Something Fishy

Some of my tomatoes are failing to thrive. Purple stems, a purple cast to the leaves, and necrotic spots on leaves that progressively turn more yellow -- these symptoms seem consistent with phosphorous deficiency.

Back in April, I discovered that garden loam isn't good for gardening -- after having five cubic yards of it dumped next to my waiting raised-beds. It was mostly clay. Not so good for growing things. So I then found a place to deliver four cubic yards of compost. All the extra loam pushed me to add a few beds. I mixed the loam with the compost. But a couple of the beds are filled with about 95% of the sub-standard loam. The tomato pictured above is struggling to grow in one of those beds. I did mix a little fertilizer into the bed. But it probably wasn't enough.

I also found some grubs while I was digging up the sod for my beds. And there were some grubs in the loam. I squished any that I saw. However, last week, I pulled up an eggplant that just hadn't grown at all. There was hardly any root ball -- and a very lively grub was nestled in what was left of the roots -- very unhappy to be disturbed. I put an end to its unhappiness. So maybe more grubs are eating at the roots of some of my plants. If the roots are being eaten, then the plants will also have trouble absorbing water and nutrients.

One of the tomatoes that I planted in a pot with 100% sterile, pre-fertilized, store-bought garden soil is doing great. It's the control subject.

So I have saturated the soil with fish emulsion. I got a nice local brand, Neptune's Harvest. It's basically rotten fish syrup that gets mixed with water. It should start to get the nutrients in the soil up to where they should be. And a UPS truck should be bringing me a delivery of nematodes sometime today. I'll just have to wait for a wet day to get them into the soil. The nematodes are parasitic worms that will infect the grubs and eat them from the inside. Fish, worms: it's all circle of life here.

Septoria

from Wikipedia: Septoria: Ascomycete pycnidia-producing fungi that causes numerous leaf spot diseases on field crops, forages and many vegetables, and is responsible for yield losses.

from the Cornell department of plant pathology: Following spread, spores may germinate within 48 hr under moist conditions and favorable temperatures. Leaf spots can appear within 5 days.

Last evening, as I loaded up a tray with the remaining potted tomato seedlings, I noticed spots on them. I did a check of the planted tomatoes. The one hanging from the porch had more spots, and the ones in the ground had fewer. But all had some. It was classic Septoria.

The plants were stressed from transplant and had been root-bound in their peat pots. Then they were alternately watered and rained on, allowing dirt to splash their leaves and then several days of overcast skies prevented the leaves from drying well.

The only treatment is amputation. The seedlings still unplanted fared worst. They had been the smallest, weakest plants anyway. That's why they were still unplanted.

But even some of the plants in my beds look rather poodled.

A couple of the smaller seedlings were totally compromised and had to be taken out.

I spent the rest of the day in purchasing some straw and weaving it around the tomatoes (and other plants). This stops the rain from splashing dirt (and fungal spores) up onto the leaves. I had always planned on doing this. The rain coming right after transplanting was unfortunate.

Overview

 I still have a few things to build -- mainly some supports for the uchuva so that they don't get too rangy. But this photo gives a sense of the garden. The raised beds with the PVC hoops are four by eight feet. And the footprint of the whole garden is roughly twenty-six by twenty-eight feet. Rabbit fencing surrounds the garden to a height of thirty-eight to forty inches and goes below ground four to six inches. Deer netting tops off the fence up to six feet (not enough to stop a determined deer, but I hope that there's enough other vegetation to make the jump seem not worthwhile) and covers the rabbit fence as well, descending six to eight inches below the ground plus a few inches out. The gate is backed by hardware cloth, and a door-sill has stapled to it hardware cloth that extends ten inches below the ground.

Today, I planted cantaloupe and squash seeds -- and built some vertical supports out of bamboo on the narrowest raised bed, and then I planted it with a few tomatoes, jalepeños, and Thai eggplant. I already had a bunch of garlic growing there.

The supports that I built today are a little taller than those that I built inside the cold-frames a few days ago. But the cold frames are super strong and, well, cooler.

The pictured bed probably only needs the vertical support on one side for a few tomatoes, but the symmetry was irresistible. Most of the cabbages, broccoli and kale will probably come out in another month, giving the tomatoes (and a few peppers) room to breathe.
Here's an habenero, dwarfed by some kale:

The broccoli is starting to form heads:

In the next bed, the cabbage is really loving the cool spring:

There are small fruiting trees and shrubs in the garden, too. Eventually, there will be fewer beds when they get big. But now they're pretty small. There are two beach plums that are in bloom right now:

And there is a persimmon as well as a paw-paw:

And blueberries:

I'm a little worried that I planted to corn too early. Only four kernels have shown themselves:

But the peas and beans are doing great and the artichoke seems to be tolerating the cold okay:

Time will tell how the plants do that I squeezed in between the wood-chips and the fence. I had dug a trench so that the fence could extend below ground, and I figured that some roots could only help reinforce the border. The worst that happens is that I pull them out. I planted a couple of grapes, a bunch of raspberries, and five or so tiny tomato seedlings that probably would have been trashed (I planted a ton of tomato seeds expecting that some wouldn't grow -- but they all did).

There are parts of the border that were more intentional. A narrow bed by the gate has bell peppers, Mexican marigold, and nasturtium.

And the wide bed on the west side of the garden has the uchuva, squash, peppers, cauliflower. Here's a picture of one of the simple vertical supports that I'm making for the uchuva.

Seeing the overview photograph and knowing the dimensions doesn't really help one understand the garden. There's a lot going on.

First Harvest

I got my first harvest from the garden today: some kale and some romaine lettuce.

The leaves chopped up nicely into a salad. It's kind of amazing how sweet kale can be when it's only been picked ten minutes before it's in one's mouth.

Strawberry Massacre

I got back from videoing the women's crew team this morning only to be confronted with a scene of devastation. Ten out of twenty-four strawberry plants were eaten last night. I have been tempting fate by not covering the berries (with the netting that I have that isn't rabbit-grade).  No footprints were evident. So I assume that the light-footed criminal was Leporidae. I spent some time scouring the internet for advice about my plants. I know strawberries are delicate and if stressed might never produce fruit. But every search-string that I came up with offered me advice about how to soothe a house rabbit that had eaten too many berries. I was being mocked by google.

After fuming all day, I noticed that by evening the denuded plants were already pushing out their next leaves -- which is kind of creepy. But that's nature for you.

In other gardening news, I dug up the sod for the last planned bed (foreground). I also covered with black plastic the bed that I plan to sow with corn (midground). The plastic will warm the soil so that I can get the corn started a little early.

I also fixed some of the erosion-bars on a terraced plot and filled them with loam and the last of the compost. 

Now I need to fence the whole thing before the great destroyers come again.

Hero Gardener

I got a new Hero3 camera for documenting both this garden blog and my rowing blog. I christened the camera by attaching it to the pickaxe while I broke up the sod and dug up stones around the perimeter of the garden. I need to dig a trench so that I can extend a rabbit-fence below ground and frustrate animals from digging under and into my garden. I got some dramatic footage.

On a less dramatic note, I now have a compost bin. 

 Brought to you by the state of Massachusetts (and $53.00 cash). Made locally in New Bedford by New England Plastics Corp. Unfortunately, the state no longer subsidizes these bins. I think they used to be offered for $10.00.

 Some of my seedlings have also been re-potted.

Clay

Last week I was talking to my brother on the phone about my gardening project. He built raised beds at his home in Texas about 20 years ago. He was telling me about how he ordered a truckload of topsoil to fill them. Big mistake. In central Texas, there isn't a lot of top soil. What he got was pretty much clay. Vegetables don't like clay. I laughed. My poor brother trying to grow vegetables in Texas. I had tried to grow vegetables down there when I was in grad school, and I'd given up.

Originally, I had wanted to fill my boxes with compost. I thought I'd mix in a little local topsoil to ensure good mineral content. Over a three week period, I casually called around looking for compost. I called the garden columnist at the local New Bedford Newspaper and sent her an email. No response. I called a garden center in Marion. And I did daily web searches. From those searches and several calls, I found several places that would sell me soil -- but not compost. They suggested loam and said this was perfect for my raised-bed vegetable gardening. The only compost that I could find locally was in bags. I would have had to spend $800.00 to fill my beds with bags of compost.

Loam. It sounds soft, doesn't it? Certainly it sounds softer than plain-old topsoil. Right? I decided that loam was the best I could do. And I could afford a few bags of manure and a good organic fertilizer to enrich the loam. Plus, weeks had gone by, and I needed to fill my boxes if I was going to get some cool weather crops in. 

So I had six yards of loam delivered and filled two boxes. I planted one with strawberries. Then I put a soaker hose on the second one. I pulled off the hose and raked the loam around a little. What I saw wasn't good.

When you push a rake into wet soil, at least a little water should squeeze out. None did. In fact, the soil just snapped back like Jello. I went back and checked the strawberry box. It had been drying for a day. I knocked on the soil. Hard as a brick and cracking. Turns out that "loam" is just the local word for topsoil. And the topsoil that I got wasn't any better than the topsoil that my brother had gotten in Texas.

I went to one last garden center. I hadn't been able to talk to them on the phone because it is a small family operation, and when they're working, they don't answer the phone. They just had bags of compost, too. But they suggested Sunny Nook Farms in Rochester. I called. And by 9 AM yesterday morning, I had compost being dumped in the yard.

You can see the difference in the color of the compost and the loam.

I dug out in between the strawberries and filled the holes with compost.

Then I dug out the other box that I'd filled with loam.

Then I filled that box and the one next to it and a little box with compost (mixed with a little topsoil) and planted my cabbages, kale, lettuce, and broccoli. And I wrapped chicken wire around the newly planted beds to keep the rabbits out until I can build my fence around the whole garden. Yesterday was exhausting. And I learned something about New England soil.