Tomato condolences! Hopefully you get some tasty green tomato chutney with the ones that don’t ripen. Here’s to the next growing season! Good thing your new year starts soon. All the best from Oregon- -Kryn
Intelligence reports are in. Paul's tomatoes are a go. Attack formations A to G, to the front! In such an adverse growing year, I'm glad you still have your sense of humour to keep you sane enough to carry on. :) Cheers. ~ Jon in rural BC, Canada
Tomato condolences! Hopefully you get some tasty green tomato chutney with the ones that don’t ripen. Here’s to the next growing season! Glad your year is about to restart. All the best from Oregon -Kryn
I think I said I would make curry with them. 🤔 We don't make chutney as a) Richard is not a fan, and b) it exacerbates my acid production which is not good for my throat condition. 👍🤞👍 And I am very much looking ahead now too. 🤞🤞🤞
Sorry about your blight, Paul. Hugs. I use a wood burnishing tool to make my drain holes in plastic. It works nicely. I'm having apple tree issues also and considering pulling my trees and starting over. In part, as the garden has grown, the apples are no longer in good locations. I've started to pull out plants that are no longer producing or producing little. Life is a work in progress, and so are our gardens.
What a shame about the tomatoes, hope you managed to salvage a few. I rarely grow any on the plot, because of blight, but outside on my top balcony, they seem safe!
It's difficult to battle blight spores carried by the breezes later in the season. We hold off blight well for quite a while due to the chopped straw layer throughout the tomato bed covering any visible soil. It really reduces splash back! Cooler soil temp and less water loss is fine but we really want to minimize those spores!
I use raw wool mulch, start at 4 inches deep around the tomatoes. This did not do all that much for either the early blight or now the late blight. What it did do was make the plants healthy enough that they outgrew the early blight. The plants are currently struggling through the late blight. I still have a lot of tomatoes getting ripe. Toronto, Canada.
@@gabriellakadar I did look at raw wool some time ago and worked out that an application aroound tomatoes, brassicas etc would work out at about 75p per plant; though maybe worth it. 🤔🤔
@@paulsavident For me it's worth it because it cuts down on having weeds, keeps soil moisture even so I don't get fluctuations, eventually it rots into the soil and provides nitrogen, the pee and poo in the wool also adds fertility everytime it rains or I irrigate. I drive to a farm about 2 hours away and fill up the car with gigantic burlap bags of smelly wool. Keep the windows open on the way home. Belly wool is low quality and not used for yarn. So farmers are only too happy to sell the stuff. They at least make some money out of what would otherwise be garbage. I suppose wool would not be vegan friendly seeing as how sheep are raised for meat. The other thing I use is burlap coffee bags between the rows. These rot down in a season but they are organic. When I fold them lengthwise in thirds, they do help to suppress weeds. Burlap coffee bags are free. I just have to go and get them. Many coffee roasteries give them away to gardeners instead of adding them to the garbage. That's something you could investigate. Coffee chaff is also a good mulch around plants and I think because of how it is, slugs are not in love with it. A deep enough layer will also begin to compost and warm up the soil so at the end of the season when temperatures are going down, the roots stay warm. Slugs don't seem to like crawling over the stuff. I've had to get creative after my usual mulch, cocoa hulls, became unobtainable due to Covid import restrictions. It was not considered to be 'essential'. I have no idea now if my usual supplier finally has this in stock. I got tired of asking. They were also expensive compared to the new 'creative' options but look beautiful. I also don't need to concern myself with dogs eating it because our plots are individually fenced. It's a really great slow release fertilizer. All sorts of stuff is no longer available, like pine bark mini nuggets. It's just annoying to have to come up with workarounds. I get delivery of free woodchips from the arborists because this way I save them $200 per load they don't need to pay to the city composting yards. Slugs only become a problem at the end of July. We had the most rain ever in July and August this year and the slugs were coming out of the woodwork. I sprinkle slugbait directly on plants like cabbages and escarole. It's not going all over the place. What we need to keep an eye out for is Jumping Worms that have arrived from China. These need to be reported. People should never obtain soil from just anywhere. Using compost from certified manufacturers is the safe route. The neighbour 'steals' soil from someplace and ended up with wireworms destroying his garlic. But it hasn't stopped him from 'importing' soil.
I had the slug army arrive in late June/early July. Liberal sprinkling of slug bait (ferric phosphate) directly on the plants and not randomly on the soil did the trick. They were eating the chard and cabbage. Ferric phosphate is eco-friendly. Anything not consumed by the slugs and snails breaks down into the soil. Adding minute amounts of iron to the soil is not toxic. The chemical types are not available here and are illegal anyway. Also in the UK. If you don't use the slug bait, given your situation, your plants are doomed. These pellets are not toxic to anything except the slugs and snails.
Gabi, I do use organic slug pellets, though sparingly as they are now known to cause serious damage to the life cycle of worms and other soil living creatures. 👍
@@paulsavident Ironically, earthworms are not native to Canada. Watch people's heads explode when they find out. They are all introduced species, same as how we have your weeds. I think we have some of your slug species as well although we do have our own natives. If we could add these to the 'Columbian Exchange' I think you got the better deal.
Ive still got a few tomatoes clinging on - im giving them a bit longer to ripen. Only a week or so. Am i doing the right thing? ( there is not enough to make a green tomato chutney or similar). It is a bit heartening to see that you also struggle with pests, Paul. Thank you.
Maybe your mum called it 'water' mint as it is easy to root in a glass of water? Shame about your tomatoes- feel sad for you. A great, busy week on the plot. happy gardening 🙂
Shame about the blight, but in such a dreadful growing season I think you've done well to get any outdoor tomatoes, so I'd give myself a pat on the back if I were you! Re: the slug/snail issues, some interesting advice I came across on an agronomy site recently recommended foliar feeding plants with chelated iron to help with this particular problem. I can't explain exactly how it works because, quite frankly, it's a bit beyond me, but the bottom line is that iron enables plants to make better use of the light spectrum thereby photosynthesising more effectively, and better photosynthesis equals stronger-growing plants that are less appealing to slugs and snails. If you think about it, we've had pretty appalling light levels this "summer" and this will only be getting worse as day length diminishes, so anything we can do to help them use what little light is available seems to make sense. And although they may not appear chlorotic to our eyes, plants can still be suffering from sub-optimal iron levels, apparently. The reasons for this are complicated, but even soils with plentiful iron may not be able to deliver it in a plant-available form, so a foliar application is the most direct way to help. I've been noticing increased slug/snail damage on my winter brassicas in the past week so I'm definitely giving this a go myself - I'll let you know how I get on!😀🤞
Now this is definitely worth looking into. 👍👍👍 It is thought plants that are weak or stressed given of pheromones that gives out this message, which is detected by slugs and snails, so it certainly makes sense a stronger plant should get less damage. 🤞
I have, though have found with UK wet weather it runs off quickly, needing to be regularly re-applied... 🙄 In the past, both Vivi and I have found aspirin a better bet, though it needs to be applied a few weeks before blight is likely. 👍😊👍
@@paulsavident gosh I wouldn’t know about aspirin but I do know as a natural remedy horsetail fermentation tea sprayed on potatoes and tomatoes work well. I think it has something to do with silica.
@@paulsavident Potassium bicarbonate, not sodium bicarbonate is being used but the manufactured product has a 'secret' list of ingredients that help the material to stick to the leaves. If you get Blue Stone or copper sulphate mixture (Bordo mixture) and add potassium bicarbonate to it, that will stick. Potassium bicarb can be obtained from companies that provide supplies for people who make their own beer. You don't want to be applying sodium in the garden. We got early blight on the tomatoes. I removed all of the affected leaves which took hours given we had 60 plants. Then they outgrew the blight and most of them are now seven feet tall. I think we are now getting some bacterial issues due to the rain and some rather cool overnights. That's okay. I've noticed that late season tomatoes don't have as good a flavour anyway. If we don't get super low overnights, I'll be picking tomatoes until the end of September. The Pink Brandywines have done extremely well. I use organic chicken manure pellets for fertilizer. Throw a handful in the planting hole, fill with water, mix it up by hand and that's it. One time fertilizer application. Healthy plants are much more resistant to disease.
I'm yet to find a miracle cure for slugs and snails, most of them are impractical or ineffective. Vermiculite or similar works better than eggshells, it's so light it sticks to the slimy foot and just sort of hinders them rather than gets rid of them which is ok for pots and containers but again not very practical for beds. My ducklings are almost ready to be out in the garden full time now so heres hoping that keeps the numbers down 😊
@paulsavident this is the problem Paul 😆 I figure it's easier to keep two larger animals off the plants than hundreds of tiny ones. So far so good but the ducks seem to be more interested in eating the flowers at the moment, they haven't bothered any of the veg. I think they're still working out what they can and can't eat or rather what's nice or not to eat lol.
I so welcome your gardening knowledge. I learn something every time I watch a video. Thank you
Thank you. 👍😊👍
Great video - this year has certainly been challenging and disappointing. Keep smiling, x
Hiya Paul. Thankyou for the visit to your allotment. Take care Luv Southern Ontario Canada 🇨🇦🐝
Thanks for popping by Beverley. 👍😊👍
Tomato condolences! Hopefully you get some tasty green tomato chutney with the ones that don’t ripen. Here’s to the next growing season! Good thing your new year starts soon. All the best from Oregon-
-Kryn
Not everything on the internet is true? I'm gob-smacked! 🤣 Love the borage plant - so pretty. Thanks for another interesting video, Paul
😁👍😁
Intelligence reports are in. Paul's tomatoes are a go. Attack formations A to G, to the front!
In such an adverse growing year, I'm glad you still have your sense of humour to keep you sane enough to carry on. :)
Cheers.
~ Jon in rural BC, Canada
I think this is exactly what the blight spores said. 👍👍👍
The borage looks lovely; thanks for this video😊
Thank you for popping by. 👍😊👍
Tomato condolences! Hopefully you get some tasty green tomato chutney with the ones that don’t ripen. Here’s to the next growing season! Glad your year is about to restart. All the best from Oregon
-Kryn
I think I said I would make curry with them. 🤔 We don't make chutney as a) Richard is not a fan, and b) it exacerbates my acid production which is not good for my throat condition. 👍🤞👍 And I am very much looking ahead now too. 🤞🤞🤞
Sorry about your blight, Paul. Hugs. I use a wood burnishing tool to make my drain holes in plastic. It works nicely. I'm having apple tree issues also and considering pulling my trees and starting over. In part, as the garden has grown, the apples are no longer in good locations. I've started to pull out plants that are no longer producing or producing little. Life is a work in progress, and so are our gardens.
Indeed, life is a work in progress. 👍😊👍
Yes, what a year, so frustrating but there's always next season 😅. Jo Devon 🙂
Indeed, always next season. 👍🤞👍
What a shame about the tomatoes, hope you managed to salvage a few. I rarely grow any on the plot, because of blight, but outside on my top balcony, they seem safe!
I was hoping that with the plot neighbour on the other side gone, we might have a longer season, but... 🙄
It's difficult to battle blight spores carried by the breezes later in the season. We hold off blight well for quite a while due to the chopped straw layer throughout the tomato bed covering any visible soil. It really reduces splash back! Cooler soil temp and less water loss is fine but we really want to minimize those spores!
Indeed, I have thought of straw though a bale where we are is now SO expensive. 😳
I use raw wool mulch, start at 4 inches deep around the tomatoes. This did not do all that much for either the early blight or now the late blight. What it did do was make the plants healthy enough that they outgrew the early blight. The plants are currently struggling through the late blight. I still have a lot of tomatoes getting ripe. Toronto, Canada.
@@gabriellakadar I did look at raw wool some time ago and worked out that an application aroound tomatoes, brassicas etc would work out at about 75p per plant; though maybe worth it. 🤔🤔
@@paulsavident For me it's worth it because it cuts down on having weeds, keeps soil moisture even so I don't get fluctuations, eventually it rots into the soil and provides nitrogen, the pee and poo in the wool also adds fertility everytime it rains or I irrigate. I drive to a farm about 2 hours away and fill up the car with gigantic burlap bags of smelly wool. Keep the windows open on the way home. Belly wool is low quality and not used for yarn. So farmers are only too happy to sell the stuff. They at least make some money out of what would otherwise be garbage. I suppose wool would not be vegan friendly seeing as how sheep are raised for meat.
The other thing I use is burlap coffee bags between the rows. These rot down in a season but they are organic. When I fold them lengthwise in thirds, they do help to suppress weeds. Burlap coffee bags are free. I just have to go and get them. Many coffee roasteries give them away to gardeners instead of adding them to the garbage. That's something you could investigate.
Coffee chaff is also a good mulch around plants and I think because of how it is, slugs are not in love with it. A deep enough layer will also begin to compost and warm up the soil so at the end of the season when temperatures are going down, the roots stay warm. Slugs don't seem to like crawling over the stuff.
I've had to get creative after my usual mulch, cocoa hulls, became unobtainable due to Covid import restrictions. It was not considered to be 'essential'. I have no idea now if my usual supplier finally has this in stock. I got tired of asking. They were also expensive compared to the new 'creative' options but look beautiful. I also don't need to concern myself with dogs eating it because our plots are individually fenced. It's a really great slow release fertilizer.
All sorts of stuff is no longer available, like pine bark mini nuggets. It's just annoying to have to come up with workarounds.
I get delivery of free woodchips from the arborists because this way I save them $200 per load they don't need to pay to the city composting yards.
Slugs only become a problem at the end of July. We had the most rain ever in July and August this year and the slugs were coming out of the woodwork. I sprinkle slugbait directly on plants like cabbages and escarole. It's not going all over the place.
What we need to keep an eye out for is Jumping Worms that have arrived from China. These need to be reported. People should never obtain soil from just anywhere. Using compost from certified manufacturers is the safe route. The neighbour 'steals' soil from someplace and ended up with wireworms destroying his garlic. But it hasn't stopped him from 'importing' soil.
Eggshell attractive to Mr Rat also 🐀🐀🐀
I guess they are. 👍
The one in the orange container might just be an actual watermint.
Ah, I will take a photo and look. 👍😊👍
Paul how is it that one of your tomatoes survived blight and the others didn’t 🤗
I think it put its tin hat on in preparation! 😁
I had the slug army arrive in late June/early July. Liberal sprinkling of slug bait (ferric phosphate) directly on the plants and not randomly on the soil did the trick. They were eating the chard and cabbage. Ferric phosphate is eco-friendly. Anything not consumed by the slugs and snails breaks down into the soil. Adding minute amounts of iron to the soil is not toxic. The chemical types are not available here and are illegal anyway. Also in the UK. If you don't use the slug bait, given your situation, your plants are doomed.
These pellets are not toxic to anything except the slugs and snails.
Gabi, I do use organic slug pellets, though sparingly as they are now known to cause serious damage to the life cycle of worms and other soil living creatures. 👍
@@paulsavident Ironically, earthworms are not native to Canada. Watch people's heads explode when they find out. They are all introduced species, same as how we have your weeds. I think we have some of your slug species as well although we do have our own natives. If we could add these to the 'Columbian Exchange' I think you got the better deal.
Ive still got a few tomatoes clinging on - im giving them a bit longer to ripen. Only a week or so. Am i doing the right thing? ( there is not enough to make a green tomato chutney or similar). It is a bit heartening to see that you also struggle with pests, Paul. Thank you.
If you have tomatoes clinging on, then let them for sure. 👍👍👍
Maybe your mum called it 'water' mint as it is easy to root in a glass of water? Shame about your tomatoes- feel sad for you. A great, busy week on the plot. happy gardening 🙂
I think there is a variety of mint called water mint, though I terms of why mum called it such you may very well be right! 😁
Shame about the blight, but in such a dreadful growing season I think you've done well to get any outdoor tomatoes, so I'd give myself a pat on the back if I were you!
Re: the slug/snail issues, some interesting advice I came across on an agronomy site recently recommended foliar feeding plants with chelated iron to help with this particular problem. I can't explain exactly how it works because, quite frankly, it's a bit beyond me, but the bottom line is that iron enables plants to make better use of the light spectrum thereby photosynthesising more effectively, and better photosynthesis equals stronger-growing plants that are less appealing to slugs and snails. If you think about it, we've had pretty appalling light levels this "summer" and this will only be getting worse as day length diminishes, so anything we can do to help them use what little light is available seems to make sense.
And although they may not appear chlorotic to our eyes, plants can still be suffering from sub-optimal iron levels, apparently. The reasons for this are complicated, but even soils with plentiful iron may not be able to deliver it in a plant-available form, so a foliar application is the most direct way to help. I've been noticing increased slug/snail damage on my winter brassicas in the past week so I'm definitely giving this a go myself - I'll let you know how I get on!😀🤞
Now this is definitely worth looking into. 👍👍👍 It is thought plants that are weak or stressed given of pheromones that gives out this message, which is detected by slugs and snails, so it certainly makes sense a stronger plant should get less damage. 🤞
That’s a nuisance. Have you ever tried baking soda for blight?
I have, though have found with UK wet weather it runs off quickly, needing to be regularly re-applied... 🙄 In the past, both Vivi and I have found aspirin a better bet, though it needs to be applied a few weeks before blight is likely. 👍😊👍
@@paulsavident gosh I wouldn’t know about aspirin but I do know as a natural remedy horsetail fermentation tea sprayed on potatoes and tomatoes work well. I think it has something to do with silica.
@@paulsavident Potassium bicarbonate, not sodium bicarbonate is being used but the manufactured product has a 'secret' list of ingredients that help the material to stick to the leaves. If you get Blue Stone or copper sulphate mixture (Bordo mixture) and add potassium bicarbonate to it, that will stick. Potassium bicarb can be obtained from companies that provide supplies for people who make their own beer. You don't want to be applying sodium in the garden.
We got early blight on the tomatoes. I removed all of the affected leaves which took hours given we had 60 plants. Then they outgrew the blight and most of them are now seven feet tall. I think we are now getting some bacterial issues due to the rain and some rather cool overnights. That's okay. I've noticed that late season tomatoes don't have as good a flavour anyway. If we don't get super low overnights, I'll be picking tomatoes until the end of September. The Pink Brandywines have done extremely well.
I use organic chicken manure pellets for fertilizer. Throw a handful in the planting hole, fill with water, mix it up by hand and that's it. One time fertilizer application. Healthy plants are much more resistant to disease.
I'm yet to find a miracle cure for slugs and snails, most of them are impractical or ineffective. Vermiculite or similar works better than eggshells, it's so light it sticks to the slimy foot and just sort of hinders them rather than gets rid of them which is ok for pots and containers but again not very practical for beds. My ducklings are almost ready to be out in the garden full time now so heres hoping that keeps the numbers down 😊
Ducks and similar are certainly the best way to keep on top of slugs, as long as they themselves don't eat too many plants!! 😁
@paulsavident this is the problem Paul 😆 I figure it's easier to keep two larger animals off the plants than hundreds of tiny ones. So far so good but the ducks seem to be more interested in eating the flowers at the moment, they haven't bothered any of the veg. I think they're still working out what they can and can't eat or rather what's nice or not to eat lol.
@@Cumbriman yay for ducks... even if they like petals!! 😁