Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Late Blight returns....

Link to Article.

I didn't garden last year so i missed it last year. This only gives me a slight advantage because my plants can't catch it from contaminated remnants of the previous season.    But since it can simply spread through the air, its really not much of an advantage.  Bonide Fung-o-Nil or Ortho's Garden Disease Control can work i understand. I'll ask hubby if he can grab me a bottle of one of them at Home Depot if he goes shopping during lunch.  He was planning to get some driveway sealer so he might be going there anyway.  I looked them up at Aubuchon, but all their concentrated garden fungicides are by order only and not in store.
I guess its been around for a while this year but i have not seen any reports of it reaching Maine yet... i did a search for articles but didn't find anything dated for this year.

Not much else going on. I haven't checked the Havahart trap yet and the weather is off and on sunny, not too hot but still quite humid.
I was going to start clearing out the flower boxes yesterday, but i wasn't able to find my big Fiskars pruning shears. I haven't seen hide or hair of them since last year. I hope they didn't get left outside to rust and then hubby had to throw them out.  I asked him if he's seen them and he hasn't.  I tried to do a little of it by hand but it was too much to do.  Pulling out the vines broke the stems off at the roots which will make it hard to locate and dig up the plants for their move. The thing is that i can't get into the mess without removing the vines first.
I've decided to use the Mantis on the walking rows in the garden. The weeds have come back too thickly to try and pull them. On the plus side, its more organic matter that will break down in the garden.

Plenty to do today and in the next few days.

2 comments:

Faith said...

How about laying some newspaper or cardboard down, to smother the weeds and add organic matter?

I used quite a bit of it this year. Also, I notice where I put newspaper down before I laid mulch on top of it, it was even more efficient.

Blight, no fun. I've wondered about it in a couple of places here, but it's not spread, so maybe it isn't.

~Faith

icebear said...

i keep getting 504 errors when i attempt to reply