Help For Tomatoes With Brown Spots

Question: My tomato plants lower limbs are turning brown, otherwise the
plants look healthy with blooms and small tomatoes. I am doing nothing different
as I have always done as far a fertilizer and water. Can you help me with this
and what I can do?

Answer:
It sounds like Early Blight which is a fungal disease that occurs early in the season. There are several diseases that affect tomatoes and they occur for different reasons which can vary from year to year. So, while you may not have had problems last year, that does not guarantee that the next year will be the same even if you are doing the same thing. For one thing, we've had a lot of rain and cloudy days which will always promote fungal disease. It is important to mulch your tomatoes well for several reasons, one of them being that it will help prevent soil-borne disease from splashing up onto the plants when it rains. Also, do not work around the plants when they are wet since you yourself can be a disease vector by touching and spreading it. It's a good idea, if you have the room for it, to plant the tomatoes in a different spot each year since diseases will build up in the soil from year to year.

Once you have the diseases, there is not a lot you can do but here's a few things that can help: Remove the affected branches right away when you see them, mulch the plants, do not water in the evening and try not to overhead water the plants. Instead water only over the root area. Increase air circulation in the area if possible by removing non-essential plants and weeds that might be crowding the tomatoes. You can try Serenade Disease Control an organic spray for diseases. It is better as a preventive than a curative, but it will probably slow the progression of the disease and help prevent the start Septoria leaf spot and late blight, two other tomato diseases that are prevalent. Lastly, if you smoke make sure not to do so near the tomatoes and wash your hands before handling the plants. Tobacco carries a disease that can easily jump to tomatoes.

-Tina Mast, Communications Director

Plant a Row For the Hungry

We're headed towards that bountiful season of squash, tomatoes, and other summertime veggies. If you have a tendency to grow more than you can consume, consider donating the surplus to your local food bank or soup kitchen. You can also plan to plant an extra row or section of fruits and veggies and donate all the produce grown there. Want to go an extra step? Get with your gardening neighbors and have a small neighborhood Plant a Row for the Hungry campaign! The Plant a Row for the Hungry is a public service program of the Garden Writers Association. Since 1995, over 14 million pounds of produce providing over 50 million meals have been donated by American gardeners. For more information, visit the Plant a Row for the Hungry webpage.

- Tina Mast, Communications Director

Track Your Garden Online with myfolia!

Here's a fun new widget for the computer or iPhone, you can track your garden's growth and progress through the website myfolia.com. Beyond being a handy online garden journal, it also allows you to use its timeline function in order to track the progress of each of your plants or crops as well as interact with other online gardeners. Let us know if you try it out and what you think!

-Tina Mast, Communications Director

Working Color Into the Garden

A customer asked me this question yesterday,"Do I have to plant the same flowers everwhere? I feel like my garden is all green, green, green right now, and someone told me to plant flower but that I had to plant a lot of them everywhere for it to look right? Do I have to do that?"

"Absolutely not," I said, "You're talking to a nurseryperson and we're the Original Plant One of Everything type of gardener. The thing is there is an element of truth there about planting more than one of something, and it's that weaving a color throughout the garden will make the effect more cohesive and will pull it all together. Now, do you have to plant 20 of the same thing to achieve that effect? No! Take me, for example, I like plants with burgundy foliage. Do I plant 50 of the same burgundy-leafed heuchera around the garden. Nope. But, I look for other plants with the same color in them: loropetalum, purple wood spurge, coleus, alternanthera, etc. in order to bring that color through the garden without having to plant the same thing. So, just think of it that way and you can have variety without ending up with a complete hodge-podge in your garden."

-Tina Mast , Communications Director

Why the Phrase "Excavate the Root Collar" is Important if You're Planting

Sounds technical but it really isn't. The "root collar" is the part of a wood tree or shrub where the trunk meets the beginning of the roots. It's an important area because if it's planted too deep or a lot of mulch or debris rests against it, the plant can get stem rot and actually die from it. Death by mulch. That can kill a tree?? Sounds implausible but it's true!

So, if you don't plant the plant too deep, no problem, right? NOT necessarily. If the plant was grown in a container, it may have had soil or mulch added over the roots. The roots may have responded by growing up PAST the root collar into this area. Then, when you plant and make the soil from the pot even with the surrounding soil, something that you are always told to do, guess what? You planted it too deep! Unless, that is the root collar was already exposed when you planted it.

What to do? Check before you plant. You may have to actually excavate the area around the root collar. This may involve merely brushing away excess soil and/or mulch. Or, this may mean you actually cut away portions of the rootball. This actually seems more brutal than it is and the plant will be fine. The plant will be very happy you did that, in fact. A pruning saw works well for this or a very sharp knife.

So, now you know. Go forth and plant thy trees and shrubs...and don't forget the pine bark soil conditioner in your clay soils!

New Device Allows Plants to Twitter

Forget about whether it's weird for you to talk to your plants (it's not, they like it) but what about your plants talking back? Well, we're one step closer with a new device called Botanicalls which lets your plants send you Twitter messages when they're thirsty (or, conversely, want you to slack off the overwatering, you worrywart).

Check it out:

http://www.reuters.com/article/smallBusinessNews/idUSTRE52U42B20090331

Sir Walter Wally don't know jack!

You just can't trust a groundhog to forecast the weather. I don't care if it's going to snow three more times this winter, I can still tell that spring is on its way. All I have to do is wait for the Okame cherries to bloom. And they have just exploded into gorgeous clouds of pink.

Every year we get tons of phone calls about these lovely specimens on Durant Road. Most people are more familiar with the bright white blooms of Yoshino cherries or the puffy, pink blooms of the Kwansan cherries, so the early-blooming Okames confuse the heck out of them. But, here at Homewood, we've known and loved Okames for years.

Also on our list of favorite, not-well-known bloomers is the Cornelian Cherry Dogwood (Cornus mas) that lights up the nursery courtyard each February like it did last year...

and this year

And I can't leave out the Golden Paperbush (Edgeworthia) whose furry silver buds tease us all winter at the tip of each branch, then open right about now to fill the air with a light, honey-like fragrance.

That groundhog in his hole just doesn't know what he's missing.

Christina, Assistant Nursery Manager