Year 8 History, Medieval Crop Rotation

I haven't had much response to last week's request for suggestions on crop rotations except for Laurie who plans to grow his Toms in 500mm pots next season because his soil is infested with either Fusarium or Verticillium.  Follow the link if you want more detail on either of these diseases but for our purposes the symptoms are very similar.  Fusarium is more noticeable in warm conditions, Verticillium when it is cool. Both of these fungi enter the plant through the roots and damage the stem of the plant choking off supply of water and nutrient to the foliage causing wilting and eventually plant death.
        
Fusarium wilt symptom and a pic showing damage to the plant stem.
Picture from Plant Pathology on line
A common solution, in fact the ancient solution is to rotate crops.  That is, avoid growing Tomatoes (or Potatoes and possibly Capsicum & Chilli as they are all related) in the same soil year after year.  Laurie has been using a 3 year rotation for his Tomatoes but has found that even this is not enough... I still remember 3 field rotation systems from year 8 history.  'Barney' Rundle made a great deal of this fact, I have no idea why.   Any way the crop rotation idea is that the fungal spores will eventually die after a few seasons if they don't find a host plant to grow and reproduce in.  But spores and seeds are fantastic plant survival agents and can survive terrible conditions for remarkable periods, just look at the wild flower shows in Central Australia (I hear the Todd river is in flood so we should see news reports of the "desert in bloom" in the next few weeks).  As we learned from Mr Rundle the three field system, one year with one crop, one year with another and the the third fallow was both inefficient and eventually unsuccessful in controlling disease.

From my reading most vegie gardening books recommend disease resistant cultivars.  This brings us back to the old question of Heirlooms vs. Hybrids.  Laurie's favourite Tomato is a classic Heirloom, Brandywine.  Half Kilo fruit if you believe him, pink skinned and solid fleshed.  Actually Laurie if you're growing fruit like that why change your system?  From my experience disease resistant varieties only offer a limited defense against heavily infested soil.

Brandywine Tomato pick from tradewindsfruit.comFollowing last week's newsletter note the cracking on the shoulder of this fruit.
Now there is one other method for protecting your garden plants from soil borne diseases: Fumigation.  Yes it is as bad as it sounds.  When we cleared out my grandfather David's garage I found a 4' tall cylinder of  Methyl Bromide.  This is filthy stuff that used to be used to kill every living thing in the soil for commercial vegetable and flower growers.  Clearly Dave had brought some home.  Well you know, he loved his flower beds.  Any way I'm sure Methyl Bromide has been banned altogether now.  Interestingly because potting mix can be "picked up" it can be steam pasteurized killing most harmful organisms but leaving the "media" inoculated with helpful bugs.  This is a bit beyond the home gardener.
So back to Laurie's original suggestion. Grow Tomatoes in big pots.  I think it's a great idea but not cheap.  If you use pots you must use good potting mix and Laurie is proposing pots twice as big as Kerry used at home this year so that's a lot of potting mix.  Of course you will remember that Kerry's 250-300mm pots just weren't big enough to supply enough nutrient or water to advanced Tomato plants.  And since we're talking about crop rotations the potting mix needs to be replaced for next year's crop or the benefit will be lost and don't forget that the big pots need to be washed out with disinfectant to ensure that all the fungal spores are gone.

That feels like a lot of reading today, see you next week I've got a great idea about attracting Lady Birds and other insect predators.
Oh and Happy Birthday to Laurie who turns 81 on Wednesday.

The Definitive Pumpkin Solution!

On making pumpkins etc. produce female flowers I learnt from experience that you need to take the ends off the leaders, thus producing more laterals. I discovered this when I had a feral pumpkin that grew in the compost heap years ago. Only had male flowers on 15 foot leaders that were threatening to take over the garden, so I went round the bush with a shovel chopping the "arms" off to about 4 feet. Voila! - laterals covered in female flowers! I seem to remember I got about 20 pumpkins from one vine. So now I'm brutal with them, but make up for it with LOTS of compost and horse manure.Jenny
How good is that!  Thank you Jenny, I'm happy to call that the definitive Cucurbit growing tip.  I'm sure you can't get simple, practical advice like this from a Google search (well, hopefully you can now).

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I also received this question during the week:
"

While we have been eating our own tomatoes for the last month (& they are very tasty), the ones in pots (which were doing OK) have all developed circular splits around the fruit & I don't know how or when it happened. Obviously they can't be fixed & luckily many of them are still edible. I think I probably didn't keep heeding your feeding advice, & will try to do better next year.

As I only have 2 smallish plots (about 2m x 1m each), rotating my crops is a bit of an issue. Can you offer any thoughts?

Deirdre"

Follow this link to the original pic on filkr.com

The concentric splits are unfortunately all too common, along with long radial splits don the sides of Tomato fruit.  This is what we call a disorder, not a disease.  Tomato fruit development responds to varying growing conditions with bursts of growth followed by less active periods, a bit like my son Ben at the moment (fortunately he's not cracking, just stretching).  Some varieties, frequently heirloom varieties are much more prone to this problem than others.  It appears that plants that mature their fruit hidden in the foliage are less susceptible.

Older (50's & 60's I guess) seed catalogues made a big deal over the resistance to splitting and cracking of the latest varieties.  We see much less of this today because it is generally assumed that this won't be a problem with modern hybrids.

As mentioned cracking is not a disease and the plants are perfectly edible as Deirdre has found. The only problem is that the cracks can provide an entrance for a disease infection so the fruit can go off more quickly.  Of course this leads to the old argument over the relative benefits of modern hybrids and their open pollinated predecessors.  Keep in mind the breeders of the Heirloom varieties pretty much ignored anything but flavour, hybrids are often accused of ignoring flavour in the search for the benefits of long storage.

OK, that's part one of Deirdre's question.  How can crops be rotated if there is only a limited space available for growing.  My real expertise is in growing in containers, so this isn't an issue I regularly face.  If you have any good suggestions I would love your feedback.  Please send me an email or leave a comment on my blog and I'll reward feedback with a tray of vegie seedlings (Um, well that's if I can get them to you. Victoria, Australia works).

Tale of the beetle and the chicken

Kerry called me into the garden a few weekends back.  "Look what I've found!"

It's a bit sad, this poor Eggplant is very wilted and not because Kerry has just pulled it out of it's pot.  Look closely at the stem, just above the root ball...

You can clearly see it's withered and black.  Now here's the reason for the Boss's animation, she had already found the culprit...

I couldn't focus the instamatic camera closely enough on the stem to show this but he had channelled a path finally ring barking the plant.  Young beetle here was delivered to a very enthusiastic Harriet (Ben's somewhat mad Wyandotte Chicken.  OK she's very beautiful and charismatic in a chickeny way but still barking) who dispatched it with relish.

So using inverse logic I'm writing to sing the praises of Eggplants and Capsicumsfor that matter.  We make such a fuss over Tomatoes but I just love Eggies and Caps because they are so reliable and much more forgiving than their pomodori cousins.  Our potted Tomatoes that started so promisingly this season suffered badly when we hit hot weather so we have pretty much given up.  The Eggplants (bar one) and Capsicums are doing just fine.

How do I suggest you deal with beetles?  Honestly I think the occurrence is so rare I'd rather lose the odd plant than spray chemicals.  I don't know any easy organic methods for controlling beetles, apart from chooks and they can be more than a little tough on plants that they like.   Interestingly they don't appear to like the flavour of Eggplant but they love Tomatoes, Capsicums and Chillis.   Parasitic waspsare used for beetle control commercially but that involves significant time and skill.  If you know any good, safe and easy beetle controls please let me know.

By the way, I've had so many follow ups about squash and pumpkin producing male flowers only that I have done a little research (please follow the link, it's a great site).  It appears to be quite normal for the plant to produce male flowers first and for the females to follow later, possibly on the lateral branches.  My guess is that the plant is waiting for a sign before it decides to set fruit. This is quite common among flowering plants, put them under some sort of stress and they will respond by reproducing.  If everything's cosy, well fed  and comfortable they will continue to bulk up so that they can be even more productive when their time comes. This might also explain why early fruit shrivel and fall off, no calcium problems (my earlier diagnosis) the plant is just building strength.  I'd love to be more definite but, well...it's a good thing I'm not your doctor "Oh yeah, sorry.  I've changed my mind, you haven't got..."

Happy New Year

Have a look at Catmint's blog.  Great comments on Summer Gardening in Melbourne. Sort of fits with a seasonal theme I've been musing this week.  The change of seasons is a frustrating time for nurserymen... should we be growing and selling Summer flowering varieties (Petunias) or should we make the leap to 'new season' varieties (Pansies & Violas)?  Damned if we do & damned if we don't.  I've taken some whacks over the past few weeks for not having Petunia's but I know I'd lose sales if we don't have Pansies available.
Personally I think the fixation with getting in first has gone too far.  Here's an example.  On Tuesday I dragged myself out of bed to represent Scotsburn at NGIV'sTrade Day, the monthly market day held for retail garden centres and landscape gardeners.  We took along a substantial batch of Gold, African Marigolds.Ok, so they were not quite showing this much flower but they were great plants.  I didn't sell one Marigold to an 'Anglo' nursery person, or florist or landscaper.  But I did sell just about all my Ornamental Capsicum.  Both plants are at the peak of their display season and I know Capsicum are much more fashionable at the moment, but not one Marigold?  Anyway, I sold all the Marigolds. Chinese New Year begins on Valentine's Day this year, 14th February.  New Year celebrations run for 15 days and Gold Marigolds are a symbol of good luck.  We can cheat a little here, in traditional Chinese homes having a flowering plant in the home in the middle of winter  would be very lucky indeed.
I think I'll take a couple of Marigolds home to welcome the Year of the Tiger. In the mean time I'll concentrate on planning so that we will have our Tomatoes ready for sale in the first week of August!