P-mac,

I'm glad you decided to stop 'lurking' and start posting so that we know that you are "there". I'm going to try to take your questions one by one and answer them.

You can harvest potatoes any time you choose. Some people dig down and harvest a few "early potatoes" while the potatos are still ping-pong ball size or so, but then leave the rest to get larger. As long as you have active, green growth of potato foliage, the tubers are still enlarging. When then plants turn brown and yellow and begin dying back, that's your signal that you can dig them. It is best to go ahead and dig them when the plants die back because the longer you leave them in the ground after that, the greater the likelihood that water and heat will combine to damage them. Different varieties mature at different rates, which is to say the potato plans begin dying back at that point...the potatoes don't reach a suddenly "ripe" point like tomatoes do. You can harvest them anytime they are a usable size, and the plants tend to dieback between 90-120 days after you planted them. So, different varieties die back at different times.

If your peppers have a fungal issue, you have to spray on a regular basis with a fungicide. If you read the label on the bottle of fungicide, it should tell you the recommended spray interval for peppers. Peppers can suffer from many types of fungal disease, and some of the diseases can defoliate and kill the plants, so it is important to control the disease to the extent that you can.

Once your peppers already have fungal issues, applying corn meal to the soil as a fungal control is not going to be as effective as it would have been at the very beginning of the season when you planted the peppers, because it is not going to "remove" or "cure" the issues in plants already affected. Mulching is always good because it keeps the soil cool which reduces plant stress, and it reduces soil splash, which can carry bacterial and fungi up onto the plant foliage.

Have you figured out which disease your peppers have because some of them are worse than others and some are harder to control than others? I'd do it all....spread corn gluten meal on the ground to try to reduce the incidence of disease in your soil, mulch to keep the disease in the soil and off the plants, and treat the plants with a fungicide. By the way, a good "tonic" for struggling pepper plants is 1 tablespoon of Epsom Salts diluted in one gallon of water. Apply some of this solution to each plant (give each plant enough to soak the immediate root zone of each plant) and you may see a noticeable improvement in the plant's color and behavior within just a few days.

I like pantyhose the best because it is stretchable and expands as the melons expand. You can use netting, but you have to start out with a large enough piece that the melon won't grow into the netting. I haven't seen melons grow into the netting used to support them on a trellis, but I have seem cantaloupes growing on a chicken wire fence grow right into the fence, so I guess it is possible.

Dawn

Thanks so much for all the advice & ideas! I've done everything except the Epson Salt....which I'm going to pick up on the way home!

Paula

Paula,

You're welcome. Good luck with those pepper plants.

Dawn