RKN Control Attn: Dr. Carolyn

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by JackE

Okay - I have no more business here. Not everyone just likes to "visit" as I do. :-)

Jack

Jack, you do more than visit and you've posted many threads on many subjects here at Tville. And in my first post to you I also said I hoped that others would post and they have and they may continue to do so.

All I said in my above post was that I, personally, didn't see how I could contribute more to this current discussion of RKN's that you initiated and that was all I said. Period. And I said that b/c you had also included my name in your thread title, but I can do no more. Just see what others have said here in this thread as well as your previous thread on RKN's which I liked to.

I was saying I was bowing out because you had directed this thread to me, that's all, and doing it out of courtesy to you.

[JackE]

No problem, Carolyn - I took it wrong. I thought you were telling me to "shut-up." Please forget it. That's the trouble with the web - you can't see the face of the person you're talking too. I do have a tendency to talk WAY too much and it gets me in lots of trouble. I can't work in the gardens because we have no irrigation water, so I just sit here! Thanks for your help.

********************************************

Member from Georgia:

I tried the plastic solarization but it didn't work for me - probably because my soil doesn't have any organic matter. I do hope this two-year clean fallow works. Thanks for sharing your experience - and congratulation on winning the battle with those little devils, That's better than I've been able to do. I'm a little jealous! We need rain real bad.

Jack

[b54red]

I have battled nematodes since I started gardening in this same spot over 30 years ago. I tried the nematode resistant varieties and had some limited success but it was mostly like Carolyn said; it only extended the life of the plants a few weeks.

I read somewhere that fresh horse manure contained a fungus or mold that inhibited or killed nematodes so I tried it in one area and had far less nematode damage so I started hauling in truckloads and tilling it in for the next couple of years. Eventually the nematode problem became only a slight one that would only affect the occasional plant. I also found that planting hot peppers next to a tomato plant seemed to have some effect.

I found the Nemagone marigolds to be somewhat effective but they make a real mess because to be effective they need to be planted all around the plant and they will spread out and nearly take over. If you use them it means that more watering and fertilizing will be required during the tomato growing period because the marigolds suck a lot out of the soil.

Of all the things I have tried and I have tried many; the horse manure was the most effective. I'm not able to muck out horse stalls anymore so I have gone to using organic cow manure but it is not as effective but it does seem to help some. The problem I have is just like yours in that my soil will revert to sand in no time without constant adding of organic matter. Pine trees do great here though.

[JackE]

Originally Posted by b54red

The problem I have is just like yours in that my soil will revert to sand in no time without constant adding of organic matter. Pine trees do great here though.

Yeah! - glad somebody understands this sandy, acid pine tree sand we have to live with down here! Large, frequent amendments of organic matter of most any kind will control them. Horse manure has a different texture, for lack of a better lexicon, "more grasslike and less pooplike than cow patties"! so it would be more effective in inhibiting RKN movement in the soil (I learned that from Carolyn). Unfortunately, we garden on a scale that makes that prohibitively expensive - we would have to hire a dump truck at God knows how much per hour with $4.00 diesel, and maybe pay for the manure as well. Local chicken growers don't give it away anymore! Like you. the compost disappears within weeks of application - very discouraging!

My wife of 47 years has a 400 sq' flower garden with all kinds of exotic - and expensive - ornamentals. RKN activity would definitely NOT be acceptable there - if you know what I mean I do hire a dump truck to bring in 14 cubic yards of pine bark from a local utility pole mill once a year for her &&^%$ Day Lilies and stupid, useless "trumpet" flowers. But we can't afford that for the vegetables. you see, because they actually have value - people can eat them! Last time I tried them, those silly trumpet flowers were not very tasty.

With tongue in cheek and hoping my wife doesn't monitor the thread,

Jack

[ssi912]

check you municple dump. the one that collects yard debris. they probably give or sell the by product, which is usually compost. i am lucky here for our dump has a great mix formulated by the university of georgia. i mix in 50 or so gallons per 25 foot row every spring, at my community plot, when planting. tomatoes love it, real rich. have not seen any nematode sign on any thing but okra, and very little at that. it definently filutes the rkn pop. other gardeners 20 feet away are ate up with them. it also dilutes bact. wilt. widespread in our plots. when the soil gets wrm it takes off. knock on wood, have not been infected with wilt in three years, after i started adding 10 five gallon buckets of compost to the row and mixing it in. good luck.

b54, i bet it was the edition of hot material to the soil. when i solarized last year, i cooked the rkn. i would pull back plastic a little to feel the soil. let me tell you, it was HOT. no signs this year at all on the roots. if one has failed at achieving results, maybe it was not performed correctly. use thick plastic, clear. add some type of hot organic matter. mix it in with soil, not to deep though, maybe 4 inches. water soil in real well, lay plastic on top of the soil, so it is touching the dirt. throw dirt along edges of plastic so it does not move or blow away. leave for 1.5- 2 months of the hottest time of year.remove plastic after time stated, cover with organic mulch, plant following season. this absolutely worked for me. i was depressed when i seen sign of them in 2010 growing season. i will report back on effectiveness of marigolds grow all year and chopped into soil.

[JackE]

The reason the resistant hybrids fail is elevated soil temps around picking time. The hybrid's resistance fails completely at about 85 degrees. Nems are dormant in cool soil. It's a real heartbreaker - you've got this fabulous looking crop of ripening toms and then, just before harvest, the plants suddenly wilt-down and collapse!

There's absolutely no question that massive amounts of organic matter ( and 50 gals of compost for a 25 ft of row is MASSIVE) controls RKN. I wish it were a viable option for us. But we live on a sand hill with the clay hardpan thirty feet down, and the organic matter disappears as fast as we add it.

Organic matter inhibits the nematode's mobility and creates a generally unfavorable environment for them. Most all of the biological control products on the market today will not work without a high organic content in the soil. I would venture to say, having tried some of these products, that organic matter alone would be just as effective. Extensive testing at the U of Florida showed that the products had no direct negative effect on the nems - it was the organic matter that did the job!

I've been all through the marigold thing. IMO, your efforts will be more productively spent on adding compost. I think the marigolds are a waste of time - along with all the other supposedly suppressive cover crops - their only value is adding green manure in small quantities that won't bother the nems..

Frankly, nothing is ever going to replace methy bromide for commercial tomato production in the South. But I'm sure hoping that this deep tillage and clean fallow will clean-up our soil for at least a couple years. I'll know along about next May! Growers over in LA have had good results with it. I don't want any living thing in my soil other than tomato roots. :-)

Jack

[b54red]

Jack, luckily I don't have the deep sand because I live on top of a clay knob which gives me an impenetrable hard pan a foot or so below my garden soil. I have to be very careful not to get it mixed in because then I have to deal with a brick after the first rain.

As to methy bromide my neighbor, whose garden was separated from mine by a fence, used it while I was just beginning to use the horse manure. He had one year of good production and then the nematodes came back with a vengeance. It seems the stuff killed all the helpful organisms in the soil. He gave up trying to grow tomatoes after a few years while my nematode problem got better, slowly but surely.

Justin, it wasn't the heat of the manure because I added most of it in the cool of winter and tilled it in so it was well dispersed. It must have been something contained in the horse poop that had the effect on the nematodes. I've tried other manures since but none seems as effective on nematodes.

I had really good luck with sugar, molasses and Nemagone marigolds this year in my okra bed and only had a couple of plants show any signs of nematodes. That was the best result with okra in years. The same things seemed to help my squash and cucumbers this year. Composted organic cow manure was also used in all of my beds this year.

[JackE]

Red, I think the commercial growers fumigated (past tense!) every year - or at least a regular schedule. They also took soil samples to monitor the nem population and when it got to a certain point, they fumigated again. I do know it wasn't a one shot deal like yiour neighbor did. Commercial tomato growers tell me they want sterile soil for a growing medium, because they provide all nutrients in the irrigation water. It basically amounts to a form of outdoor hydroponics. That's one reason (along with green picking and artificially ripening with ethylene gas) that store tomatoes don't have much taste.

That's the way we garden, as a matter of necessity, but we let them ripen on the vine which gives them a litle better taste than Wally World toms, but certainly not as good as yours probably are.

Sadly, the very best situation for us is to kill every living thing in the sand (don't call it soil or even loam - it's SAND period!) - impossible of course, without fumigants, but that's pretty much my mindset. It's the only way we can operate - we've tried everything else over the years. Actually, if we can keep the nems down, we grow a lot of vegetables that way - all given away to the poor.

Next year I'm going to plant some genuine heirloom tomatoes. TVille member Salix sent me some seed - but they will be planted in my wife's compost-rich flower garden - NOT out in the pine tree sand!!! Ya oughtta see the bills for keeping that flower garden organically viable! Looks like Obama's stimulus package! She's not sure she has room for my heirloom "experiment", but I assured her that we could find room. When she tastes those tomatoes, from what I hear here, she'll probably open up half her flower garden for them. The last OP toms I ate were Homesteads planted by my grandfather in empty hog pens. They were red - the seed I have now is for green ones (Green Zebra, Green Giant, etc.). Next year I'm gonna post a picture of my wierdly deformed tomatoes like everyone else here

Jack

[JackE]

Member from Georgia --

I just re-read your posts above and I see you added organic matter under the plastic. I didn't (and couldn't have anyway because I was doing two acres) and that's why yours worked - again, it all comes down to organic matter where RKN is concerned. When I checked under the clear plastic it was hot enough to almost burn my hand, but a few inches down it was 90 or so, which is optimum for RKN reproduction! It didn't get hot enough deep enough. Just a few inches down it was still well within RKN temperature tolerance - and that's where most of the nems reside.

My friends in Louisiana also tried it around the same time I did - several years ago - and none of them, all market growers, had any success with it. The reason without doubt was that they/we didn't apply compost and you did! My guess is that the plastic had little to do with your success - it was the manure, IMO. I say that because I don't want others to put in endless hours of labor and expense on something that won't help them. They're better off to hire a dump truck and haul some compost in!

The jury is still out for me on this clean fallow technique. I have had some good reports from Louisiana and am keeping my fingers crossed. In some areas with a lot of water they flood the fields, like a rice patty, and that kills the nematodes - but hardly an option in Texas this year!! LOL

Jack

PS - What's your first name?

[b54red]

Jack have you thought about setting aside part of that two acres and getting all the volunteers to bring in what they can in the form of organic matter and just concentrate it in a small area. If you put organics in and keep adding to it the soil will become more viable for quality tomato production.

You might also want to try some of the more durable heirlooms like Indian Stripe. I have had as good a luck with them as with any of the hybrids. They just seem a bit more persistent in their ability to produce in bad conditions than most.

[ssi912]

out of the five plants that were grown in the 80 square foot raised bed in 2010, granny cantrell was the only one to show no signs of rkn damage on the roots. the rest where covered in galls.the plants were only 20 inches apart in a 24 inch high raised bed.could try the grafting, think johnny's carries the seed.

[JackE]

The compost has to be constantly added, Red. Everytime it rains (NOT a problem lately LOL) it leaches out and disappears. I get a whole truckload of composted pine bark - a BIG dump truck - every year for the flowers and ornamentals. My wife adds it all the time and by year's end it's gone. Some ornamentals like this sand the way it is - azaleas, gardenias, crepe myrtle, confederate rose - but many others need the compost. I'll treat the fancy tomatoes like an ornamental and give them a prime spot.

I wish you knew how hard I've worked to get organic conent in this soil. It's almost the "story of my life." This is the family homestead where I was born, but I lived and worked in Houston for many years (can't make a living here), and came-up every weekend, which I spent - from dawn to dark - making compost and collecting organic matter by the ton - trying to prepare the soil for a large, 100% organic garden after I retired. People thought I was nuts - and perhaps they were right! LOL It can only be done with annual applications of compost in quantities that are utterly impossible to conceive - it would take a whole fleet of trucks!! LOL

There is no interest in organic gardening by our volunteers and our other growers - strictly Triple 13 and Sevin dust, in part, I'm sure, because it's too difficult around here. It's one thing to be organic in New Hampshire and quite another in East Texas with our insect populations. Also, they associate organic with the "bad old days" when there wasn't any commercial fertilizer or pesticides and getting a crop was hit and miss.

My grandfather didn't know it, but he was an organic gardener, right here on this land. He had three hog pens, which he rotated each year from hogs to fallow to garden. The hogs deposited organic matter and consumed most soil pests and weed seeds, then it would fallow allowing the manure to rot (sometimes he'd dig it in) and the pen was ready for a garden on the third year. It did pretty well - but nowhere near as productive as we do now with commerical fertilizers. Despite the hog manure, his garden was obviously nitrogen-starved. BUT no RKN! The hogs took care of that. His tomatoes were OP Homestead, I remember that. By the fifities he, and everyone else, was using commercial fertilizers and pesticides - and they produced twice as much with half the labor.

Actually, we do very well with our present system - we usually get a really impressive tomato harvest, with only two major enemies - sunscald and RKN. We now have a spray product for sunscald but the RKN remain elusive.

Jack

[JackE]

Let me add one other little addendum to my post above.

Organic gardening is highly correlated with educational level, for obvious reasons. It's all about health, conservation, sustainability, good stewardship, and keeping the planet itself green and healthy. Poor rural people in the Deep South don't have much education and life for them is just a matter of daily survival. It's so challenging and difficult that the future of the planet - (or even their own health for that matter ) - has a very low priority for them. These folks live their lives one day at a time - if they have food and shelter today, they aren't much concerned about tomorrow ( a little hyperbolic, but you get the point).

And that's why, my beloved TVille friends, when I talk to my elderly, mostly female, devoutely Christian volunteers about organic practices, my only response is a blank stare. And I know what's behind the stare ("Jackie went north to college and came back with a lot of looney, left-wing, Yankee ideas. His parents were good people but that college ruined that boy!")

Jack

[JackE]

I'll give y'all your chuckle for the day:

The headline today on our local weekly newspaper - Sheriff Hennigan suspects fowl play in disappearance of local woman...



Jack

[Worth1]

Im sitting in my hotel room in Seattle and when i get home i think i can give some advice. WORTH