From: boron_elgar@hotmail.com   
      
   On Fri, 23 Jul 2021 07:20:08 -0400, songbird    
   wrote:   
      
      
   >  it's been such a strange year this season that i'm glad to see   
   >anything on the tomato plants at all.  it will be two weeks or   
   >longer yet before we start seeing ripening.  disease pressure   
   >here also is starting off.  i won't spray or pull leaves off or   
   >mulch, i've tried all those approaches and it makes no sense for   
   >me to bother.  the plants all end up looking bad by the end of   
   >the season but they've got fruits and we get results enough and   
   >that is fine for me.  i don't want to use fungicides in general   
   >because all you are really doing is selecting for fungi that   
   >can survive being poisoned and that's not a good thing.  the   
   >best soil community creatures for dealing with fungi are worms   
   >as they are bacteria factories and the bacteria and fungi have   
   >been in competition for millions of years.  i vastly prefer to   
   >let them keep sorting it out.  :)   
   >   
   >  i hope for resistant plants enough instead and in past years   
   >we've had some that have done better than other years.  the   
   >past two years the plants weren't as resistant as the plants   
   >we previously (all are beefsteak varieties).   
      
   Bad year for that cursed wilt. I have switched over a lot of my tomato   
   growing to various cherries to try to let the crop beat out the worst   
   of the wilt.   
      
   I know there is nothing I have tried over the past 35 years that will   
   eliminate it in any natural way. Been there. Done that. Lots of times.   
   The weather seems to have as much bearing on it as anything. And yes,   
   as does variety, but even that varies by the year.   
      
   I save seeds from those varieties that seem to do best and sometimes   
   Mother Nature cooperates the next year or two, and sometimes not.   
      
   The weather has been chaotic enough there that there is some BER on   
   one variety . Again, I find the cherries do not suffer from that in my   
   garden. Maybe just luck.   
      
      
   >   
   >  cucumbers here were always productive and ended up having   
   >more than we could eat or give away.  we decided to not grow   
   >any this year at all as we needed the space for other things.   
      
   Weather had not been kind to the cukes this year, either, except one   
   odd variety of Italian cukes that are the size of a softball.   
      
   https://carosellopugliese.blogspot.com/2020/02/carosello-tondo-b   
   rese-coltivato-nel.html   
      
    Green beans are ok, both the bush and long reds. Nice, yellow   
   peppers, too.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)