat as it's Mexican ... maybe it's that much more tempermental because of that I don't know)

Here's what I really accomplished tonight - getting more of these plants into the ground ... here it is almost the end of June but I notice an awful lot of other gardeners are really behind this year. I've been on time for most of the garden - just a few stray bits and bobs that I keep finding that I have left over after heavy planting days.

I spent about 15 minutes weeding the herb patch. I lost the French tarragon ... I don't seem to have any luck with it where I put it so I won't be planting it there again ... this time it was overrun by weeds (maybe that's what happened to it before as well) ... poor delicate little thing. The rosemary was sturdy enough underneath them and even the parsley kind of survived. I brought home a little dill - I hope I can get it growing successfully on the roof (it's in water now along with a little oregano). The oregano had black dots all over it so I yanked a good bit of it out and piled it in the path along with all the other weeds I pulled tonight. That's something that works quite well - drying the weeds on the path where they smother the other weeds so I don't have to weed the paths.

I really wish I could remember for sure what the small basil globes are (I think it's the Thai) ... I couldn't bring myself to take any leaves from two of them after I saw how asymmetric the first one I plucked looked after.

Also I noticed that there are some white dots on the lower leaves of many of my tomato plants which I think might be early tomato blight. I looked up an organic solution which I'll try after all the rain stops. Looks like Friday!

Here's the recipe!

Baking Soda Spray
For anthracnose, early tomato blight, leaf blight and spots, powdery mildew, and as a general fungicide
Sodium bicarbonate commonly known as baking soda has been found to posses fungicidal properties. It is recommended for plants that already have powdery mildew to hose down all the infected leaves prior to treatment. This helps to dislodge as many of the spores as possibly to help you get better results. Use as a prevention or as treatment at first signs of any of the diseases.

To make: Mix 1 tablespoon baking soda, 2 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil with one gallon of water. Shake this up very thoroughly. To this mix add 1/2 teaspoon of pure Castile soap and spray. Be sure to agitate your sprayer while you work to keep the ingredients from separating. Cover upper and lower leaf surfaces and spray some on the soil. Repeat every 5-7 days as needed.

The tayberry was sporting a red 'black berry' which I ate and one of the pumpkins was sporting a blossom which I left (for now).

It rained enough that I didn't go to the allotment for a week and then the forecast was for more rain so I decided to head out of town for a week since I knew watering wouldn't be a problem. Yikes! Two weeks and two foot weeds! Almost all my tomatoes had grown a couple of feet as well without having been staked - HA - a pretty knarly sight of sideways growth - they were all taking a nice little nap on the red mulch cover cloth when I got there. So instead of popping just a few more tomatoes in I spent the day weeding and twisting ties around poles and snapping bottom stems and the 'inbetweeny' stems out of the top stems. Owy-owy owy -my fingernails hurt - and it's not helping that I am typing this now.

It was supposed to have only been 25C but holy crow it was hot but when I took breaks from staking the toms I worked the soil to plant my two new raspberry plants in (I soaked them for a few hours and the soil they were going into) and I dug up some soil to pile up around the potatoes which had grown two foot stems where no stems had been before, too, and by the time I made it home - here's how dirty I was ... I was so filthy I had to get cleaned before having my bath!