Gardening

My luscious deck garden is sick. I clipped off lots and lots of leaves and branches from the tomotoes and herbs, and I gave all the plants a big dose of some sort of organic fungicide and insecticide a few days ago. Now, all I can do is water and wait.

I have this sneaking suspicion that I am the one to blame for the fungus. It all started with an infestation of aphids (plant lice) on the baby lettuce. So I bought a big spray bottle and ground up some garlic, mixed it with water and sprayed it on the lettuce. It sort of worked.

But then, I went a little nuts, and I also started misting all my plants with regular water as well. Isn’t that what they do at the green houses and in the garden shops? The plants always look wet and recently misted. So I sprayed all of my plants very well almost every morning. The plants kept growing beautifully.

Then recently, I noticed that the mint leaves were starting to look sickly with brown spots all over it. I didn’t do anything right away. Then I noticed that the mints in the other pot were starting to yellow too. I had to act. I clipped out all the affected leaves (~70% of the leaves on those plants) and sprayed them with the garlic juice too. It seemed to help the mints immensely. So I kept misting the plants, not realizing the connection.

And before I knew it, half of the leaves on the tomato plants were yellow and sickly. I just learned that too much moisture on the leaves or too much fertilizer make the plants susceptible to diseases. :-(

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