Mulch (and cleaning out affected leaves) controls the Early Blight by stopping the fungus spores from splashing up from the soil. We like pine needles (pine straw) best of all for tomatoes and strawberries. Late blight apparently isn't so easily controlled. I wish we could buy straw for mulching, but we usually can't even afford hay. I use whatever I can, including pulled weeds on top of newspaper, old natural fiber rugs, and wood shavings from a boat building school in the paths.

We are using our own potatoes for seed potatoes too, as well as having lots of potatoes that overwintered to use for early potatoes. Some of our tomatoes are from seed, some from cuttings, and some we bought at several different places.

We hand pick Striped Cucumber beetles (bad this year), Colorado Potato Beetles, and the Red Lily Beetles. The State Horticulturalist who approves our certification mentioned an appropriate organic insecticide for the lily beetles. I'll have to look it up. I hope that the steady rain has at least drowned most of the Japanese Beetle larva as it did a couple of years ago. If not, we'll hand pick them a few times a day as well; the chickens will gorge themselves and my hands will smell of roses. I'm already watching for the Tomato Hornworm.

I've opened up the farmstand as we seem to be between showers.

maeve

Today's rain makes it 18 days of rain in the last 28 days.