Cucumber plants are several inches high but on of them the stem shrunk and withered from ground level up to about an inch. This has killed the plant. What is that and will I need to worry about the other plants? They all look healthy to my untrained eyes.
Jeff
The key that I'm looking at says,
"Plant wilts slowly but permanently, with no recovery at night; stem may rot at the base" .......fusarium wilt
IIRC you are screwed (sorry).
would not surprise me if it had fungi. The deceased plants roots looked fine, as that article had mentioned. For that matter, so did the rest of the plant, until it fell over.
I'll keep watching. Any chance cat urine could do it in? I'm herding cats faster than I can spay them.
Jeff
If it wasn't there before, it probably came in with the seed. Salts from cat urine would just have made it wilt and cats aren't likely to carry plant diseases. I have the same problem with basil in one spot in my garden. Look for fusarium resistant plants to put in that area.
OK, I'll do exactly that. I see I have a Downey Mildew resistant strain (Market More 76).
I have some "compost" that probably has fungus in it also. Can I do anything with that? I have some glazing for a solar collector I wont need till winter, heat???
Jeff
really difficult time controlling them this year. I'm spraying each emerging plant with Bt, but with the daily rains it's almost impossible to keep up.
Look at Park's Seed web site they actually give disease resistance for different varieties. Steve
Downey mildew is what all of our gardens get at the end of the years as the weather cools and the plants get wet. (With this in mind, try not to wet the leaves on tomatoes when watering.) I don't know what you mean by glazing but nurseries and hardware stores will have clear plastic sheeting for sale. Be sure to bury the edges of the plastic with dirt.
Got it.
(With this in mind, try not to
Hmmm. I've been watering the leaves when I fertilize weekly, something I have just started doing. I take it that this is OK as long as the leaves dry, which they currently do quickly.
Which brings me to a fertilizer question I've been meaning to ask. I looked around a bit and didn't see many options, so I took home some Miracle Grow Tomato Plant Food (18-18-21). It seemed to me that the organic benefits are mostly in the lack of insecticides. I've been watering my small garden of cukes, carrots, tomatoes, snow peas, blueberries, a peach, a grape, cantalopes and one zuchini and one pepper with this once a week. Is there a better direction for me, this late in the game?
I don't know what you mean by
Just clear "plastic". For solar, transparency and UV resistance is key. You may have noticed that clear plastic is milky, unlike the bag it comes in!
but nurseries and hardware stores will have clear plastic
Jeff
Not good, helps set spores for more opportun moment.
This is about six times more fertilizer than you need. Chemferts are salts and salts kill mirco-organisms. Go to organic fish emulsion (organic in this case means no mercury, lead, DDT, dioxin, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers [PBDEs] ) or manure
OK.
I'll look for the fish emulsion, I suspect I'll need to hunt it down as I don't remember seeing it in the big box stores.
I used a bit of bagged cow manure. But mostly mushroom compost and whatever soil I had that looked good. It looks like next season that I'll rake in more cow manure. Or can I just dump this on top?
Thanks, Jeff
Yes, rake it in (top 2") and water. The nitrogen in manure comes from proteins (diet and bacterial) that break down. When protein breaks down, an amine group (Ammonia. w/ perhaps with another group added) is released. In many cases this is just ammonia. It is a gas that needs to be disolved in water to make it available to soil bacteria.
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