Calling Tucson/Southern Arizona Gardeners

[flyingbrass]

I was bad about not keeping something growing in all my beds year round. I meant to, but I didn't know what to use cheaply for a cover crop and didn't get around to doing it. If nothing else, the roots help break up the soil and add some biomass.

As far as iron deficiency symptoms on some crops, could your soil ph be a factor? Our soil is alkaline, and so is our water. That's why I added some soil sulfur this year. I gather it's probably not a bad idea to make mixing in some sulfur a regular habit.

I'll try to check with some local Starbucks shops to see if I can get coffee grounds.

[tuk50]

Yeah, I think your dead on. We use well water for irrigation.. I use 5lbs of sulfur over the whole 2000sq ft each spring before planting.. it seems to really help the bean production for some reason, but I can't tell there is any difference in anything else except that for some reason, just as the weather starts turning hot in May is when the onion and garlic leaves start looking a bit off. So I top dress a little bit of greensand and they seem to always level off and I see greening before harvest usually at the end of May. Other than coloring there seems to be no damage to the size of bulbs or flavor.
I read where Sulfur acts as an antifungal and that it keeps the mycorrhizae levels down, so this year I thought I might not use it except in the bean rows and see if the no till will help the tomatoes with higher levels of the m. Also, the volume of coffee grounds I'm using this year should help the ph a bit over time. In spite of all this the main reason of no till is to see if it slows down the rkn's, I'm finding some varieties of tomatoes are violently attacked by them. I'm not planting the dwarfs that were developed here this year because of the nine varieties that I tried every last one of them had deformed roots except for Sleeping Lady and it just doesn't like the intense heat.. its not that they were any different than a lot of other verieties, but not worth the space for amount of production. The only tomatoe I've found in the last three years to not have one knot on the roots is Susy, a tomato I found here on Knapps site that is fantastic against disease or rkn's. and seems to thrive in the heat. A few others that have done fairly well are Antonovka, Celebrity and I'm trying some from the University of Hawaii, this year one called N-63. Hawaii seems to have a big problem with rkn's as well and all their vegetables developed at the UofH has rkn resistance developed in them.
As for ground cover in the winter.. I found annual rye will sprout even in november here after the first frost, its cheap for seed at walmart or other discounters.

[flyingbrass]

Re: RKN's, planting heavily (full coverage) with marigolds (certain kinds being most favorable), is supposed to help. I'd sure try using them as a cover or rotating crop if RKN's were a problem. Thankfully, I haven't had to deal with that.

Lately I've become more interested in the soil food web. I bought a decent air pump for brewing compost tea, and have been researching that pretty hard. I've made a couple batches so far. I dragged out my dad's old microscope to watch the brew's progression. Now that my order of cover slips has arrived I'll be able to go beyond 100X.

Due to an unexpected cold snap, I planted my bigger tomatoes on March 1 instead of earlier as planned. I'm beginning to conclude that there isn't much benefit to planting extra early. For here, the beginning of March is about right.

I bought a roll of yellow duct tape at the dollar store and made little flags on bamboo skewers. Smeared them with Vaseline. They are full of trapped aphids. I've been spraying with neem oil every 4-7 days. So far, so good, though despite the neem oil aphids are still pestering my young pepper plants as usual.

I bought some bars of Kirk's castile soap at Walmart and have been experimenting with the concentration, working up from the low end, to make insecticidal soap for the peppers.

Tomato plants seem to kill aphids, as they are loaded with dead ones. Aphids on my tomatoes aren't a concern. Whiteflies are a different story, which is the reason for the yellow flags and neem oil.

A few tomatoes, the largest about grape size, have set on my Sophie's Choice plants. The other tomatoes are growing well and looking healthy. Knock on wood.

How are others faring?

[flyingbrass]

I meant to ask if anyone manages to keep composting worms alive and healthy through the summer heat here in outside bins. I've searched a lot, but haven't found anything definitive, such as "Yes, it works, but do this..."

I don't really want a worm bin inside the house.

[tuk50]

I've got two worm compost bins ... one in the shed attached to my greenhouse on the cement floor with no heating or cooling ... it has done fine the last two years with 20deg low and 111high over the last two years. The one in the house was done as a control to see how they compared .. the only difference so far is the one outside needs a bit more water added every couple of months in the heat, but the one inside doesn't need watering at all. The inside one gets my morning coffee grounds each day which has a lot of moisture in them, so that may be the difference. I started them for both fishing bait and making compost tea.. I convinced myself last year that the worm tea:
2 cups worm compost
2 tablespoons kelp
2 tablespoons molasses
5 gallons water
bubbled for two days makes a tea that will fight disease and furnish nutrients.. I'm going to try and drench one tomato row every couple of weeks this summer and see if it will help with the rkn problem. I grow different varieties of marigolds every year along a tomato row and as far as I can tell it doesn't make a difference. The horsemanure compost and rye cover crop grown each winter seems to do the most good. I'm having the best luck, simply growing varieties that aren't bothered by them as much as others.
Its funny mentioning the microscope .. my grandkids are homeschooled and each Tuesday they work in the garden with me and we are going to try and get some rkn's on a slide this summer.. we found some good images on google to compare with what we find.

[kevinrs]

those might not be dead aphids on your tomatoes, aphids molt(4 times in their life cycle), leaving their exoskeletons around as decoys for predatory wasps apparently.

[flyingbrass]

Tuk, IIRC, you're at 3000+ feet elevation. It's not unusual for my spot here at 1150 feet to have highs pushing 120 in the summer. I don't know how much that difference would make. Apparently there is a commercial worm grower here in the valley, so somehow it must work. I don't know how they have things set up.

I don't have room inside this small house for a worm bin. I don't have a garage. If outside, the best I could do is keep the bin shaded. Maybe something in ground that I could keep covered would be best. I don't know.

Compost tea can get somewhat complicated. Teas aren't the same, and some advice on the net isn't very good. Your recipe seems within the bounds of good recommendations I've read elsewhere as long as you are providing enough air and cleaning equipment thoroughly between batches.

Tim Wilson's site (http://microbeorganics.com/) is one of the most informative. He determined the airflow needed to produce adequate dissolved oxygen levels in aerated teas, and provides some percentages of compost, molasses and extras that have worked out well when examined under the microscope and in the lab. There is also a Yahoo group about compost tea. Tim and others hang out there. Dr. Elaine Ingham is apparently the guru of such things.

I'm interested, but not enough to get terribly geeky. Since I have a decent microscope, I'll use it. So far, it's fun. I can't tell you yet what exactly all those things I'm seeing are, but I'm learning. I haven't seen a nematode yet.

Your grandkids are fortunate in being homeschooled.

Re: dead aphids on the tomato plants, I'm pretty sure they are actually dead aphids. IIRC, I've had the occasional tomato plant affected by aphids (leaf damage) in the past, but it's rare. There are even recipes online using tomato leaves to make an aphid-killing spray. Here is one: http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/ri...ato-leaves.htm I should prune my maters and try it, as the soap so far isn't helping.

[flyingbrass]

For tea, I bought an EcoPlus 1 pump. $36 shipped. Ouch. I had a fresh bucket, and a neighbor had recently given me an unopened urine/catheter bag left over from when his mother was under hospice care. I saw the tubing and thought it would come in useful for something, which it has.

To make an aerator that can be thoroughly cleaned by soaking in a bleach or peroxide solution (air stone bubblers can't) I had some 1/2" schedule 40 PVC pipe on hand. I heated using a heat gun and bent into a spiral. I had a threaded end cap in my box of parts, so I heated the end and screwed the cap on. It screws on and off just fine. A threaded adapter would be more upscale.

I drilled air holes in the bottom of the spiral. I spent a grand total of $36 on this. I need to redo the aerator, as I drilled too many 1/16" holes. I thought I was starting on the conservative side concerning the number of holes, but I guessed wrong. PVC pipe is cheap, and making these things is easy, so no big deal.

[flyingbrass]

For what it's worth, blending and soaking tomato leaves, then straining and spraying the resulting juice on my peppers didn't kill aphids. I tried several concentrations and drenched the young aphids on the bottoms of the leaves.

Enough playing with neem oil, soaps, hosing off, etc. I'll buy some more pyrethrin. It works and is what I've eventually resorted to the past 2 seasons. Tomatoes still show no young aphids or damage, only dead adults.

Later in the season aphids aren't a problem on my pepper plants, but they sure put a hurt on them early on.

I finally saw a nematode in a sample of compost tea. Neat. Nematodes are big game in the microscope, sort of like stumbling across an elephant when you're looking for little bugs. Seemed to be a good guy, and I enjoyed watching him. A web search turns up pictures/drawings of the various kinds of nematodes.

Neighbors have irrigation water coming in soon. I'll grab a bucket and try a batch of tea using that to compare with tap water. I'd like to get some fresh worm castings, as I suspect they'd have more and better stuff than my homemade compost.

[flyingbrass]

Am I a thread killer? Maybe someone is still listening.

Some of my plants are doing great, and a few are/were stunted. The poor ones didn't seem to have any viral issues. Funny how two plants of the same kind, grown from the same seed, planted next to each other, can vary so much.

I'm trying Yellow Brandywine for the first time this year. The seedlings grew like crazy, and the lone plant I put in the ground has continued that trend. It is already 6' tall, and is producing very well -- over 8 lbs. of tomatoes from it to date, and more are growing. The largest was over a pound.

As usual, my plants are now getting blight or whatever crud that always strikes. I'd like to know what exactly it is. So far, only inside bottom leaves are affected, but I know how this will progress.

Today I harvested 35 lbs. of tomatoes. I'm up to about 70 lbs. total so far. That's with 12 "big" plants, a few of which are stunted and not worth a crap -- one I already pulled, and will remove another soon -- and 4 Sophie's Choice.

Those 4 Sophie plants look awful as usual, with horribly rolled leaves, but they produce. They are responsible for a little over 29 lbs. of the 70ish lb. harvest so far, and they taste good.

Here are some pictures. Most of what is on the table is today's harvest.

[tuk50]

Beautiful harvest.. its making my mouth water.. LOL.
My plants are just now blooming well and setting small green maters. Just harvested my onions and garlic this week and have been preparing the same beds to receive the sweetpotato slips. The turnips and radishes are just about ready to harvest the seeds with my leeks and onions still needing a while longer before I can get the seeds from them. With my temps here, this is the first year in a while that I have been able to get the tomatoes and peppers in the ground about the third week of march and did not have a killing frost after that. For the past few years there has always been a killing frost the first or second week of April. Yesterday we made a giant compost pile out of horse manure, a few bales of old moldy hay and straw plus household scraps and the spring trimmings off the fruit trees, weeds and a couple wheelbarrow loads from the chicken coups, then covered it with a tarp to hold the moisture in. It wound up about 5ft tall and about 10ft long.. by January it should be about 1/3 the size it is now and ready to use then. I pay my grandson 10bucks and hour to run the tractor, so he helps to remind me when it is time to turn it every month... LOL.

[flyingbrass]

Sounds like you'll have some excellent compost that won't suffer from lack of being turned.

I have a small sweet potato plant growing that came up from last summer. I don't know how many others I've pulled out in the meantime -- dozens. Sweet potatoes here are more resilient than regular weeds.

Speaking of weeds, some time ago you mentioned you were considering trying alfalfa as a cover crop in your garden. Have you? I'm still half afraid I'd end up with a permanent alfalfa patch, but on the other hand alfalfa should be good for the soil.

[tuk50]

Permanent patch is my concern also... I did get the seeds and will probably try to start some this fall.. right now I'm using a couple of bales of alfalfa for my mulch, I should of planned ahead and bought the bales in the fall since it is so expensive in the spring. This past winter I used winter rye and am very pleased with it. I have already cut it twice at about a foot tall and the heat is starting to turn it brown, so I've just been walking it down ... a couple of years ago I planted about a 6ft row of vetch in the spring and it never got over about a foot tall and the heat killed it before it went to seed, so I will probably not use it again..

[dice]

You could try this for an alfalfa cover crop that you do not
want to persist:
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-7208-su..._alfalfa_seeds

[tuk50]

dice, thanks, I was not aware of an annual alfalfa... I will mix it 50/50 with winter rye and try it this fall. It may handle my mild winters and if not then I will replant it in the spring to see how it works for me.