What's eating my 'maters

John- does the product you are talking about work better than blood meal?.

Yes PlantSkydd does seem to work better than just using blood meal. I am always pretty skeptical about the claims various repellents make, but this product does work. My folks live near a a heavily wooded area and were having terrible problems with the deer eating the landscaping they put in. We tried all the common methods but had no luck. I have always had good results with blood meal but it didnt seem to work in this situation. We ended up trying the PlantSkydd (its not cheap) and it really worked well. Its the only repellent I sell at the greenhouse now.

Well it doesn't much matter anymore. The dreaded "Blight" got my tomatoes over the past few days. Had to cut all five plants down yesterday <sniff>. Talked to John H. and he said this has happened to a LOT of people and that the price of local tomatoes and squash will be skyrocketing in the next few weeks.

Hey Steve, that sucks. Ive heard from a lot of folks about problems with tomatoes this year. Most of whats going on is called late blight. You will see the leaves get brown spots and turn yellow all over. Some people will recommend spraying your plants with a fungicide, but in my experience it only delays the inevitable. Plus I dont want to eat fungicide. The cool,wet night weve had is the reason for this. Putting tomatoes in the same place every year,watering them at night,and not keeping the ground around and under plants free of plant debris compounds the problem. I have talked to growers who do some of the area farmers markets about their plants and have heard reports of whole fields that are lost. One guy I spoke with had hundreds and hundreds of plants with just a few tomatoes hanging on the branches while all of the foliage had already turned yellow and fallen off. I put out my plants really late this year and havent got but a few red ones so far. I do see a bit of blight in the garden but Im hoping it will hold off long enough to gat a good harvest. Im hoping within ten days I should be picking.The east coast also got hit pretty hard by late blight. One thing that made their situation worse was Bonnie Plant Farm. They are a large plant wholesaler who ships to all the big box stores. They sent out truck loads of tomato plants that were infected with blight up and down the east coast. This time of year the wholsale price for a twenty pound box of tomatoes out east goes for about 20 bucks,this year its over 40 already.
The other thing thats going around right now is powdery mildew on squash and cucumber plants. This is also caused by the wet,cool nights.
Its been a rough year for some crops,but others are really loving all the rain weve gotten. Its been good for flowers.Anybody else having trouble with tomatoes?

John,

I'm having major problems with some of my tomato plants- leaves turn yellow ( bottom ones first) , then dry to brown crumbly, then the whole plant goes. It's only affecting certain varieties so far . I thought from descriptions that it might be Vermiculum Wilt (sp?) and the plants affected might be the ones that were not resistant. But now I'm wondering if it was late blight...

I am now officially the only person who can not grow squash. The couple of plants I had last year ( zucchini, crookneck and pumpkin) all succumbed early in the season. So this year I planted from seed in self-watering pots with new potting soil. They did really well for a while, then dropped their baby squash and finally wilted away. I think I am the only gardener in the country who has to BUY squash from the Farmer's Market, instead of Ding-Dong ditching it at neighbor's doors.

On the other hand, my oregano came back from the ice storm as a small bush and I'm knee-deep in rosemary. And those Black Krim tomatoes you recommended are FANTASTIC!

Deb