Anyhow, I went out yesterday evening and noticed that there are spider mites. I've never had spider mites before. So I will start preventative measures tomorrow morning. These preventative measures are also called "strong spray of water from underneath the leaves", thus the reason for doing it tomorrow morning instead of tonight.
Also, I noticed a few leaves that were yellowing in what is possibly a spotted fashion. It may be early blight. I'm not sure. I dealt with the problem last night by pinching off the affected leaves. I will likely prune the tomato plants tomorrow morning to increase air flow. Of course I will end with the affected plant so as to minimize the transfer to another plant via clippers. Furthermore, the savior of the garden during the hail storms has now become its worst enemy (the fence prevented the golf ball sized hail from damaging the heirloom tomato plants, but it now also serves as a windbreak thus reducing airflow).
Oddly there are still no tomato hornworms. Though I think they're coming since I saw a moth fly away from the plants last night.
The one pepper plant still has aphids.
I did get 2 cayenne peppers off the pepper plant out front. And the Thai chilies surprised me by coming back from the ground this year...If they survive the summer, I'm hoping they'll give some fall peppers.
And now the before and after pictures:
Before (about a week or so after planting...a few days after the hail, thus the craptacular looking plants in the front):
Now-ish (about 2 weeks ago...So that gives about 3 weeks between pictures. Front Row from left to right: Eggplant, BHN tomato, Corno De Toro Pepper, Roma tomato. Back Row from left to right: Rococo Pepper, Black Krim tomato, Brandywine tomato, Viva Italia tomato):
We planted the tomatoes in the "organic gardeners of Austin" style; that is, we planted them as deep as possible, of course the only one that was small enough to actually somewhat adhere to the "all but the top leaves" rule was the Krim. And it has probably had the best growth there for a while. It's definitely the most robust of the tomatoes in any case.
2 comments:
The garden looks great in the picture!! Bring the hornworms in as pets!
That raised bed looks great. You will need to mulch soon and you left just enough room for it. If you want to add cukes or something else that vines, I have some cattle panel pieces you can have to use for trellis off of the back of the bed.
You may have to use Spinosad for the mites. They are hard to deal with. I play hell with them every year, my worst pest.
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