Many people are growing some of their own food and want to preserve some of the harvest to enjoy later in the year. It is important to follow certain guidelines in doing this:

    * You MUST use a pressure canner to can low-acid foods like vegetables & meats safely.

    * Always use only tested recipes from recent reliable sources. NEVER use your own untested recipe.

    * Get your pressure canner guage tested each year or two. Call below to make appointment for free testing.

More information about canning and freezing is available:

    * Website - http://northampton.extension.psu.edu/  Click on "Food & Nutrition", then "Food Safety at PSU", then "Home Food Preservation"

    * Food Preservation Hotline - 1-800-240-3340 (Mon-Fri 8:30-4:30)

Food preservation workshops that include practice doing boiling water and pressure canning are offered this summer:

Thursday, July 23 from 1-4 p.m., or 6-9 p.m., Northampton County Cooperative Extension office, Graystone Bldg, 14 Gracedale Ave., Nazareth

or

Saturday, August 8, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., Cedar Crest College, Allen Center for Nutrition, Miller Family Building, Allentown

Cost is $20 for printed information and canned product.

To get a registration form sent to you call the Northampton County Extension office at 610-746-1970.

"I live in CT and have a huge garden of tomato plants, where can I order some of the organic alternatives to try and prevent blight?"

When we're answering questions about organic production, even by home gardeners who aren't certified organic, we refer to the standards for the organic growers who are certified. General information on organic alternatives for late blight control (in potatoes) can be found here:

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/lateblight.html

Here's a site with information about the efficacy of copper as used for protection from late blight in potatoes and tomatoes:

http://www.extension.org/article/18351

Information on the copper formulations that are O.K. for certified organic growers to use (in general) can be found here. This tells you who the manufacturers are, so you can look them up.

http://omri.org/OMRI_datatable.php?search=coppers

I don't know that these specific formulations would be available in your local garden center, but I think if I were searching for an organic alternative that is labeled for late blight, I'd be calling around first maybe, then visiting the best garden centers and suppliers I knew of to see what they had on the shelves. That gives you a chance to read labels too. I haven't checked lately, but it seems to me I've seen copper formulations on the shelves in the past. Make sure that any formulation you buy is labeled for use on the specific plant you mean to use it on (in his case, tomatoes), and that it says on the label that it controls late blight.

Late blight of tomatoes and potatoes is a serious plant disease. Tomato or potato plants with late blight growing on them should be promptly, carefully and completely destroyed to avoid sending the disease inoculum on to other gardens or to farms. If tomato or potato plants in your garden have late blight, and you have to destroy your plants, here are some suggestions:

1. Mature green tomato fruit can be picked and stored in a dry area where they can be ripened for later use.

2. Once affected potato vines and leaves have been killed, the potatoes can be dug and eaten. It is better to eat the potatoes soon since affected potatoes do not store well.

3. DO NOT pull affected plants because this process can dislodge spores into the air where they can be wind-borne to neighboring plantings of tomatoes and potatoes.

4. To destroy individual plants, the best way is to pull a large plastic bag over the plant first. Then the plant can be cut off at ground level, tied inside the plastic bag, and the bag put in full sunlight so that the contents will be killed by the heat from the sun. After that, the bags and their contents can be discarded with regular garbage. In the absence of plastic bags, merely cut the plant stem near ground level, preferably when the plant surfaces are dry, and about mid-morning when the sun is shining. Old spores will die in about five hours when the humidity is low, and no new spores will form on dead plants.

5. To destroy several to many adjacent plants, cut the plant stems near ground level. When possible, destruction of plants can be promoted by pulling a dark plastic cover over plants so that heat from sunlight will help kill the tissue. Once the plants are dead, the fungus is also destroyed.

6. Affected potatoes should not be put into the compost pile because if they survive the winter, new sprouts from these potatoes could be source of inoculum next season.

First - Don't Waste Any Time! Be Aggressive!

As soon as plant surfaces are dry and the sun is shining, remove all leaves and fruit with any symptoms of late blight. Mid-morning is a better time than evening to do this since any spores that are dislodged in the morning are likely to die before dew formation when new infections would become possible. Try to minimize movement of affected plants during the following procedure; pick affected leaves and fruit and immediately put them into a plastic bag. When completed, tie the bag shut and put the bag in sunlight so that the contents will be killed. Then the bag and the dead leaf and fruit material can be disposed of with other garbage.

Immediately initiate and continue a weekly spray program with a fungicide labeled for late blight control on vegetables. Products that contain chlorothalonil, maneb, mancozeb or copper will be useful. If you choose to stop spraying regularly before frost kills the plants, follow the procedure to destroy affected plants. (I'll write about that tomorrow).

Continue to monitor the plants. Obviously, if the disease was further along than you thought and it's gotten ahead of you, you will have to destroy the plants promptly.

What does late blight look like?

Late blight affects fruit and leaves. Large, circular to irregular greasy grayish areas (one to two inches in diameter), sometimes bordered by a light green band, develop on otherwise healthy-appearing leaves. These areas expand rapidly in wet weather. When humidity is high, a whitish mold may be evident on the undersurface of leaves at the margin of dead areas killed by the late blight fungus (between the green and the brown areas of the leaf). Late blight on fruit results in extensive superficial brownish areas (one to two inches in diameter) on the surface of fruit. These are initially leathery, but frequently develop soft rots following wet periods.

How can I distinguish it from other tomato diseases?

Early blight symptoms are dark brown spots with dark concentric rings. Septoria leaf spots are usually dark; eventually the center of the spot becomes whitish to light brown, sometimes with tiny dark specks evident in the light area. Both early blight and septoria leaf spot symptoms usually start on the oldest leaves. Affected leaves die prematurely. There are other diseases that can affect tomatoes and potatoes, but they will look different from the description for late blight given above.

So what should I be doing?

You may have already decided to treat the plants with a fungicide to protect against infection.

Other than that, regularly check leaves and fruit on plants in your garden for typical symptoms of late blight. If late blight symptoms appear, you will need to quickly make an important decision whether to destroy the plants or  to aggressively work to control the disease. Leaving affected plants without treatment is not an acceptable option because spores produced on affected plants can be wind-borne to neighboring tomato and potato plantings, and these spores can intiate new disease. Therefore, if there is any doubt about the diagnosis, call the extension office. They may want to look at a sample.

More to come . . . .

Often the hemlocks were planted in rows as a hedge, and the shearing is being done for a variety of reasons. Hemlocks want to grow into big trees, the people don't have a big lot, and they don't want the hemlocks to eat up yard space as they become as wide as they would normally grow. Also, if their size isn't limited, the hemlocks grow together and start to interfere with each other. Sometimes the folks really could have put in a fence instead, but were hoping their hedge could be maintained to act like a living, green fence.

Hemlocks aren't the only plants, or even the plants most often used for this purpose. Arborvitaes, yews and others are used as well. And folks don't only shear hedges. There are lots of examples of landscapes where the owners want an especially neat, formal appearance for many of the shrubs planted around their home.

What is disturbing is the condition of some of these plants. Shearing shrubs can have some very unfortunate effects. The hemlocks we saw were starting to show almost no spring growth at all. They appeared to be very stressed, and were badly infested with multiple species of extremely damaging adelgids, scale insects and mites.

Shearing is a pruning technique often used on evergreen plants in which tips of all the outer branches are cut off. This stimulates dense growth on the outside surface of the plant which can cut off air movement and light to the interior of the plant, resulting in the loss of interior leaves.

Shearing must be done carefully. It takes a tough plant to take this treatment, so plants that are going to be sheared should be chosen carefully. Even so, shearing cannot be used by itself to keep a big plant small. The plant needs to continue to grow. Any shearing technique that takes all, or nearly all, of this year's growth off can severely damage an evergreen plant. For these reasons and others, plant experts prefer to see people practice a more conventional pruning technique that allows the plant to maintain a looser, more natural form. If that isn't the "look" the property manager wants, then to encourage some interior growth, shearing can be combined with cutting out a branch here and there to leave "holes" in the thickly growing outside surface so light and air can get to the interior to maintain some greenery in there.

For information on pruning all kinds of ornamental plants: http://horticulture.psu.edu/files/hort/extension/pruning_ornamental_plants.pdf

This second one is a web site written by folks who don't seem to like the appearance of sheared plants. Read beyond the first two paragraphs, though, for some really good points on choosing plants that will tolerate shearing, and the effects of shearing on the health of plants:

http://www.plantamnesty.org/shearmadness.htm

This disease has been found in Lehigh, Blair, Center, Washington, Lancaster, and Bedford counties in Pennsylvania so far this year.  Other states reporting late blight include New Jersey, Maryland, New York, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina. 

Home gardeners should be on the lookout for this disease.  According to Dr. Meg McGrath from Cornell University, here are the steps you should take:

1. Examine your tomato and potato plants thoroughly at least once a week for signs of late blight.
2. Spray fungicides preventively and regularly and/or
3. Be prepared to destroy your plants when late blight starts to become severe.

If you want to try to control late blight with fungicides, you need to begin spraying fungicide now – even before you see symptoms – and you need to continue spraying regularly. Use a product that contains chlorothalonil. Copper is not very effective on late blight.

For organic growers, there are few control options currently available with known efficacy against late blight on tomato and potato. Frequent copper applications may provide minimal control if applied preventatively. In Pennsylvania there are several OMRI approved copper formulations. Other potential products include Sonata and Sporatec however, minimal efficacy data is available.

Dr. Beth Gugino from Penn State University offers these suggestions for destroying infected plants: If late blight is found in a localized spot in a field then the best management practice is to destroy those plants as well as several of the surrounding non-symptomatic plants. Pull out and drop the plants then apply a herbicide or disk/bury the plants. If a few plants, they could be covered by a plastic tarp. Both the sunlight and heat will kill the spores. If disking the crop, apply a fungicide first to reduce the potential movement of spores on the equipment. Thoroughly clean all equipment (and yourself) used to destroy the crop to spreading the spores around.

According to Beth Guigino, a Penn State Vegetable Pathologist, late blight has been confirmed in five

Pennsylvania counties on tomato and potato plants.  Late blight is the same disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s. It has never occurred this early and this widespread in the U.S. 

Late blight thrives in wet weather, so current conditions favor the spread of the disease.  Late blight is a serious problem because tomato and potato crops in home gardens could potentially harbor an infestation that could destroy commercial grower’s fields. 

Late blight has not been confirmed on either potato or tomato plants in the Lehigh Valley, however, Beth Guigino has advised that we should assume the spores are present in our area.  If you have suspicious plants, please get samples to Emelie Swackhamer at the Lehigh County Cooperative Extension Office.  If the disease is confirmed in the Valley, the Extension Office will notify the commercial growers so they can take preventative measures.

Here is a link to Dr. Meg McGrath’s (from Cornell University ) blog about the current late blight situation.  It contains good information for home gardeners about the blight:

http://blogs.cornell.edu/hort/2009/06/26/late-blight-a-serious-disease-killing-tomatoes-and-potatoes-this-year

My family has a very big garden plot in a new community garden for the first time this year.  It’s the first year we’ve ever planted more than a few tomatoes and basil around our house.

We’re excited by our new garden space and probably overly ambitious.  We’ve certainly had our hands full with weeds this year, so I got a book called “Weedless Gardening” by Lee Reich.  The book has a lot of useful information in it above and beyond how to have a weedless garden.  One of the suggestions that the book makes is to use soybean meal as a source of nitrogen for the plants.

We’ve tried it in our garden with good results.  The soybean meal (ground up, de-fatted soybeans) is an excellent source of nitrogen for all kinds of soil types and plants.  The meal is natural, cheap, and widely available at feed stores.  In general, Reich recommends 3 pounds of soybean meal per 100 square feet of planted area that should be spread once a year before laying down mulch.

The Juneberry, also called Shadbush and Serviceberry, is a wonderful shrub to consider for your garden space.  It has a delicate white blossom that comes out around the time of the Shad Run on the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers, when the shad fish migrate upstream from the ocean (thus the name shadbush). 

Right around this time in June, blueberry-like fruits develop that are very tasty and a great surprise when you first try them.  Different kinds of Juneberries will produce different fruits.  We planted a Saskatoon Juneberry in our garden this year, which is supposed to produce some of the most abundant and biggest berries.