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What is cause of blight in the soil?
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Author:  Rocky53 [ Sun Apr 19, 2009 1:09 am ]
Post subject:  What is cause of blight in the soil?

Assuming that blight is either a bacteria or fungus and seems to be soilborne, is it possible to kill this disease in the soil (using organic methods of course) instead of treating the plant on a weekly basis?

I should add here that I live in SE Iowa. The soil in my veggie garden is primarily clay, but by adding mulches and compost for several years now the clay is getting much looser.

The past two years my poor tomatoes have been hit by blight (bell peppers too). Crop rotation has not helped. This year I will try some of the organic remedies I have seen on the Internet, but I'd still like to know if I can get this disease out of the soil for good.

Thanks for any insights you can send my way.

Author:  user_48634 [ Sun Apr 19, 2009 8:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: What is cause of blight in the soil?

Have you tried using organic fertilizers? Mulch and compost are nice but the do not feed the soil microbes like fertilizer does. Healthy microbes are better than more and more microbes. Just to kick things off I would start with ordinary corn meal and alfalfa pellets. Scatter a heaping handful of each under the canopy of the tomato plants and repeat that monthly. If you really wanted to go crazy you could scatter a handful of flour, too.

Spray the foliage with milk (3 tbs per gallon on your Ortho sprayer) every other week to reduce/eliminate insect problems.

Be sure you are not doing anything to harm the paper wasps building nests under your eaves. They eat tomato horn worms. If you don't have wasps I've heard the best way to find the horn worms is with a flashlight after dark.

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