By AMY IVY, Cornell Co-op Extension
June 29, 2009 03:26 am
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Now that we've finally gotten some warm weather, all kinds of things are showing up in our gardens, good and not so good. My tomatoes, a crop that needs warmth, have grown more in the last week than they have all month. Other warm-loving crops such as cucumbers, squash and beans are also taking off, while the cool-loving lettuce is beginning to languish.
The sporadic rain has meant we haven't had to water too much, but those overcast, muggy days create prime conditions for various disease problems. Anything you can do to increase air circulation around and through your plants will help discourage diseases. This includes staking or trellising tomatoes, cucumbers and any tall plants that tend to flop over and lean on their neighbors such as delphinium and monkshood.
Thin out individual tomato plants by removing most of the suckers that form where the leaves attach to the main stem. Just snap these off, the sooner the better, while they're small. Interior branches on roses can be pruned out now to help air circulate through the plant.
As usual, I can see already that I've planted some of my annuals too close together. I need to relocate a few of them in each flower bed to another location to give the remaining plants enough room to spread out and grow without crowding. The plants are still small enough that I can move them, but I'll be sure to give them a good soak afterwards.
LATE BLIGHT ALERT
There are two common diseases that get on tomatoes every year: early blight and septoria leaf spot. These are troublesome, and in some years, they can really reduce your yield. But they're something we can live with.
Late blight is a different story. This fungus disease is seen only rarely this far north. It doesn't survive our winters, so it either blows in or is carried in on infested plants. We haven't seen late blight in Clinton County since one summer in the mid 1990s.
We just received notice that infested tomato transplants were found for sale at a big box store in Ithaca. That is much too close for comfort with this disease. We're asking anyone growing tomatoes or potatoes to be on the lookout. As soon as you notice any large brown patches on your plant leaves or stems, please bring a sample to any Cooperative Extension office. Enclose it in a plastic bag and keep refrigerated if possible.
This disease only affects tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant. It spreads very rapidly and will quickly jump from one garden to the neighbor's. The brown patches produce lots of spores that are blown by the wind and carried by rain. If one gardener ignores the problem and leaves the plants to die, they could become the source for a widespread infection. While a home garden can lose a few tomato plants, our growers with hundreds of plants would be severely affected by this disease.
Infested plants need to be removed from the garden in a plastic bag — don't try composting them or leave them in a pile. For more information about late blight, visit http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/factsheets/Potato_LateBlt.htm or call our office for a fact sheet. Thanks for keeping your eye out for this disease as we try to minimize its impact.
GARDEN SERIES
Our next Lunch Time Gardening Series will be held at the Community Garden in Plattsburgh's Melissa Penfield Park at noon Tuesday, July 7. The topic will be timely: identifying, preventing and controlling diseases in the garden. Come and learn first-hand some methods to keep your garden healthier this year. For more information call or visit our Web site www.cce.cornell.edu/clinton.
Amy Ivy is executive director of Cornell Cooperative Extension, Clinton County. Office phone numbers: Clinton County 561-7450, Essex County 962-4810, Franklin County 483-7403. Web site: http://www.cce.cornell.edu/ecgardening. E-mail questions to askMG@cornell.edu.
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