garden suddenly not looking so good...

Wow how things change over night in a veggie garden!! I've found that I have a pretty heavy case of powdery mildew on my zucchini so on Sunday I gave my first dose of milk/water treatment....everything else was looking great. Yesterday we harvested tomatoes, 3 zucchini, a cucumber, and 2 banana peppers....

today I went out to see the garden, and now found in addition to the powdery mildew (supposed to get 2nd treatment today) squash bugs on my zucchini and cucumbers. And suddenly all the older leaves of my 3 tomato plants have begun turning brown while the younger leaves are a little curled as if they need water. I just watered on Sunday! so I put 7 dust on the squash bugs on the cucs and zucchini and am hoping this will cure it, I on the other hand can't treat for powdery mildew as the 7 is on there....
Also I have NO IDEA what happened to the tomatoes but I asked my dh to water them this morning as I will be off to work in a few minutes.

The banana peppers have been slow producers as we have only had about 10 (we have 6 plants) so far, but there are blooms so I'm trying to be patient.

Anyone have any advice or suggestion on the other woes? I just can't get over how things can go from good to bad in 1 day!
Gwen

This message was edited Jul 31, 2007 8:04 AM

My my I don't quite know what to tell you but here is a big (((((((((HUG))))))). When in doubt use lots of powdered milk and hold you mouth just right.

makshi, what do you mean? Powdered milk and hold my mouth just right?

Thanks for the hug! I'm so bummed because my garden was so strong and doing great until today!

We use a lot of powdered milk on the ground around the plants. It seems to help a lot. Haven't you ever heard the saying that says something like if you hold you mouth just right it may work or?

Powdered milk? Sorry, I have never heard of that. For which plants - tomatoes? Zucchini? What does it do? I hope this is not one of those questions that has to be answered over and over again because people don't read enough of the threads, but I have not seen this mentioned.

We use powdered milk on everything. It add calcium and also kills germs. That is the best I can do with the explanation.

huh, I never heard that! How often do you put the powdered milk on the ground? Does it attract the wrong kind of insects? Like squash bugs...

Thanks for the info!


Also does anyone know what the tiny white flying insect is that is all over my tomatoes? They're the size of a grain of salt but if I shake the branch they all fly off for a minute, then settle on the tomatos again!! I tried taking a pic but they're too small to focus on.

I used 7 dust, but it didn't help... any advice?

It has never attracted any bad bugs as I can see. I put it the hole with the tomatoes and sprinkled it all around on everything and than watered. We then put it on about every two weeks or so.

Crazy they are whiteflies

They are White Flies and a royal pain in the #$&%^^&%. There are several thread that address them, but I haven't really found anything that totally does away with them. Seems like once you get them, they're around for the duration.

You can use marigolds and/or nasturtiums as a trap crop, but you have to be very diligent about spraying the dickens out of them. (The white flies are drawn to the trap crop, then you can kill them on those instead of having to spray your tomatoes, or other veggies, with a pesticide.)