Man, what a crap summer! I should be looking at my jandal tan marks not bloomin snow on the ranges. Check out this photo I took on Friday in Levin.
Perhaps my wish for less flies got misconstrued by Mother Nature, though I’m going to count it as a silver lining! The only silver lining mind.
Dreaming of a white Christmas??!!
Crazy crazy.
I have learnt an important (painful) lesson though, if you’d read an earlier post of mine, I had said I was trying to keep blight at bay by nipping off the infected foliage. Well that was a losing battle and I ended up pulling 18 tomato plants out and harvesting my main crop potatoes early, therefore they won’t keep. So my lesson is to pull out the plants as soon as you see infection, it will move onto the fruit and/or spread onto other susceptible plants. I’ve lost two seed lines due to this nasty lesson (Sweet Raima and Moonglow). For the next three years no tomatoes nor potatoes will go in those now empty beds. I’m going to fill them with lettuce and what not for now.
Early stages of late blight on tomato leaves. Pull it out!!!
Keeping a regular seaweed spray routine is said to help keep your plants strong against blight. I must admit that I do spray with seaweed but I often forget… I won’t anymore! You can use copper as a fungicide, a lot of organic institutions say it’s ok, some say only if there’s a real risk of infection (it’s a preventative not a fixer), some say not at all. There’s an article here if you’re interested. Personally I’m not sold on the idea. I’ll just work on getting my soil stronger as a preventative and remember to regularly apply seaweed.
Hope your gardens are growing strong and healthy!
P.S. Raumati is Maori for Summer
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