Sprayed Tomatoes, Staked & Applied Wood Ash

Gardening

8/22/2021 – The nine Celebrity tomatoes are doing well and most have flowers or buds. Today we:

  1. Early in the morning sprayed them with mancozeb as a preventative. They do not yet show any disease.
  2. Drop on then scratched in a wide “donut” about two handfuls of pecan firewood ash saved from last winter.
  3. Installed stakes and tied them up with one wrap of the Florida Weave.

One plant that responds especially well to a handful of wood ash is the tomato. The potash helps produce lots of flowers and enhances the flavour of the fruit, while the calcium helps to prevent blossom end rot. Apply the wood ash just as the plant starts to flower. From here, an Australian Organic site, where there is more good advice.

Note – The drip irrigation is running one hour per day at 1 PM. We set it to drip at the beginning of the hot part of the day to cool the soil for the tomatoes and the two winter squash varieties sowed.