woe is me. my sickly plants.

We're feeling the acute effects of inexperience. Our once healthy squash plants that were producing prolifically now seem to be slipping away. It pains me to see them suffering as a result of our limited knowledge of the infinite number of garden diseases. Damn the lot of them! Stunted growth, yellowing leaves and (gasp!) moldy fruits now characterize the sad plants. Not to mention the cucumbers also seem to be suffering from the same disease.

Diseases, I'm told, affect plant "families". So one disease that effects squash can also affect the cucumbers and pumpkins. The late blight epidemic of the northeast this season that wiped out many-a-promising tomato and potato plant on this side of the country due to all the tropical-like rain we've been having acted in exactly that way.

I've been trying to narrow in on the disease, and this is what it's come down to:

Powdery mildew, angular leaf spot, scab, Alternaria leaf blight (fungal diseases): Manifest themselves in the form of spots bloches and brown areas on squash leaves. My internet searching says to keep foliage dry when watering and to not touch the plants when wet. Seeing as how much rain we've been getting (another storm has been haunting us for the past four days and will continue through the weekend) this is a likely possibility. It is reccommended to spray infected plants with a dilute solution of copper spray to reduce the spread of the disease. (doesn't seem very "sustainable", but then again my naive concept of sustainable gardening shoves all added ingredients beyond compost and other simple, recognizable things out of the picture.)

Aphids.:Causes yellowing and wilting of leaves. Bugs are small, green, pink, gray, black, or white fluffy-coated, soft-bodied insects which transmit viral diseases. Control aphids by knocking them off the plants with a strong blast of water. (Too bad we don't have a hose...) Prevent problems by using a foil mulch.
Yes, my leaves are wilting and yellow, but I haven't seen bugs. Then again, I haven't looked THAT close.

Mosaic. Also manifests itself in the form of yellowing leaves. What a coincidence. How am I supposed to tell what is what? Can also cause deformed, mottled fruits. It is reccommended to remove and destroy diseased plants, control aphids and cucumber beetles that spead it (do we have nasty bugs lurking among our beloved?), plant tolerant cultivars (will research, but genetically-modifed crops are not an option for us. opposed on moral grounds), and practice crop rotation (will do).

Enough wallowing. I'm going to be constructive here. As we hope that the garden will be a permanent installment at F&M, it is not only important for us to enjoy and learn from this amazing experience, but to make sure to pass our knowledge along to those who will inherit the garden after us and to the broader community. And now for a few simple reccommendations:

• Do not plant the African Marigold from Seeds of Change unless you want a nice invasive hedge. Yes, marigolds are a great companion for tomatoes, but not when they're 5 feet tall and overwhelming. I spent my time today thinning them out, for I fear they are competing with the tomatoes for sunlight and nutrients. Experienmentation with seed varieties is great, but we reccommend going small with marigolds.
• start eggplant indoors. We planted the seeds right in the soil even though the seed packet did say to start indoors. They didn't grow.
• don't be afraid to thin the plants. So every plant doesn't realize their full potential; it'll give the ones you do keep a fighting chance, plus they're always a welcome addition to the compost pile.
• use mulch between the rows! It'll keep the weeds down and make your life a whole lot easier. We learned the hard way.
• Be wary when planting the Amish nuttle bean from Happy Cat Farms. It didn't grow for us. We planted them in two different plots one month apart and neither sprouted.
• Happy Cat Farm seed packets are sometimes misleading, so be careful. the Lancaster Brown Bush Bean is actually vining bean. A new trellis is in order.
• give squash, watermelon, pumpkins, and the like adequate room!

Ok, so even though we had our fair share of mistakes, the garden isn't TOTALLY dead, contrary to what you may be thinking now based on my previous rantings. I just harvested about 2 pounds of various tomatoes, 3 zucchini (perhaps the last though, if the plants die), 2 cucumber, 6 beets, 2 onions, 1 watermelon (our first of the season!), a handful of green beans, and 3 green bell peppers. Now I must go about finding what to do with all this food!