June 11, 2015

Good morning, It was one of my plans this spring to solarize several of my nematode infested beds. The funny thing about solarizing you need daily intense sun for it to do its thing. As everyone knows we have had occasional sun but not days on end.

To correctly solarize the film needs to be buried around the edge of the bed. No little feat. I am not sure I want to do this what with the suns track record so far this year. I think I am just going to lay the film on the surface of the graded beds and call it good. I may just get the weeds seeds killed.

Four weeks is good but 8 weeks is even better. The long term weather forecast is for a moist summer. This would be great for growing but is not good to solarize. As they say the best laid plans of mice and men! There is next year.

Because of the moisture this winter the leaf hopper population was real bad this year. Leaf hoppers are the vector for Western Curling Disease. It makes the growing tips to be convoluted and causes the plant to have a slow death. This ended up being the demise of my tomato crop last year. I should have culled the infected plants to save the rest.

My First plantings of jalapenos got infected this year and with much trepidation I culled them. Luckily I had a few big plants for the replacements but it will take time for them to catch up to where the culled ones were. This may delay Jezebel jam. Oh well such is life.

The leaf hoppers seem to be active in the day, so I may have to plant my early solanaceae before sunrise to avoid this. I may not have gotten my covers on quick enough. This is the only control, exclusion, to prevent the leaf hoppers from chewing on the plants. You can spray them but if they have chewed, well at least the bug is dead. Funny thing the hoppers usually migrate out of the area by the first of May. This has been true this year too.

Ah yes so for the dilemma, is finding a way to plant early for well established plants to go through what is usually the angry months of May and June. Maybe some research is due with lots of trial and error. Then again next year it may not be a problem.

I am beginning to see some Root Knot Nematode (RKN) affects on some of my squash and cucumbers. I had installed an injector so I could chemigate with Azaguard, a neem oil extract, to help combat them. I did not get the injector installed in time to start the process from seed to mature plant. Ah but there is next year. I do plan on continue treatment every 2 weeks and see what the roots look like when the crops are finished. This will be interesting. Having the drip system does help with delivering much needed water to the infected roots and does slow the plants eventual demise, or at least more so than hose end watering.

The garden does continue to mature and the toms may be be up to full production within the next 2 weeks. I am beginning to get daily toms so they will soon be making it int bags and on to the table at market. Okra is starting to come on. I have two beds I am getting some from and a third that is not quite mature. Chili's are coming along and so are the eggplants. I hope to have a fully mature garde very soon.

I have started pickling cucumbers so I am not sure how many cukes I have for bags or market..

Patience!