Table Of Contents
- Prevent Blight for Next Year’s Tomatoes!
- Did you know that essential oils have a shelf life?
- Want to Dig into Gardening?
- Ready to get your hands dirty? Here are some more Gardening Posts from KS:
- Lazy Gardening
- Gardening Permaculture Techniques for Containers
- Make Effortless Gardening a Reality
- Garden Planting in Barrels
- Organic Gardening: How to Get Rid of Tomato Blight
- Easy Fall Garden
- Organic Gardening: Why we Should Avoid Pesticides
- How to Plant the Best Tomatoes
- Kill Weeds Organically
- Compost Gardening
- Organic Gardening: Natural Pest Control
- Your Guide to Tomato Types and Colors
It’s a nasty disease that got all the organic tomato growers in our area last summer. It gets every last plant.
The topic of tomato blight came upinthe commentsof thispostaboutnatural pest control.
Rene, the author of that post, had this to say:
If it is only one plant that has blight I would pull it up. Blight spreads really easily through touch. This could be your hands, or insects going from one plant to another. After touching the plant that is affected, make sure to wash your hands really well with soap and water so that it does not spread further. If it is on several plants, you will want to remove all of the leaves and branches that are affected making sure to not touch any other areas of the plant or drop the pieces that you remove. Really the best way to prevent it is before you plant, with powdered milk or crushed eggshells.
You can try to place powdered milk into the soil around the plant, just make sure not to disturb the roots. Also when you water those plants, just water the soil not the plant if possible. (I know that it rains, so this won’t be a real fix.) You can also try spraying your plant with compost water. What this is is really good compost that is in non-chlorinated water. (Just leave your water out for at least 24 hours to remove the chlorine.) The compost will have good microbes in it to help fight the blight naturally. Blight is difficult to get rid of though.
Next year, you will want to plant your tomatoes in a different location since there will still be blight in your soil in that area. You can just prepare the soil next year the way that I described in the post above to prevent blight from forming.
I also came across a couple of sources to help solve the problem, although I admit I haven’t had to use any of them myself.
The first is from one of Jerry Baker’s books that I mentioned checking out at the library when I first started gardening. It’s a preventative tip (so bookmark it for next year!):
Mix 1 part skim milk and 9 parts water and apply with a hand-held squirt bottle to the point of run-off in the early part of the summer to discourage diseases from getting started.
You can alsotake steps to prevent blight when planting your tomatoes.
Our contributor Haley has an awesome post on the many varieties of tomatoes available, plus a simple tomato and mint salad recipe!
Did you know that essential oils have a shelf life?
Katie here, popping in totell you that those essential oils that have been sitting in your cabinet for a couple years and are still half full may have expired. Read more about what I learned when researching this topic, and you can even have the handy printable I made to help me remember how long which oils last.
Prevent Blight for Next Year’s Tomatoes!
If you’ve already got blight, here’s how Baker would get rid of it for next year’s tomatoes:
Spray the garden in late fall and early spring with: 2 Tbs bleach + 2 Tbs baby shampoo in a gallon of water. This covers 100 sq. ft. During the growing season, spray plants every two weeks with an all-purpose liquid fruit tree spray following package instructions.
I don’t know if one can find organic fruit tree spray though, but this sounds like a serious problem!
Here’s another way to fix your soil for next year from Backyard Living Magazine, March/April 2007:
“Once infected, tomatoes can’t be helped. The key is solarizing the soil to kill the bacteria before they get to the plants. As soon as you can work the soil, turn the entire bed to a depth of 6″, then level and smooth it out. Dig a 4-6″ deep trench around the whole bed and thoroughly soak the soil by slowly running a sprinkler over it for several hours. Cover the bed with a clear, heavy plastic painter’s drop cloth. Lay the edges of it in the trench and cover with soil to keep heat from escaping. The sun should heat the area for at least 6 weeks. The longer you leave the cover in place, the better.”
Check out these FREE gardening classes from Craftsy – pause and replay to catch all the tips. Once you sign up you can “attend” at any time!
I have that page because I keep a gardening binder. I tear out anything of interest, and in the winter, I organize all the pages into sections like “vegetables” “starting seeds” “flowering plants” and “houseplants.” Tomatoes have their own section! Complicated little buggers.
Want to Dig into Gardening?
I want you to imagine increasing your harvest with proven techniques that won’t consume your time.
I also want you to imagine decreasing disease and pests with time-honored crop rotation and companion planting.
Check out my dear friend Melissa’s Organic Gardening Workshop.Melissa is a 5th generation homesteader with 20 years of experience growing her own food. In fact, she raises more than half of her family’s fruits and vegetables with a day job and on only a half-acre.
She has got an amazing special going on to help you learn:
- how to naturally build healthy and organic soil at home with composting and/or cover crops
- vertical gardening to grow MORE in the same amount of space
- natural pest and disease treatment options that WORK
- how to easily work permaculture techniques into your property to take advantage of nature’s design for your food
- how to use cold frames in the spring and fall to increase your ability to grow food longer & extend your growing season (if not all year long)
- easy seed starting with vigorous seedlings that not only sprout but thrive when you plant them outdoors
- how to evaluate YOUR property and growing space to its best advantage so you don’t waste precious time, resources, and energy having to replant or move beds
Ready to get your hands dirty? Here are some more Gardening Posts from KS:
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