Clover blog

Question: "How do you deal with black fungus disease? It seems this nasty disease keeps on killing my tomatoes"

Answer:

My grandfather grew tomatoes in Poland, where black fungus was
just as much of a problem as it is for you. Often, farmers could lose
entire crops to the disease if they made a mistake.

The way he dealt with this problem was by applying some pretty
serious measures to keep everything sterile the whole time. Some of
which I talk about.

(Keep in mind, these measures help protect your tomatoes from many
diseases, not just black fungus… if you practice this you'll have healthier plants)

1. They used to STEAM the earth before using it. This was
done by pumping scolding hot steam into the green-house and into the
earth through pipes to kill all bacterial life.

2. Then, the earth would sit for 2-3 weeks so that new life could
begin to grow in it, hopefully, with any disease killed off by this
time.

3. Then they would apply the fertilizer and let it sit with the
earth for a week to let it de-acidify and allow even more micro life
to form in the earth for the tomatoes.

4. Only then, did they plant the tomato seedlings into the earth.

Now, that's just the first part of the process - afterwards,
everything was kept as sterile as possible. For instance, no
children, animals were allowed in the greenhouse, no shoes were worn
in the green-house. There was constant ventillation of the greenhouse
to keep the air from being stale.

(Okay, I agree, you should allow children in a greenhouse, just
don't let them run around licking and touching all the plants, hehe)

Also, instead of growing the tomatoes on wooden sticks or poles, he
used sterilized string or fishing string. Wood tends to absorb
moisture, rot, and can quickly create the environment for disease.

You would be amazed just how these variables change the probability
of your tomatoes catching disease :)

5. Keep in mind, the most important part here is tomato pruning, I
disagree with your friends who say it would take 10 years for it to go
away, you can still grow tomatoes without the disease.

The biggest reason your tomatos catch the "plegue" is because they
are poorly ventillated, and/or grown outdoors. In these areas where
the plegue is rampant, its the best idea to grow them in a
green-house.

If the tomatoes are properly pruned, the tomatoes will breathe
1,000% more freely, and therefor, you reduce the risk of them getting
the disease dramatically.

If they are not pruned, old air getstrapped underneath and around the "bushy", plant, the air goes
"stale", and your tomatoes grow slowly… as the temperature drops at
night, this air turns to moisture around the tomato stem… and now
you have a big wet plant with stale musty air around it, the water and
air drips/moves down the stem to the very bottom, where now there is a
perfect environment for a disease to spread it's wings and thrive.
Moist, Wet, Warm(protected from the sun by the giant canopy of
un-pruned leaves during the day)

That's my two cents on it :) hope it helps! My grandfather grew
tomatoes year after year in a place where lots of people lost their
plants to the black fungus, but to date, he didn't lose a single
tomato to the disease in his green-houses.

Organic gardening has increasingly become an important part of the curriculum in schools around the world. Teachers at every grade level find themselves teaching it to students, and sometimes being called on to give a speech to a group of parents. As a career educator and principal, I know the difficulty of opening up time for speech preparation, and offer this organic gardening speech for your use. Feel free to edit it to fit your needs.

Organic Gardening Speech

How selfish are you? On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, how selfish would you rate yourself? If you are the least bit selfish, you might be interested in organic gardening.

An organic gardening speech might seem more appropriate coming from a Home Economics teacher, but I am just selfish enough that I love organic gardening. I want to share that love with you and with your children.

Imagine

I want you to come with me, in imagination, to a time and place before the Industrial Revolution. The year is 1707. It is late summer. We find ourselves walking the streets of a small town. Houses are spaced well apart for privacy. Land stretches out behind each house. As we look, we notice that much of that land is taken up by gardens. Here and there, we see both adults and children actively engaged in gardening. The plants are beautiful.

You call to one of the adults and ask what they use to make the garden so lush. A broad smile breaks, and through the smile come the words, "Feed the soil, and the soil will feed the plants."

You shake your head. Poor people. Too bad they don't know about that miracle combination of chemicals you saw advertised on TV last week. That's the easy way to grow spectacular plants!

Dinner

The organic gardener invites us to join them for the evening meal, and we accept. At dinner, we join in the prayer of thanks, and then watch in amazement as the children, one after another, begin eating fresh vegetables.

You yourself are not that fond of vegetables, but you politely take a small serving of each. You bite into a leaf of steamed cabbage, and your eyes open wide in amazement. It is sweet – twice as sweet as the cabbage you buy at your local market! You watch a small child fill his mouth with dark green kale, and shudder. There's a small spoonful of the nasty vegetable on your own plate, and you pick at it, putting a single small leaf in your mouth. Amazing! It, too, is twice as sweet as any kale you ever ate. The same seems true of every vegetable on the table. You decide that if your supermarket vegetables were this good, you would eat a lot more of them.

Our imaginary trip ends at that dinner table, and we return to the present.

Organic Gardening's Benefits

Organic gardening has many benefits. If you are completely selfish, you will want those benefits for yourself. If you are unselfish, you will want those benefits for your family. Let me give you just three of organic gardening's benefits.

1. Taste: Organic gardening has been proven to produce tastier fruits and vegetables. A Hong Kong study measured Brix levels, the percentage of sugar in plant juices, using produce from organic gardening and from non-organic gardening. The results showed that organic gardening produced produce that was 2 to 4 times as sweet as that produced by non-organic gardening. Sweeter fruits and vegetables are tastier, and easier to eat, whether you are a young person or an adult. Organic gardening helps us eat better by providing tastier fruits and vegetables.

2. Nutrition: Organic gardening has also been found to provide nutritionally superior produce. Virginia Worthington, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, compared the composition of vegetables grown simultaneously under different farming conditions. Her work included 41 studies with 1,240 comparisons of 35 vitamins and minerals. Worthington found that organic gardening produced vegetables and fruits that were higher in most minerals and vitamins than those from non-organic gardening. Not only that, organic gardening produce was lower in potentially harmful nitrates, which result from nitrogen fertilizers. Dr. Worthington concluded that produce from organic gardening is nutritionally superior. You and your family will enjoy better health with fruits and vegetables from organic gardening. (Effect of Agricultural Methods on Nutritional Quality: A Comparison of Organic with Conventional Crops, Virginia Worthington MS, ScD, CNS, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1998, Alternative Therapies, Volume 4, 1998, pages 58-69)

3. Exercise: Finally, organic gardening offers you and your children regular daily exercise in the outdoors. Organic gardening helps you build muscles, especially important core muscles. Organic gardening gets you into the sunlight where you can absorb essential vitamin D. Organic gardening is a great stress management tool. Organic gardening gives you an outlet for creativity. It provides satisfaction as you see your work produce useful fruits, herbs, and vegetables.

We could talk about the aesthetic pleasures of organic gardening – how beautiful that garden might become. We could talk about how you can save money with organic gardening – growing your produce instead of purchasing.

Finally, we could talk about how important it is for our children to learn about organic gardening, to embrace it as the way to better health, and to practice it with school, home, and community gardens.

An organic gardening speech could go on for hours, but I'm going to stop here, hoping that I have whetted your appetite enough that you will seek out more information on organic gardening.

Helpful Tip for Speech-givers

A few large bowls of beautiful organic produce can be set on the platform or around the room to help visual learners picture organic gardening.

Unless you plan to hire a professional landscaping company, you will need to have the right equipment in order to produce the results you desire. Whether you are a novice or a professional in the landscaping field, you are going to need to purchase landscaping equipment in order to get the jobs that you want done completed properly. So, just what kind of landscaping equipment do you need to succeed?

There are many different types of landscaping equipment offered, and so it is vital that you take time to learn about these tools in order to be fully satisfied in the end, so that you can get the best value and worth for your money. From the variety of different types of equipment on the marketplace, there are a few fundamental necessities you will have to get started with most landscaping tasks and projects around your house.

The equipment you'll need depends on the layout of your yard and which elements you have incorporated, or hope to incorporate, into your landscaping. If you have a moderately small lawn, a push mower may be suitable for your needs. But if you have a large lawn, you may need a rider lawn mower. In many case, lawn mower or push mower is almost a given, because even the smallest attempt at a beautiful lawn will require that the grass be cut neatly.

If you intend to add a lot of landscaping elements in your lawn, you may want to consider getting a trimmer for the grass around the elements because most mowers are unable to get close enough to keep the edges tidy. New gardeners often find that some of the most inexpensive and small hand tools are the most useful pieces of landscaping equipment. These hand tools include spades, hoes, clippers, trowels, and cultivators.

Besides the common purchases listed above, there are many other pieces of equipment that you will find useful as well. For instance, appropriate attire is required for landscaping. You may want to find yourself some coveralls and a good pair of gloves for working in the dirt. There are other tools such as long-handled shovels, leaf rakes, bypass pruners, etc. that will come in hand while you work on your landscape as well.

Where to find the landscaping equipment

There are many different locations available that offer landscaping equipment. All of the major home improvement stores offer wide selections of the various types of landscaping equipment. One of the most popular and more well-known options is A to Z Equipment Rentals & Sales. The company is an excellent choice for many reasons. You can lease a piece of landscaping equipment if you only need to use it for a short period of time, or you can buy it if you desire. Also, they are a very old company which has established an incredibly respected reputation over the years and their service is worthy of your business.

A to Z Equipment Rentals & Sales also offer the most complete collection of power landscaping equipment and they have three centrally located stores and a website as well, in order to make your shopping process as easy and convenient as possible. Some of the landscaping equipment that they offer includes that of the following: aerators, blowers, brush clippers, chain saws, earth augers, engines, hedge trimmers, ladders, lawn edgers, lawn tractors, lawn vacs, line trimmers, power rakes, reel motors, rotary mowers, riding mowers, sprayers, stump grinders, tillers, tractors, trenchers, and weed mowers.

Another option is Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse is a lesser known but still worthy company. Thecompany was established in 1914, and since that time continues to look to the future and yet has never forgotten its roots. Rittenhouse earnestly guarantee to continue to deliver that of the highest quality landscaping equipment, parts, and accessories coupled with superior customer service.

Your local hardware store may also be a good selection as well, depending on where you live. If you are an Internet shopper, you can also find many landscaping equipment websites that can ship different types of landscaping equipment right to your door. The choice is really up to.

Regardless of where you actually decide to shop for your landscaping equipment, you should keep in mind that the most important thing is that you should always have fun working on your landscape. Take the proper time and consideration so that you can have the best quality and worth in the end.