Garden warnings in the area.

I am reading the area paper on line and guess what I see.... Garden warnings for the area for downy mildew and late blight. What? So I start to research it online. Sure enough I think one of my containers has late blight. Late blight is what  caused the Irish potato famine in the 1850's.... The crop disease that brought my great great (great?) grandmother to this country!!!

Ok I tell myself calm down find out what to do to fix it. One of the first pages I find talks about destroy the infected plants  to save my crop.... Ok I might have to do that for one container but all my plants??? Not a happy camper.  But I not sure if the yellow and brown spots on my leaves are downy mildew or late blight.  I look some more.....  The picture show a brown spot on the stem.... I go outside and look not sure don't see any.

I find many sites that advise me to buy a copper fungicide. I not too sure I want to do that I am trying to grow food to keep the pesticides off my families dining table.  I find a site that offers some organic remedies.  Yea! My plants don't look like that but I will do a couple of the organic pesticide ideas seeing how they are easy enough to do.

Compost tea

I have a bucket of water that I will let sit for a day. I have city water and yes I can filter it but still like to let it sit for a day to get rid of chloride.
Early in the morning I will get some compost and place it in a cloth bag. A cotton sock or you can use a  pillow case if you want to make a lot of the compost tea.
Let it steep for 24 hours. Spray after straining (if needed) Again early in the morning.

or make a spray out of household items:

1 gallon of Water
1 tablespoon baking soda
2 drops dishwashing liquid
1 tablespoon oil. You can use vegetable oil.

So tomorrow morning I  be checking my plants for brown area on the stems. Picking off the leaves that have brown leaves on them. Placing them in a dark colored bag and tying closed so it doesn't infect all my plants.....  let that sit out away from my other plants in the bright sun. They might end up in the drive way... so the dog doesn't scent the bag to mark his territory... I could just see it!!!


A ounce  of prevention is worth a pound of  cure!!

Plus I have compost to make compost tea and you never know what the wet spring and the hot humid summer will bring...........

So I am guessing  too that the EWG Shopper's Guide to Pesticides or known as the Dirty Dozen will include tomatoes, potatoes, squashes,and cucumbers after this....