Last seeding, powdery mildew, timely tasks
Labour Day Weekend is the last chance to sow frost hardy lettuce, corn salad and arugula.
With the high daytime temperatures forecast for the next few days, be sure to shade new seedbeds so that seeds and seedlings don’t fry. By now, with gaps opening up in the garden where potatoes, onions, leeks, etc. have been harvested, you should be able to find lots of open spots to sow seeds. You can also sow corn salad and lettuce under tomatoes, pole beans, & peppers, and other crops that will be finished in October—just pull back mulches and scatter the seeds on the soil. Corn salad won’t germinate in warm soil, but when it is a bit cooler the soil will be suddenly covered.
This week at RPCG, we thinned our Asian Greens (which were planted a month ago) and in the bare spots we planted radishes and lettuce.
We are trying a new style of lettuce this year - smaller Butterhead style lettuces that are harvested as fully mature heads, for more efficient higher yields, and easier to share with our community as part of our food security/distribution activities. This week we seeded Freckles, Tom Thumb, Butter Crunch & Pomegranate, all available at West Coast Seeds.
(Content referenced from Linda's list for Sept 3, 2020 | http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/index.html)
Powdery mildew, that whitish dusting seen on leaves of squash and other plants, is spreading quickly in this humid weather.
This group of fungi has spores that can’t germinate in the presence of water so rainfall and overhead watering suppress infections. During dry, but humid, weather the fungi spread quickly, especially on older leaves, which are less able to fight off infection than vigorous new leaves. While powdery mildew appears on a variety of plants at this time of year, the fungi are different species, so the mildew on peas or chard isn’t the same one as on squash or roses. Choosing powdery mildew resistant varieties of cucumbers, squash, peas, etc. where available is always a good idea, but you can also stave off infection by keeping plants growing vigorously. If plants need an end of season boost, water them weekly with a liquid fertilizer, such as diluted fish fertilizer or ‘tea’ made by soaking fish compost or horse manure in a bucket of water for a day or two to extract the nitrogen/ You can also slow the rate of infection by spraying the leaves with water at midday several times a week to prevent spores from germinating. [more on powdery mildew http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/gardening_tips.html]
Miscellaneous tasks:
🥕Check whether carrots, beets and other crops sown in the July and August need to be thinned and weeded. Carrots under insect netting are easy to forget about and will need to be thinned again this week to ensure they reach full size in the next month. And those baby carrot thinnings are so delicious!
- 🍅 Vining tomatoes should have all flowers pinched off to allow plants to put their energy into ripening the fruit already on the plant. Unless plants are in a greenhouse, fruit setting this late won’t have time to ripen. Remember that tomatoes ripen perfectly well off the vine once they have turned light green so you will be able to pick and ripen late tomatoes indoors when we run out of ripening season out in the garden.
Tomato blight came early to RPGC this year!
Tomato blight is a fungal disease characterized by small brown lesions on the plants stems, with eventual sudden leaf die back and hard brown rot on the tomatoes.
The fungus thrives in cool temperatures, when the soil is moist and not too warm - remember all that rain we had in June? In later summer humid conditions, the pathogen spreads quickly through the entire plant. The tell-take brown blotches on the stems were the first sign we first noticed a month ago. Even very small brown spots will quickly spread through the entire tomato, so must be harvested and used immediately. To manage this disease, prevention is the best approach - plant disease resistant varieties, avoid overcrowding of plants, rotate beds yearly, sanitize all equipment, pick up all diseased plant matter from the soil, do not compost any affected plant matter.
Over the past week, we’ve had to cut back 4 diseased plants and 25kg of beautiful green tomatoes. Fried green tomatoes anyone? Other favourite recipes are green tomato chutney and green tomato enchilada sauce.
On a brighter note, one of Angela’s old gardening buddies in Blewberry says his tomatoes have been transformed by blight resistant varieties, such as Mountain Magic. American. Excellent, from Moles Seeds, UK. We’ll be looking for some blight resistant seed closer to home for next year.
A Visual Guide: Tomato Foliage, Stem & Root Problems