Chance the Gardener

Experts Comment on Tomato Gardening Issues

The Great Big Plants team just returned from the Independent Garden Center Show in Chicago. In response to many customer requests, we are attempting to make the Great Big Plants line of liquid organic composts available on retail shelves.

Of interest to many at the show were the difficulties with tomato gardens this year. The consensus from dozens of professionals was that the Northeast U.S. experienced the worst tomato growing year in many decades. Many cited the cooler, later arriving summer as the major culprit. This situation manifested heavy disease pressure, especially Late Blight Fungus. See the NY Times article on this: Late Blight Fungus. Several experienced gardeners said that they had to abandon their tomato gardens completely.

Along a similar theme, a new customer in the mid-Atlantic area sent us pictures of her ailing tomato plants and asked for our opinion. The Great Big Plants team forwarded the pictures to several professionals who manage tomato growing operations. The following are some of the comments regarding the same pictures.

"Looks like it could be powdery mildew. It's a new strain that is very aggressive and is rolling through fields right now. Also, the purple leaves suggest N or P deficiency."

"The photos look like phosphate and potassium deficiency."

"First, heat stress; secondly, disease, i.e., powdery mildew, bacterial spot, etc. And most likely a combination of these."

"Jeez, bacterial spec + over watering + under fertilizing are my guesses."

"Barring disease, salinity and/or poor drainage looks to be probable there."

These responses point at two things. One, you can't be a plant pathologist from pictures. Two, don't take caring for your tomatoes lightly - lots of bad things can happen to them!

Benefits of Compost

Whether one has a green thumb or is a complete gardening novice, everyone agrees that compost is a “good thing”.  At the same time, very few of us are aware of the specific benefits compost provides to our garden soil.  So the following is a list of compost benefits agreed upon by soil scientists and picky government regulators.  Pithy explanations are courtesy of yours truly.

Compost:

1. Improves garden soil structure and porosity – creating a better plant root environment. (It’s better to have garden soil you can dig in with your bare hands than dirt compacted like a concrete slab.)

2. Increases moisture infiltration and permeability, and reduces bulk density of heavy soils – improving moisture infiltration rates and reducing erosion and runoff. (Your garden soil should absorb water better than your driveway.)

3. Improves the moisture holding capacity of light soils –reducing water loss and nutrient leaching, and improving moisture retention. (Better your garden soil is a sponge than a sieve.)

4. Improves the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of soils. (As the Buddha observed, clinging is a source of suffering.)

5. Supplies organic matter. (Without organic matter, soil is essentially gravel. Gravel as garden soil is only good for plastic, pink flamingos.)

6. Supplies beneficial microbes to soils and growing media. (Garden soil without beneficial microbes is like a factory with no workers.)

7. Aids the proliferation of soil microorganisms. (Microbes need stuff like carbon and minerals.) 

8. Encourages vigorous root growth. (More roots good; less roots bad.)

9. Allows plants to more effectively utilize nutrients,while reducing nutrient loss by leaching. (Healthy soil requires far less fertilizer. Be sure to reduce your rates)

10. Enables soils to retain nutrients longer. (This is a major environmental plus. Retained nutrients get used by plants instead of leaching into the water supply.)

11. Contains humus – assisting in soil aggregation and making nutrients available for plant uptake. (Also good with pita bread and string cheese. Oh wait, maybe that’s hummus.)

12. Buffers soil pH. (Garden soil pH can determine the rate of nutrient uptake by the plant.)

Wow! That explains why so many people use and make garden compost even though it’s a pain.  The good news is that with Great Big Plants we can get the benefits of compost without all the trouble, and it's organic compost too. Even better is the fact that Great Big Plants doesn’t require you to dig up trees and shrubs or re-pot container plants because it’s liquid and travels with the water to the root zone. And if we do make our own compost, the addition of Great Big Plants significantly accelerates the process.

Welcome to our blog!

This is the first entry for the Great Big Plants blog, which we have so cleverly named in honor of one of the all time great gardeners. Our goal will be to share useful gardening information with our fellow gardeners, friends and readers. We will also share some of the experiences and pictures of the successes that we hear from you. We hope that we can help you to have rich garden soil, great big plants, and a smile.  Please feel free to submit comments anytime. 

As Chance says "In the garden, growth has its seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again."