Archive for the ‘Disease’ Category

A greeting in some places, in others just words on a page,

And may the sun shine on you, in your work week, So often in the old days, the life of the crop meant the life of the man and his family, these days, our farmers, are quietly facing a huge problem and none of the media outlets are even covering it.

As the old saying goes life for your crop, many say this was a greeting in the old days of gardening, you have to wonder just how they managed to deal with all the problems, that we as gentle gardeners face.

Imagine for a moment that you lived back in the old days, where a bad crop might mean you did not eat the next winter…

What would you do if you had to create your own food out of the soil?

Would you be able, to grow a garden? Or would you be in trouble?

Most of us would be in trouble, in fact 90 percent would be in a real pardon the pun pickle.

Of course they had the almanac, and you do too, many farmers depended on the almanac, in many different ways.

Prediction of rain, sunshine, even when to fish…

The Farmers Almanac, is a source of much used information, from weather, to gardening, to even the best time to get married? Why sure and why not, it is after all based, on a form of science, if not somewhat superstitious, as some claim, back in the day, it might have even been viewed as using the craft…

Regardless, of its accuracy, it is still in use today all across america.

Farmers, gardeners, and even just the curious read and use the almanac…

So even if you take it all with a grain of salt or even throw some over you shoulder, the almanac has been around for a long time and it looks like it is not going to be phased out of existence anytime soon…

BOLO, Be on the look out, for Blight, it is right under you nose…

Ok the tomato blight is back and it is hungry for your tomatoes, but how can you get rid of it, believe me it is not easy, but you can do some things to help. One way is to remove the sucker branches from your plants, and the ones near the bottom, (usually the ones that do not have blooms on them)

You will see the brown spots on the leaves, get rid of those, before it spreads, do this before you water, because it will spread if you dont…

Make sure you use a good fungicide, one that will help you out with your tomato plants, and never ever use an oil based pesticide on your plants.

Blight in case some of you are new to gardening is the most evil thing that can happen to your plants, except for blossom end rot, that is worse, but neither one is good.

The best thing you can do is to remove the effected and diseased ends of the plants then treat with a good fungicide, because if you miss the short window you can end up with a terrible situation, where all your hard work just goes away and you end up with no tomatoes at all.

Now that is something no one wants.

So head out to that garden and have a look at the leaves, take special care to look toward the bottom of the plant, it seems to start at the bottom for some reason, take your pick, it could be a number of things, but the most important thing is to catch it early.

Remember if you do not clip you may get ripped.

So get out there and check your garden now is the time to nip it in the bud, just kidding.

Blight is creeping back and this year we are hoping that it does not get worse…

Gardening is a real challenge, in fact over the last two growing seasons, we have not been able to produce fruit, due to disease, this could be due to the ecology of rain, pollutants, and other vectors of plant disease, which is causing farmers all over the USA to loose entire crops, yet you dont see this covered in the news media, perhaps they dont think it is news.

From our perspective, it is news and it is news that everyone should be aware of, because some of this disease is causing such a problem that we may be faced with shortages in crops.

There is a horrible problem effecting trees and agricultural farming communities in cities in the south and possibly in other parts of the USA, and else where, the problem is said to be a bacterial agent, the vector of which is not known, (allegedly)

The problem is that is kills trees and will in some cases defoliate fruit trees.

Fire Blight, issues, lost crops

So what can be done, well we checked and found sadly that there is not much that can be done expect to prune the diseased plants and hope for the best, but hopefully there will be more information soon because so far we have lost 30 percent of our pear and apple trees to this problem and we are beginning to see larger trees with the same type problems.

Large hard wood trees with what could be described as a disease.

Something needs to be done and we are looking into a treatment, but so far in our research efforts we have not found a treatment that promises a cure, and it looks like we may also loose our entire peach crop as well this year, bad stuff…