Unchained Preppers
General Category => Sustenance => Topic started by: Jeremy Knauff on June 24, 2013, 01:51:18 PM
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Pretty much everything has died; my tomatoes were *almost* doing OK, but the fruit kept rotting on the vine. Now it's time to pull everything out, add more compost, and start over.
Any tips?
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I'm not the best farmer/gardener, but the book Encyclopaedia of Country Living is a very valuable tool if you don't already have it! I bought it for myself, but my dad is the one who's mostly used it since he's the gardener of the family lol.
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Any ideas about what went wrong?
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You mentioned the fruit "rotting." How did the rest of the plant look? Stalk? Leaves? Root ball?
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A picture would be really helpful Jeremy
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I'll post some pics before I pull it all out.
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Don't go pulling anything out yet. Post a couple pictures of the plants and we'll see what affected them. Answer me this:
How often are you watering?
How much direct sunlight is hitting the plants?
Are they non-GMO open pollinating?
What fertilizer are you using?
When did you plant?
It can be a number of things, but I'll be glad to help you out.
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I have no experience gardening in humid climates like yours, but I would suspect that either your soil is too hot, meaning it's too fresh and can burn plants, you have some sort of fungus, or the grasshoppers are taking bites out of your tomatoes before you can. If it's a problem with the soil (compost or fungus) you'll see burn marks, strange spots on the leaves, or the plant will look wilted regardless of how well watered it is. As long as your soil doesn't have high clay content, it's unlikely that you'd over water a tomato plant.
Definitely post those pictures for us. Here's the URL for your county extension office: http://hillsborough.ifas.ufl.edu/ (http://hillsborough.ifas.ufl.edu/) I simply typed Tampa, FL agricultural extension office into my search engine. You can take courses from them, take them samples of your dying plants and have them identify the culprit, get on a mailing list to know what pests and pathogens are hitting your neighborhood, etc... In fact, one of the first things I saw on the website above is that they are offering a solar cooker class next week, get on it!
Another thing that works for me a lot of the time is plugging key descriptive words into your search engine. For example, if I notice my tomato plant has black around the edges of the leaves and black spots in the middle, I type "black spots black edges tomato leaves" and the first few hits tell me that my tomatoes probably have a type of blight.
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Whitewolf is the resident "green thumb." Ask him - he has had gardens for years and years and knows what to look for.
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I got into some yard work, and when I saw the gardens, I just kept going...so I pulled everything before taking pics. Here's what I found:
- Caterpillars and grasshoppers were all over. This explains why aside from the problems in my main garden areas, the pumpkins I planted elsewhere had also completely disappeared.
- Soil is fine, my compost comes from yard clippings (no chemicals), vegetable scraps, and rabbit droppings, so the nitrogen content is low enough not to cause burning. Also, I have tons of earthworms in the soil.
- Root structure sucks; they didn't seem very deep or wide. That may have been caused by item #1 since the leaves were not healthy and the root structure generally mimics the plant above ground.
I've replanted, and will be building a trellis system to support the growing plants. I've also planted a ton of marigolds and sunflowers nearby, which aside from drawing in the bees, other predatory insects, and lizards (since they have a place to hide) they also supply supplemental food for the rabbits. I should be on the right track this time around. Am I missing anything?
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The "rotting" fruit and the underdeveloped root ball were the clues... the plants were drowning. You'll have to figure out why. Poor drainage? Too much rain? Too much watering? Any combination of these? Since you got worms, it's not sticky un-arable soil.
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Well, it is Florida, so too much water is a possibility, but I doubt it because the drainage is pretty good. I could be wrong though. If that's the case, how do I solve the issue? And if I take steps to solve it, and it turns out that wasn't the issue, would there be any harm?
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Raised bed(s). When I lived in GA, raised beds were pretty much standard for any serious backyard vegetable garden... unless the garden was on the peak of a sandy loam hill.
But before you put the effort into that, I would have an experienced vegetable gardener check it out... it would have been nice if he/she could have observed the plants right when you pulled them up.
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Yeah, my two main areas are raised beds. My ground-level areas are just for the sunflowers and marigolds. My new seeds have sprouted already so we should know within the next month or so.
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If it makes a difference, my peppers (chilies) have been kicking ass...producing more than we can use.
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If it makes a difference, my peppers (chilies) have been kicking ass...producing more than we can use.
Well not a total loss then. :fuckYeah: