New ideas for an old problem?

[RayR]

Originally Posted by Mark0820

Do you use the same products and approach as Ami?

Yes, much the same approach. Ami's methods are sound, inoculating the rhizosphere with diverse species and inoculating the phyllosphere with bacteria which produce anti-fungal compounds makes sense and is effective for me.
Years ago before I understood how to manage Early Blight and Septoria, my Tomato plants would be defoliated by this time. Now, any successful infections are minimal and don't spread like wildfire, they just seem to give up and go away. My biggest problem this year besides the long long periods of dry weather has been those darn Two Spotted Spider Mites in the last few weeks.

[saltmarsh]

RayR, Try making a tea using 2 tablespoons of powdered sage, 2 tablespoons of hot pepper flakes, and 2 tablespoons of powdered garlic in a gallon of water. Boil for 15 minutes and allow to sit overnight. Strain the tea through a nylon stocking and add another gallon of water to make two gallons of spray. This is what I use anytime I see the little buggers. Claud

[RayR]

Originally Posted by saltmarsh

RayR, Try making a tea using 2 tablespoons of powdered sage, 2 tablespoons of hot pepper flakes, and 2 tablespoons of powdered garlic in a gallon of water. Boil for 15 minutes and allow to sit overnight. Strain the tea through a nylon stocking and add another gallon of water to make two gallons of spray. This is what I use anytime I see the little buggers. Claud

Thanks for the recipe, I might give that a try.
I've been using a mixture of 2 tablespoons of pure neem oil, a half teaspoon of Seacom PGR Liquid Kelp and a half teaspoon of Green Works natural dishwashing liquid soap in my 1.5 Liter pump Sprayer and that seems to do the job at smothering the devils. I'll be going out again today to poke around on the bottom of the leaves with a jewelers loop to look for any sign of life.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by beeman

Would you care to advise what products you used and method of innoculation.
Hopefully I can fix the garbage I'm producing every year. I suspect Corky Root Rot.

Products are great, especially to restore balance. But the best single thing you can do is get your soil back to functional again with compost, mulches, manures and worms, etc....

If the soil is right, it really is hard to fail at growing tomatoes.

[greentiger87]

Originally Posted by Redbaron

If the soil is right, it really is hard to fail at growing tomatoes.

Sorry, but I'm really tired of hearing things like this. The tomatoes we grow as crops are not wild plants, and we're expecting to perform in ways that wild plants never would. Large populations of plants can adapt to new diseases and pests, but it requires lots of time, death and casualties for that to occur. Too much sacrifice for a productive vegetable garden. Nothing about this is really "natural"- the plants themselves, their expected productivity, the location, the pest conditions... the list goes on.

Frankly, most of my garden has fantastic soil. If I put out my tomatoes at the right time, I can get small crop of fruits even when the plants have a full onslaught of early blight and spidermites, along with whatever else I haven't identified. Nothing about my soil is "wrong", non-functional, or unbalanced.

Yet, the right products can make a huge difference. Identifying a strain of bacteria that is particularly antagonistic to a pathogen, greatly amplifying its population, and applying it exactly where it's needed - that's not something that can come about "naturally". These methods of biocontrol are only in their infancy - greater efficacy in the future is inevitable. Using these and other controls allows me to harvest tomatoes all summer long.

Can you have a great garden without controlling pests with targeted biologicals or chemicals? Of course. Can you grow tomatoes without any of them? A lot of depends on location, weather, disease pressure, and other factors that are mostly down to chance. In my location, you'd have to be very lucky to get a satisfying crop without some IPM program. Suggesting that this is because I haven't done enough for my soil is... to put it mildly.. frustrating. It's also misleading to beginners.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by greentiger87

Sorry, but I'm really tired of hearing things like this. The tomatoes we grow as crops are not wild plants, and we're expecting to perform in ways that wild plants never would. Large populations of plants can adapt to new diseases and pests, but it requires lots of time, death and casualties for that to occur. Too much sacrifice for a productive vegetable garden. Nothing about this is really "natural"- the plants themselves, their expected productivity, the location, the pest conditions... the list goes on.

Frankly, most of my garden has fantastic soil. If I put out my tomatoes at the right time, I can get small crop of fruits even when the plants have a full onslaught of early blight and spidermites, along with whatever else I haven't identified. Nothing about my soil is "wrong", non-functional, or unbalanced.

Yet, the right products can make a huge difference. Identifying a strain of bacteria that is particularly antagonistic to a pathogen, greatly amplifying its population, and applying it exactly where it's needed - that's not something that can come about "naturally". These methods of biocontrol are only in their infancy - greater efficacy in the future is inevitable. Using these and other controls allows me to harvest tomatoes all summer long.

Can you have a great garden without controlling pests with targeted biologicals or chemicals? Of course. Can you grow tomatoes without any of them? A lot of depends on location, weather, disease pressure, and other factors that are mostly down to chance. In my location, you'd have to be very lucky to get a satisfying crop without some IPM program. Suggesting that this is because I haven't done enough for my soil is... to put it mildly.. frustrating. It's also misleading to beginners.

Well now, that is interesting. Your tone sounds somewhat angry, yet I am guessing we have similar philosophies, if not exactly the same. I put out mouse traps yesterday. That is human intervention. So technically that isn't "natural". I buy seed that has been domesticated and selected for thousands of years. That isn't "natural" unless you realise we are part of nature ourselves and us "domesticating" crops is actually a common thing found in the symbiotic relationships found all throughout nature in many species. If we don't get enough rain I water my crops. That isn't natural. So depending on how you define "natural", of course nothing in gardening is "natural"

But at the same time, we can mimic the natural order and balance in nature to minimise the need even for "natural" biological controls. However you have to change your way of thinking. A lot of gardeners and farmers look at biological sprays like a gentler kinder way of spraying chemicals. See a bug or fungus, get out the appropriate organic product, and spray away. I do that too in emergencies. However, I am always looking for ways to not have to pull out even the biologicals.

The main point, although I fully admit I didn't clarify it properly having reread my post, is that most the plagues and swarms of pests come from neglecting the soil. And it may not even be YOUR soil that is neglected. The farmer a few miles away may be doing something that makes his field a breeding ground, and a bit of wind or water erosion and we pay the price for his foolishness.

So in one way you are right. We do need these biocontrols, I never said they are a bad thing. They are a step in the right direction. But the problem and solution is much broader. Until we can make the principles of permaculture viable commercially on a large scale, and start repairing the damages to the larger arable land by converting the large commercial growers, we are fighting against ourselves! And that requires a different way of thinking than just plowing the land and spraying it, no matter if the spray is a "natural" organic spray or a chemical spray.

[greentiger87]

It's probably mostly semantics, when it gets down to practice and specifics. But I think the semantics are important - primarily because it's crucial to the adoption of permaculture methods by beginners, and even the larger agriculture industry. I don't want people just starting out to feel like it's a personal failure when they have to resort to a pest control product.

Your point about the nebulous definition of "natural" is well taken. When you say we should mimic the natural order and balance in nature though... I think that's overly romantic. It's more honest, in my opinion, to accept that all gardening is a wholesale manipulation of nature to suit our purposes. Permaculture is the manipulation of nature to not only suit the purpose of immediate productivity, but also long term sustainability of production and minimal (or restorative) impact on pre-existing ecosystems.

"Most plagues and swarms of pests come from neglecting the soil." - this I just don't understand.

In my opinion, most of the plagues and swarms of pests we deal with today are because large scale agriculture involves vast areas of monoculture, of plant varieties bred primarily for production and secondarily for pest resistance. Add to this the global mobility humans have provided for pathogens and pests.

For example, what general aspect of soil health could protect against the combination of rainy weather and early blight spores blown in by the wind? If I didn't bag and remove the infected material at the end of the season, what aspect of general soil health could prevent those spores from infecting a neighbors crop the next season?

Similarly, how could well managed soil protect against a sudden onslaught of tomato russet mites? Nobody knows their origin for certain, but it's likely that they're not native to the Americas.. and they love Solanaceous plants. No indirect enhancement of predator populations has been seen to control these mites to any satisfactory degree (even direct application of predators has been powerless against their reproductive capacity).

Once late blight spores have germinated on your plants, is there really something general soil health can do to stop the disease from taking over your crop? Since most plant viruses are favored by general plant health, is there anything healthy soil can do to suppress them?

PS: Yes, I was a little angry in my last post. I apologize for letting it bleed through.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by greentiger87

1) It's probably mostly semantics...



2) When you say we should mimic the natural order and balance in nature though... I think that's overly romantic...



3) It's more honest, in my opinion, to accept that all gardening is a wholesale manipulation of nature to suit our purposes. Permaculture is the manipulation of nature to not only suit the purpose of immediate productivity, but also long term sustainability of production and minimal (or restorative) impact on pre-existing ecosystems....



4) "Most plagues and swarms of pests come from neglecting the soil." - this I just don't understand.

In my opinion, most of the plagues and swarms of pests we deal with today are because large scale agriculture involves vast areas of monoculture...



5) For example, what general aspect of soil health could protect against the combination of rainy weather and early blight spores blown in by the wind?....



6) If I didn't bag and remove the infected material at the end of the season, what aspect of general soil health could prevent those spores from infecting a neighbors crop the next season?.....

1) After reading your post I am now sure of it. Semantics.

2) You are accusing me of being a romantic! Well I guess I have been called worse.

3) That's a good definition, but the romantic in me rebels at such course language!

4) Agreed

5) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0827130647.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0921111038.htm

6)Yes neighbors are important. I don't know the answer to every situation, every disease or every pest. Even the scientists are just beginning to understand in their scientific ways, what people like me have been saying for decades.

But I believe in my heart of hearts that the broader solution is to find a way to convert those large mono crop growers to a permaculture system. And I also believe the only way to do that is for us in permaculture to figure out a system that is scalable to any size, whether home gardener, or giant corporate farmer and anyone in between. And for that large corporate farm the only thing that can work is showing a business model that increases profitability per acre.

Joel Salatin of Polyface farms figured out a scalable model for animal husbandry that uses the principles of permaculture. His model is now growing by leaps and bounds as literally 10's of thousands of farmers world wide are using it or variations of it. But I believe the reason it is growing so fast is because the profit per acre goes from about $200-400 dollars per acre to up to about $8,000 dollars per acre per year. He did it (in part) by primarily focusing on the soil and the grass ecosystem instead of the animals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvj6i...=plpp_play_all

We on the crop side of permaculture need to learn from Joel and focus our energies on making a model that is scalable for commercial growers. Once the land is healed on those vast acres of mono crops, I will wager my last penny that these plagues will take care of themselves. (with a little help now and then from those professors of plant and soil sciences)