Mike Bruner

Hey All - I couldn't find a previous thread on this, but I feel like it has to have been discussed in depth so feel free to link a thread if you know of one.

I had an awesome overall year for tomatoes, at least for me! About 250 lbs. from 6 Romas, 6 Matt's Wild cherries, and 12 other assorted indeterminate varieties, some of which didn't even perform very well. I finally pulled them all and cleaned up yesterday.

My 10 cubic-foot pull-behind cart is full and mounded about as high as it can go between the plant material and straw I mulched with. My plants were nice and healthy longer than I've ever managed before, but eventually all had pretty bad disease - I think either late blight or septoria leaf spot or both. I just can't bring myself to throw away this much organic matter! SURELY there's a safe way to keep it in my ecosystem (sorry idk the right word to use but I think you'll get my meaning) without inoculating my compost pile with disease spores.

Does anyone have a good way to accomplish this? I was thinking maybe get a metal drum and basically sterilize it all by cooking it over a fire? Or even putting a lid on that drum and making biochar out of it maybe?

I have a ton of book learning around this stuff but am just getting to where I'd call myself an "experienced" microfarmer and have a ton to learn practically speaking. Thanks so much for any info!

Hey All - Looks like everything has been pretty well covered, but I just wanted to reiterate a couple things for good measure. My wife had a major concussion a few years ago and was pretty disabled for about a year.

- She somehow got lucky and met with this concussion specialist who works with the Bengals. He really emphasized the importance of including fat in her diet. Interestingly, he encouraged her to be sure to get good amounts of what we'd normally think of as both healthy and unhealthy fat - e.g., he suggested she cook with suet at least some of the time. Aside from that he just encouraged a whole food diet with lots of fruits and veggies and low sugar. I'm pretty sure I've seen research recently linking gut health (of which low sugar is a huge part) to cognitive function, so I'll add my own emphasis to that last piece.

- Someone talked about patience. I could not encourage that more. Mary made very slow progress for months, and then when we were getting close to a year she just shot up to near pre-injury functioning over the course of about a month. I'll say more related to this but make it its own bullet:

- I cannot overemphasize attention to the interconnections between body, mind, and spirit on this issue. People with brain injury are at higher risk of mental health concerns, both emotionally/psychologically and physiologically, yet stress/anxiety/depression/etc. also exacerbate many of the symptoms of brain injury. I saw this first-hand with Mare and see it with patients all the time (I'm a psychologist). I believe (idk either way if there's research on this part) that stress/anxiety/depression/etc. not only exacerbate the symptoms but even impair healing/recovery. I would strongly recommend that anyone who is suffering from concussion/brain injury see a mental health provider; any approach is probably better than nothing but I'd encourage finding someone who says they use "ACT" or "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy"). If you're not up for that, a couple self-help books that would probably be good for this (or anything honestly) are "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris or "A Liberated Mind" by Steven C. Hayes.  

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It wouldn't let me attach 2 pics...going to try another one here.

Hi All - Just in case any minds are still inquiring, just wanted to update that my tomato plants are all doing fine now that theytr in the ground. To be honest, they're doing amazing lol! I built this nice trellis out of electrical conduit, and some of the plants are already taller than I am and are outgrowing it! I'm posting a couple pics below.

Moral of the story is don't be too hasty in writing off your seedlings!

Mike

Ha that's an interesting thought! I only bought one kind so I'm pretty sure I didn't mistake anything, but they could have given me the wrong kind lol! It wouldn't be the first time - I once ordered a bush snap pea and got something that grew at least 6'....wasn't planning on that so didn't set up any kind of trellising. That was super fun. 😳

Hmm you know that may be it actually - we had the torrential rain for 2-3 days, then we had blistering sun and 90+ temps for several days. I'll read up on how high temps can impact zucchini!

Hello all - I'm having an issue w/ my zucchini plants that is new to me! I was hoping I won't sound crazy and someone could tell me this is a known thing, hopefully with solutions.

Basically, the plants look fantastic, no signs of disease thus far,  but it's like someone hit pause on the growth of the zucchini themselves! I'm not talking about when little baby zucchini don't get pollinated and abort. None of the zucchini on any of the plants has any signs of shriveling/rotting like they would in that case, and I've been tracking this issue for a week. There is one zucchini that has been roughly 6-7" long and 1-1 1/2" diameter - in other words, what I'd normally say will be ready to pick in a day or two - for that full week!

I have some crookneck squash and cucumbers that are all growing and producing totally fine. I have zucchini growing opposite ends of the garden, probably 30-40' from each other, and they are all behaving the same. Any ideas here? Thanks so much; have a great one and for those in the US (I think this forum is international right?) happy 4th!

Mike

Hi Debbie! I was just thinking "I should probably post an update just in case anyone was wondering", and sure enough!

Long story short, everything is good! I'm still not sure exactly what it was, but I'm pretty sure I was right about it being some kind of "environmental stress" rather than a disease. I had to pick off quite a few mostly-dead limbs, but I would have been doing that anyway come transplanting time, so no big deal. I had just potted them up from 2"x2" soil blocks into 4.5" pots when I wrote the original post, and I foliar fed them with fish & kelp fertilizer a couple times over the following month, and although the affected leaves continued to get worse, the new growth looked great.

We had temps into the 30's overnight even last week this year, so I waited until this past Saturday to finally get them into the ground. So far so good! I don't have any pics off-hand but I post a lot on instagram as growing_bodymindsoul so I'll probably post some on there this weekend.

Thanks for the help all! Have a good one.

Hello All - I'd really appreciate some help identifying a problem with my tomato seedlings. They were doing fantastic until maybe 7-10 days ago. Although some are worse than others, it seemed to happen very quickly, more/less all at once, which makes me think it's not a disease, but I could certainly be wrong. I have several varieties, and nearly all of them are affected - interestingly, only the Purple Calabash seem to be fine, and those were super old seeds.

I've attached several good pictures that, hopefully, will make it easy for someone experienced w/ seed starting. If not, here is some background/context that might help:

I started these in 3/4" soil blocks & moved up to 2" blocks. I just put them in the pots seen in the pics on Sunday, and the issue was already going on before that. I did a light spray of Neptune's Harvest (fish & kelp) diluted per instructions on Sunday; no significant response that I can tell so far.

These are indoors on a heating mat under lights. Some of the things I've thought of: 1) Am I over-watering and this is edema? I've started waiting until I see them just start to droop before watering, but it's hard to know if that's doing nothing or if I'm preventing further trouble. 2) I had pepper seeds germinating on the same mat, so I had the thermostat set to 85F - will tomatoes suffer at that soil temp? I've since turned it down to 75F.

Thanks so much for any help. I have a feeling they'll outgrow whatever this is if I can keep them alive until it's time to plant, but that will be at least 2 weeks away - maybe more w/ the crazy weather here in Cinci right now!

Hey All!

I don't think of myself as a beginner gardener, but this really blew me away and I'm wondering if I missed something when I WAS a beginner! I have some great looking lettuce that I planted late last Summer and harvested from through the Fall. Fortunately it over-wintered without any aid from me and has grown a ton since it started warming up again. I tasted some today and it was sweet - like there was an immediately noticeable sugary flavor! I always took "sweet" to simply mean "not bitter" in reference to greens. I've grown lettuce for several years, including in Fall for Winter harvest, and never had this before. These same plants didn't even taste like this last Fall. Can anyone tell me how I managed this lol? I couldn't figure out the right search terms to find anything useful on Google. It sure is something I'd like to repeat! Thanks for any info!

Mike