Nice harvest and your mom is looking good. My tomato season
ended early from disease, but at least my peppers did good.
Hopefully next year will be better.

Hello roper. Glad to hear from you. Yes, our garden did OK considering we had a three week and then a two week stretch of no rain and 95* to 100* temps for quite a few days. My mom is doing ok but slowing down, she will turn 90 early next year. I'll pass on your compliment. She has put up with RLS for over 20 years. Never a full nights sleep, two to three hours at a time and legs that ache a good part of the day. She still did what she was able to do in the garden. Even though I am now preping all the garden area, we are going to cut back on it next year. I find that elderly folks have a hard time giving up something they love doing after sixty some years like gardening. But there comes a time.. and it's just to time consuming for me on the weekends. I was never interested in gardening. Three years before my dad passed I started tilling up the garden. I had hauled in a load of manure every year for many years, that was it. When dad passed I told her I would help her keep the garden going for as long as she wanted to. I do enjoyed it but less would be better.

I experimented last year with my own mix for combating blight and other plant diseases. I used my mix the last half of this growing season with great results as you can see from the photos on our garden site (I'll post photos below). Our plants are still producing tomatoes while all the gardeners in our area had their plants completely die off three or four weeks ago.
I'll email you my mix. It's rather unorthodox but you can try it next year if you like. The cost is less than five cents per gallon of water and also worked well on our potatoes. My last spray of the tomatoes was on Sept 18th.

Williams Exploration just finished drilling a natural gas well in our area. I set up a site similar to my garden site , my latest project. I'll include the link, lots of photos. It's an interesting operation, like gardening, kinda.

Sept 18th
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Last weekend we picked most of the plants clean. I hope the plants finally give up so I can clean them out and pull the stakes.
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Here is a link that might be useful: Mom's Garden Pics 2010

Thanks for the recipe for your mix. I'll try it on 2 tomato plants
next year to experiment. That's nice of you to help your mother
all these years. You are a good son.
Your other weekend project looks like a pretty big one there.

Linda

You're welcome Linda.

I'm curious, are your peppers still producing?

I've seen your pictures before, and been blown away by your mom's garden. It's just beautiful, and all that sun! Here in Cincinnati, my tomato plants were surprisingly healthy this year, after some fairly serious late blight last year and a warmish winter. Would you e-mail me your mix for combating diseases anyway?

Yes, but mostly my hot peppers. The only sweet still producing, but
smaller peppers is the Quadrato Asti Giallo. My new favorite bell
pepper.

Why thank you catwhisperer. We had plenty of sun this summer.
I could have bottled a gallon of concentrate if I knew you were in
need and gladly sent it to ya. An email is on it's way.

Roper
In 2007 and 2008 I bought two of the largest peppers
I could find in a grocery store sometime in December,
they were one pound each. Mom took the seeds and dried
them. Two images below from those seeds. For this past
year I bought seeds. I found out too late that large
pepper seeds were special order for some reason so I
bought the largest I could find, California wonder 300
and one other. I won't buy seeds again, we will buy
a couple peppers and dry the seeds. I have a few pics
from this weekend to post to my site.

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Thanks a lot for emailing me your blight mix. I printed it and it's going in my notebook.

Hey Moms Helper... From the pics, it looks like you may be in the hills of West Virginia?
Nice looking garden. Comment about yopur late peppers. I live in Charlotte, NC, and I have a buddy of mine that farms in Martinsburg, WV. Both of us experienced our pepper plants aborting flowers early on, and not really getting many nature peppers at all... until the start of Sept! And they are still going. Just like you are describing. I think the heat wave was too much for them early this summer, and they were experiencing flower drop.
Hey, I am always looking for a good blight spray... could you email to mike@lakerealty.com? I fought it awhile this summer, until mid aug., when I finally had to pull them all.

Mike...

TY, mom knows here stuff for sure. I'm just a novice.

Yes, peppers...strange

Email sent,,,and I did place a few more pics on my site.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mom's Garden Pics

I need all the help I can get combating disease. I would like the formula for your mix.

philbrown36641s5@att.net

Hi Mom`s Helper, beautiful garden and great pictures. I would like your blight formula. thanks Bill

Got your message, thanks. I have sticker spreader, so I'll use that instead of the soap. I also have neem oil.

Wow, that's a big pepper you have. I grew fat n sassy hybrid
and Quadrato Asti Giallo. Took this picture today. I like the
Quadrato because it is a sweet bell pepper. You use the
manure on all your vegetables, peppers too?

Fat n Sassy-These are small ones.

Quadrato Asti Giallo

Can I get the blight mix formula also? t.dalva@att.net....thanks!
Tom

Got it! Thanks very much and am looking forward to using it next year. How soon after plantout do you recommend beginning to spray the mix?

Okay, I have to know what is the name of the big red tomatoes in the pic with your mom? And what is the name of the onion she grew in her pics that was soooo big?

roper2008

Nice pics. Yes, I covered all the garden area with manure this fall. Next year we will not use fertilizer on our pepper plants until they start bearing small peppers.

chalstonsc

I start spraying about two or three weeks after we plant. I used Mancozeb with one heaping tablespoon of baking soda per gallon in the spray mix. I ran out of Mancozeb about half way through the season and just used my mix the remainder of the year.

cottageflowers

For large tomatoes we plant Burpee Delicious and SuperSteak hybrid. We raise one of each in a starting cup and plant both in the same hole. I lean towards Burpee Delicious as my favorite. They both have a sweet tomato taste, few seeds and very meaty. Next year I may just plant Delicious. We have had many tomatoes that were 2 to 3 pounds.

Mom had wrapped green tomatoes in newspaper. Three weeks later we had...ripe romatoes. Before she wraps them she baths them in clorox water and wipes them dry with paper towels.

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Here is a link that might be useful: Mom's Garden Pics