Early Blight and Flea Beetles

I am happy to announce my tomato plants are not only healthy, but are also protected against Late Blight and other related fungi as of today.  This is particularly good news considering what I learned at the garden store.  Apparently a LOT of people have been bringing in diseased tomato leaves to have diagnosed.  No Late Blight leaves yet, but plenty of Early Blight which means conditions are perfect for Late Blight to move in.  I also witnessed Septoria leaf spot, another common fungus, on tomato plants at my parent's neighbor's house, on my last visit.  While Septoria is rather easy to control, Early Blight is more difficult, and Late Blight requires you to destroy your plants.  The fungicide I picked up and used on my tomatoes today was Bonide Copper fungicide.  It is the fungicide I mentioned in my Late Blight post that is safe for use in organic farming/ gardening.  It is important to spray the entire plant from top to bottom, to the point that it is dripping.  This ensures that you covered the whole plant.  You also should spray at a time when the plant can dry, so sometime during early to mid day and not right before rain is predicted.  And be sure to repeat as directed for maximum protection!

The other chemical spray I picked up today was for my flea beetle problem.  For that I got Bonide Rotenone-Pyrethrins Spray.  It is also approved for organic gardening, and is apart of Bonide's Naturals line.  I technically could have used the Ortho spray I picked up for Squash Vine Borers, but it is not approved for use on the edible parts of the plant, and I needed to spray my cabbages.  It's a good thing I did that today as well, because when I went out to spray the tomatoes, two of my Chinese Cabbage plants had all their leaves eaten down to the vein!  Evil, evil bugs!  I feel terrible killing anything, even bugs, but it had to be done.  I just take comfort in the knowledge that there are exceptionally more insects on this planet then there are any other creature.  And since they have been around for millions of years, I doubt a few sprays of insect killer in my garden will upset the balance in the insect world.  Sorry bugs!

Because of all the bad news (bugs eating everything, fungus taking over), I decided there needed to be a bright spot in my day.  So along with the pesticides and other miscellaneous gardening items I purchased at the store today, I also picked up a replacement Roberto.  Roberto is our Ficus Rubber plant that Tom whisked away to his office at work.  Roberto was suppose to be a house plant, not an office plant, but Tom needed the air-cleaning qualities that Ficus plants possess.  Since there is probably no hope of Roberto returning in the near future, I decided to purchase Roberto 2.0.  If Roberto 1.0 ever does return, he will have a friend to hang out and purify the air with.  It feels cleaner in here already!

Tonights dinner with fresh from the garden zucchini!!  I had to share. :)