Nah, I wasn't a die-hard about the cukes, squash and melons. Only took me a couple of years of bug battles to give up trying to grow those. Now, we plant a few 'sacrificial' squash plants at the school just to show the kids how many bugs and caterpillars come to them, and of course to illustrate the powdery mildew lesson. At school, it's what we can teach, not how much we harvest that counts. You should see the kids go nuts when we show them how to find the bean leaf rollers! No need for spraying when you have 20 kids hunting down your bugs and caterpillars.

The kicker was that even when I DID harvest some, they really weren't that much better than what I could buy, so that became my bench mark. If I can grow it, and it tastes better than what I can get in the store, I grow it. Tomatoes, all colors of peppers and beans, white eggplant that look like eggs, cabbage, broccoli (the Star!!) and the pretty colorful cauliflowers, plus this year I'm trying different colors of carrots as well. I also like to grow all the weird colors of veggies that you can't buy very often.

Just got some seeds today from Tomato Grower's Supply, Sweet peppers called "Sunset" that start out ivory, and shade through yellow and orange to red.

It's the cardinals that go after my tomatoes, occasionally. I just got a few yards of bridal veil netting and that deterred them just fine. It helps that my two bird feeders are right next to the veggie area. If it's too hard to get at the maters, they go back to seeds happily.

I even managed to grow celery one year, although it does take a long time. It was delicious, and really, REALLY green! When I first harvested some, I still had store bought celery in the fridge, and it looked like "ghost" celery beside the fresh stuff. Insipid pale green, you just know there's no 'good stuff' in it.

Elaine - I was thinking of netting, too, to discourage the birdies and bugs!

Well, I am one of those people that don't give up easily! I love a good challenge, so I am determined to get good tomatoes from a harvest. I grew some Chinese cukes that were rather long. I don't remember the cultivar name now, but got 3 nice ones, until the beetle larvae found them.

The students at my school love the caterpillars. Our garden is a butterfly garden. And ladybugs, too. No edible veggies or fruit!

I love the Stone Soup book and have read it to my classes in the past. Gardening is such a great theme to teach!

Becky, I'm with you. I'm not giving up just yet. I admit the thought crossed my mind after this summer, but I'll try the winter gardening and see what happens. Besides I already have the tomato and pepper plants ready to go into Earthboxes. I may even try cucumbers again ... I got a few in the Spring before the mildew or whatever it was got the vines. And since I had moderate success with broccoli and cauliflower, I'll definitely do those again. Now I'm wondering about Erika ... hopefully she doesn't throw a monkey wrench into our plans.

I think Erika will be a tropical depression hitting Florida ....and parts of Florida (like my area) need the rain. Not worried. I just hope it doesn't go over into the Gulf and build up into a serious hurricane like Katrina did 10 years ago. These storms are unpredictable.

The latest guess is that it will be on the west side of FL as a Tropical Storm or perhaps depression. Unfortunately this area was hit with a lot of rain in July and early August. Over 11" at the Tampa Airport with flooding in parts of the 3 county area. We're already saturated and that is one of the concerns for this area (Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco Counties). I am only a few miles from the Gulf, so I'm sure I'll be hit with high winds and the torrential rain. can't wait! ... NOT!

I can't even get my tomatoes into an earthbox before blight hits

What causes "blight"? I don't know if I have ever had that problem.

Blights are bacterial diseases that infect the plant through soil. Mary, it's very early for you to be seeing any blight in those small plants! Did you buy them already started or start your own? I'm thinking the soil may have been infected when you got them. If you started with sterile potting soil, and grew your own, well that's amazingly quick for them to be infected.

If you bought transplants, and are thinking to buy more, try this first (or treat new ones as soon as you get them home) - douse the pot with a Hydrogen peroxide solution once a day for a couple of days. You can buy a bottle of H2O2 at the drugstore for a couple of bucks, and you dilute it about 32/1 before treating.

It's a hit-or-miss thing but sometimes the plant still dies and sometimes it recovers! Worth a try. It almost never works on a big, established plant that gets hit by blight. Just too much plant tissue affected all at once and by the time you see it, it's too late. But I've used it on other plants that get hit by sudden blights, like some basils last year, and it worked wonderfully.

Elaine, I did start them myself in new potting mix. Another reason I'm so disgusted by it. No way it should be showing up in the seedlings like that.

Doing some research online I see there's a product called Serenade. Bayer has a version. Supposedly it will control a lot of diseases. I'm sure I won't find it locally, but I may order from Amazon. I just don't know how much more effort I'm willing to put in trying to get a decent tomato. I tried Daconil on the spring plants and couldn't tell that it helped at all. Have you tried either of these? Supposedly Serenade is different than other fungicides and the reviews on Amazon are positive for the most part.

Recommend you just start some more seeds, if these plants don't make it Mary. Seeds are cheap, and chemicals are expensive.

I had some Serenade a few years ago, and it's a very good product, and registered for use on edibles. But to be honest with you I stopped using it because I couldn't stand the smell of it. It's also really expensive. Please be careful what you treat your plants with, that they are ok for use on edible plants? I don't think Daconil is something I'd want to ingest. Systemics of any kind get into the plant's system and can transfer to the fruit.

Other than the peroxide douse, (very seldom) the only chemicals I use on any of my edibles are Bt, soapy water and baking soda/water sprays. Blight is not a fungus, it's a bacteria so a fungicide isn't going to work anyway.

Haven't had any serious problems except at the end of the season when I was pretty much expecting the plants to die off anyway. It's mysterious to me how your soil got infected - were the pots sitting on the ground? Could something like weed killer or a lawn treatment spray have blown onto them to cause the leaf burn and spotting?

Here's the Wikipedia page on the active ingredient in Daconil. Read down the "Toxicity" list. Arg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

At least Serenade is listed as OMRI, so I guess that's something in it's favor. And actually everything I've seen about early blight says it's a fungus and all recommendations are for some kind of fungicide. It's definitely some kind of disease on these plants ... the black spots didn't show up in the photos that much, but they're present as well.

No, the pots were not sitting on the ground ... I had them up on a shelf in that tray until they were big enough to get closer to direct sunlight. I haven't sprayed anything but who knows what has been sprayed around close to me.

I may just give up on the tomatoes for at least this year. I suspect even starting new seeds would result in the same thing.

Thanks for your input. I'm just going to sleep on this for a night or two and then decide what I want to do.

dyzzypyxxy said:Here's the Wikipedia page on the active ingredient in Daconil. Read down the "Toxicity" list. Arg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Yeah, it sounds like Daconil wouldn't be a good choice. oh well ... I've lived this long here in FL without tomatoes I'm sure I can survive a while longer lol.

Hate to see you give up so early in the game, Mary. I'd go buy some transplants at Lowe's or HD and bung them directly into your Earth Box. Don't give up, they really do grow pretty easily. Even your plants may survive, give 'em half a chance.

We had literally buckets of delicious little 'grape' tomatoes from the school garden last year, well into January and February when we had to remove the plants and start new ones because the plants got too big. The only pest we had were the tomato hornworms, which the kids took great delight in picking off by hand (they do wear gloves). No disease problems at all.

What variety were the ones you started from seed? Heirloom varieties are much more susceptible to disease. I always choose hybrids with as many numbers and letters after the name as possible.

Just discovered that I have one 'heat tolerant' tomato that has survived the summer in one Earth Box, although no fruit. I started it late, it did set some fruit but most of it dropped. But it has healthy foliage. I may yet see some tomatoes from it!

Good idea, Elaine, on the hybrids. I may just do that. All of my seedlings are OP and/or heirloom. I know they're not as productive or disease resistant as hybrids so I may have to change my approach on tomato growing. Thanks for reminding me of that! I'll be at Lowe's in the next day or two anyway so I'll see what they have.

Looks like wintersown.org may be getting a lot of seeds from me

I have grown tomatoes in large pots and never seen blight. I do see a lot of insect damage which is what discourages me. And I love using H2O2 (Hydrogen peroxide drops added to my watering can). I also know that tomatoes are heavy feeders. I think that is the other problem I have. Finding a good fertilizer. Would worm castings be a good fertilizer. I have a worm bin and have used the worm compost with amazing success on newly potted plants and with plants going into the ground.

I have great luck with bell peppers, blueberries, and most herbs. But again, they are all grown in pots/containers. I don't know how many of those are susceptible to root knot nematodes here in Florida if I was to grow them in the ground.

Everyone thinks living in Florida is great because of our year round growing conditions, but that is negated by the insects and plant diseases. So it really is a matter of finding the right plants to grow successfully here. I do think heirloom plants are a challenge to grow in FL.

Elaine - Could you please tell me again what three sprays you keep on hand?

Well, I have no idea what's going on here with my tomatoes, but I like Elaine's suggestion about hybrids. I'm definitely going to get a couple of hybrid plants and see how they fair.

I think containers might be more successful here just due to the problems we face. I don't have a choice, so it'll always be containers for me, primarily earthboxes. I do have some peppers in smartpots now and while they are doing OK, it's just that ... OK. Nothing special and the ones in the earthboxes earlier did much better. Of course, the ones in smartpots were started much later than the earthbox so perhaps weather played a part as well.

I've also used hydrogen peroxide diluted in water when watering seedlings. I'll probably douse the new hybrid plants with it when I get them and hope for the best. I know NewYorkRita posts a lot on another forum and she grows primarily hybrids in NY. I may have to adjust my thinking here if I want any tomatoes at all.

Becky, I use Bt (but not very often now that I've given up on squashes and melons etc.), soapy water solution 1/2tsp. per quart in a spray bottle, and baking soda, same recipe. The soapy water protects from aphids, whiteflies, mites etc. and the baking soda is a preventative for fungal leaf infections. (it makes the leaf surface inhospitable to spores by raising the pH value). The soap and baking soda solutions do need to be sprayed pretty often, because they rinse off in the rain, but I just keep the bottles out there and grab one or the other whenever I walk through.

The first couple of years we lived here I tried and tried to grow my favorites, Brandywine tomatoes. They were so easy and successful in Utah where we lived before, but I hardly got any fruit from them here before some wilt, disease or fungus would take them out. One day the plant would be looking pretty good, the next I'd come out and it would be standing there with all the leaves hanging down.

Another Master Gardener clued me in to the disease resistance that is bred into the newer hybrids. Suddenly I was harvesting lots of great tomatoes again. You can say what you like about heirlooms tasting good, I really don't think they're all that much better than some of the hybrids I've grown, and the hybrids survive and bear a nice harvest, too. I even have one, and started the last of its seeds just last week, that is supposed to be resistant to blights. It's called 'Ledgend'.

Elaine - Thank you! I do believe that hybrids are the way to go here in Florida. Many are bred to grow well in our climate and many are also bred to be resistant to certain diseases/fungus. I think it is planting timing and cultivar type that is the trick to getting good edibles here in Florida.

Elaine - Thank you for sharing some of your cultivar names with us. I wouldn't even know where to begin other than trial and error which in itself can discourage one from growing edibles.

Maybe the thread that I SHOULD HAVE STARTED ..... Which cultivars grow best here in Florida? And WHEN do you grow them?

I agree, Becky, the list from Elaine is very helpful. Hopefully I can find a couple of plants at either Lowe's or Home Depot. Then next year I can buy the hybrid seeds that I want to try. I'll wait and see if I can salvage any plants from the ones I started, but I'm not hopeful at this point. No one ever said gardening was easy, right?