To reduce the damage, spray every one to two weeks with potassium permanganate (¼ teaspoon to one litre of water with Raingard added). Curly leaf on stone fruit will also continue affecting more leaves as they develop so use the same spray on them weekly.
Any other signs of leaf diseases, the same very effective spray can be used.
Potatoes that are called 'early' mature in about 90 days from planting and if you planted them about August/September, they could be mature and ready to harvest now. When early potatoes flower they are considered ready.
If you lift one plant to see what the results are underneath you may find they have a good set of nice sized potatoes ready to harvest. If this is the case you can lift the whole crop and store in a cool shed and make that area available for other vegetables to grow.
Apply chicken manure, blood & bone, lime, BioBoost, sheep manure pellets or Rok Solid to the area and lightly rake in ready for sowing or planting.
If you prefer to leave the spuds in the soil then cut off all the tops at ground level and cover the stubble with soil.
The tops should be stuffed into a black plastic rubbish bag and sealed. The reason for removing the tops is to prevent the potato psyllid from damaging the potatoes when they feed on the tops, and stuffing them in a bag gets rid of them.
If you lift a plant and find the crop is not ready to harvest, you could apply Neem Tree Powder to the soil as a side dressing and spray the foliage with Super Neem Oil all over.
Check the crop again two weeks later and if a better size either lift or remove tops.
If you only find pea-sized potatoes underneath that are already sending up shoots then the psyllids have got to the plants before the potatoes could grow.
If you cut open a potato and find black rings inside then the psyllids got to them after they had reached a good size. It will be about now that the psyllid populations will start to explode and that is when the real damage happens.
Quarantine cloth over the plants to keep the psyllids off will certainly help.
Last week I had a gardener send me a picture of beans, lettuce and brassicas growing in a garden which was not doing well.
The garden had a frame over it and quarantine cloth over the frame to keep all insects out.
I would have recommended crop cover instead (also called bug mesh) which has a 15 percent shade factor and will keep out all insects other than psyllids.
The Quarantine cloth has a 25 percent shade factor which should not be too much of a problem if it's in an all day sunny situation and not too cloudy most of the time.
The problem is for those areas that have a lot of unusual hazy days like pollution which really cuts down the amount of sunlight the plants see.
Hazy skies reduce direct sunlight and can affect many plants in your garden, from lack of buds, buds not opening into flowers, fruit not ripening, low sugar content of fruit, stunted growth and extra large leaves on some plants. Not good.
Crop cover is an idea way of protecting your lower growing vegetable crops from a whole range of pests including cats, birds, butterflies aphids etc.
Obtain some rigid alkathene 13mm black plastic piping to make hoops so cloth can be raised over the crop.
This has another advantage as it protects the plants from the weather while rain or water can still penetrate.
You may notice some yellowing of leaves due to wet conditions because the roots are being affected with excess water. Spraying once a month with Perkfection will help the plants recover better.
My cucumbers and rock melon, along with other cold-sensitive plants, are growing well in glasshouses in their containers but if I were to put them outside they would sulk, as it is still not higher warm temperatures yet.
You also need to be very careful with your watering so as not to over water small plants in bigger containers.
Tomato plants with flowers may need a little assistance to pollinate the flowers so the fruit set. Some gardeners think its bees that do this but it is not the case.
On a sunny day with a little bit of breeze will be sufficient to move the pollen.
Inside a glasshouse where there is little if any breeze you need to go in about midday on a nice sunny day and tap the plant to make it vibrate. That sets the flowers.
If you have a tuning fork hit the tines on a hard surface then hold the fork near the flowers. That will do the trick also.
- For gardening problems call 0800 466464 (Palmerston North 3570606), email wallyjr@gardenews.co.nz, www.gardenews.co.nz
