Dawn the one bird that causes me the most trouble in the garden is what we call a grackle(sp) around here. They will pull young radishes in the spring. Peck peaches, cherries, apples and tomatoes at they ripen if there isn't something else for them to mess with. A total nuisance. I have never had them peck one that immature before. Thought i had them figured out but now guess they have changed their ways. I enjoy most birds. Sparrows and the grackles are the two I don't really care for. And sparrows don't cause the problems the grackles do. And I'm not a birder so we might be calling them by the wrong name. Basically and off colored blackbird you find around the farm fields and feedlots and my garden!!!! Jay

Jay,

RAIN: Any rain is good, but heavy would have been better than light. I hope more rain finds your place during this cool spell.

LATE BLIGHT: Well, I certainly hope those gardeners who are pruning heavily and trying to salvage a crop out of Late Blight-infected plants know what they are doing. The gardener in me can understand the desire to save the fruit crop, but the practical me thinks it unlikely they'll be successful unless their fruit was near breaker stage when they discovered the LB. I just can's imagine that they can get the tomatoes to ripen without the fruit themselves becoming infected. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I also wonder about how irresponsible it might be to keep those infected plants growing, knowing that they could be shedding spores of infection that will become airborne and spread. Of course, it is hard to know what to do in a case like that....nobody wants to declare their tomato crop dead and gone without harvesting a single tomato and I understand that. I just don't know what I'd do if we had LB here, although our higher temperatures and relative lack of moisture make it very unlikely.

TOMATO MOSAIC: The link won't show for me, but I'm familiar with tomato mosaic virus. I have had instances in the past where I thought a plant or two or three had it. I think it is really hard to diagnose for sure because there's been times I thought I had it, but fed the plants heavily (some might describe it as overfeeding them) and it went away, which pointed to something nutritional or at least physiological instead. I also have had cases where I thought I had it and I went ahead and pulled the plants and tossed them because they were stunted and clearly were not going to produce anything.

Some of 'those people' who say we don't have tomato or tobacco mosaic viruses in home gardens in the US any more need to get out of their ivory towers and visit real gardeners in our hot and steamy part of the world. Just because they don't see it where they live and/or garden doesn't mean we don't see it here. (OK, my rant is over.)

GRACKLES: I do not like these birds at all. We had oodles of them in our suburban neighborhood in Ft. Worth and they were loud and messy and annoying. We don't have them out here in our part of Love County, although some folks in town in Marietta have trouble with them.

We do have the red-wing blackbirds and I like them. We also have crows, and I have developed a genuine affection for them. The crows have become one of our best predator controls in terms of predator birds that try to get our chickens. I put out some cracked corn for the doves and black oil sunflower seeds for the cardinals, and the crows visit that feeding area. Since they are eating here, they've become territorial and chase away hawks, kites, falcons and owls that are flying overhead looking for a tasty chicken to eat. So, the crows are my new friends!

Grackles, though, I can live without. I had enough of them growing up in Ft. Worth. Our dog wouldn't let them get near my dad's tomatoes, but that didn't stop them from hanging out in the nearby trees and making a nuisance of themselves.

Dawn

Dawn,
I agree about disease diagnosing. And why I'm hesitant to say I've got a certain disease sometimes. And also at times I don't wait long enough to tell 100% before I just pull them. In this case and most others this year I've debated what it is and also is it a combination of problems. That is what makes diagnosing the problem even harder is you may have two or three problems instead of one. And that could well be the case here. I'm still leaving most to see what happens with the cooler weather. If I see no improvement or it getting worse then I'll yank them. But it does match the symptoms. The same way with the purple stems. I know many say they don't usually see purple coloring in older plants but I have here and then seen them improve. Same way with the curling of the leaves. I've seen stress and even overfeeding especially with a foliar feed cause funny looking curler leaves on new growth for a few days. So waiting till I see what direction they take. But my CP and IS both are staring to look stunted. Although the IS keeps setting fruit. Gave them a foliar tonic will see what that does. Jay