farm with a view

Don’t get me wrong. I love gardening magazines. But I also think their pretty photos can sometimes be a bit, well, misleading.

To be sure, there’s nothing quite like coming across a family of beans hidden behind a cluster of leaves, or seeing a delicate baby squash at the end of a fire-orange blossom, or spotting the first blush of red on a bell pepper. But, when the excitement and photo-taking wear off and you realize that more tomato leaves have browned and the aphids you tried to spray off three days earlier have now multiplied by a million … Well, it’s back to reality. Gotta roll up those sleeves and get to work.

These past few months have afforded us a bit of a reality check. Suspicious holes in our vegetables. A sudden surplus of dead leaves. Dropped fruit. But funny enough, our plants are still producing pretty well (according to us, anyway), and we still feel happy and accomplished every time we leave the garden with truly homegrown, organic produce. Perhaps, even when things look ragged and ugly and hopeless, Mother Nature has a way, and we appreciate it even more. (more…)

Stopped by the garden after work today. Nice to be outside after staring at a computer screen for eight + hours.

Quite concerned about the white, spotty mildew stuff that’s starting to spread on the bottom leaves of the tomato plants:

WTF? We’ve been so good lately about trimming and pruning suckers to improve airflow, and just chopped off a bunch more stems today. Must do some research asap. Although, a part of me is thinking, just let it go. You will never get perfectly green tomato leaves all season. At some point, they will catch some disease or wilt and die off … Much like our neighbors’ plants, and they seem fine with it.

However, still very much perturbed.

Update: Gave this a little bit of thought and realized that the wet, misty mornings we had early last week – coupled with a severe case of southern California June-creeping-into-July gloom – probably had something to do with this powdery mildew outbreak.

Update 2: It almost certainly is powdery mildew. And I guess there’s really nothing you can do once they appear. Copper or sulfur can be used as a preventative measure, but is only marginally effective once you can see the mildew with the naked eye. But I knew this, because it’s no different from the mildew that grows on melons.

Guess it can’t hurt to spray them down with copper soap anyway, since we already have the stuff and are using it on the melon and zucchini.

Anyway, here are some helpful articles about powdery mildew:

• UC Integrated Pest Management
• iVillage Gardenweb: Is There Any Escape from White Powdery Mold?
• iVillage Gardenweb: Same Old Powdery Mildew … Aaaaggghh
• University of Arizona College of Ag and Life Sciences

The key takeaway? Start the preventative sprays in June, even if the plants look fine. Must remember for next year.

The Champion Bush tomato is looking a little worse for wear:

(left: May 20; right: June 20)

It’s been out for about 2 1/2 months, since early April. The Earl of Edgecomb tomato, which we planted in the ground at around the same time, isn’t looking so hot, either. Thinking maybe we planted them out too early. We’ve been also having unseasonably cool and overcast weather here near the coast lately.

On a rare sunnier note, check out the ginormous sunflowers that one of the other OVF gardeners is growing:

First, the good news: Fruit is setting on most of the tomato plants, and we harvested our first baby zucchini! What to do with it? No clue. Andrew put up more twine for the mystery beans – they’ve already climbed to the top – and staked the Champion Bush tomato. Will likely need to stake the other two tomatoes that are in buckets, too, at some point.

Now, the bad news: Noticed the melon plant is developing a white mildew on the lower leaves. I cut most of them off, but this can’t be good. Read up a bunch on this and going to see if I can get an organic fungicide. According to what I’ve read, copper-based soap fungicides are still considered “organic.” Am afraid it’s going to spread to the zucchini, which are right next door.

Both cucumbers wilted and died off in a matter of days. Don’t know what happened, but Andrew thinks it just wasn’t warm enough, especially with them being above ground in buckets.

Boo. No pickles for us, I guess.