Africanaussie

This year I am going to add some polystyrene boxes to plant tomatoes in.  Large tomatoes don't do well here - we have bacterial wilt in the soil, and I think a myriad other diseases that are commonplace here.  I like tomatoes though, and I did get some free seeds to experiment with.  I am going to try a sort of wicking bed system as in the past I have had blossom end rot as well which indicated uneven watering.   I am putting some boxes front and centre.  They are resting on the front of the the asparagus bed, making use of every inch of the garden.  I hope I wont be disappointed. assemble what you need: The idea is to drill a  drainage holes about a quarter of the way up the box.  Add drainage rock - I used quincam, scoria is another good one to use.   Below this line the boxes are filled with small rocks for drainage. . Now I am not sure if there should...

This year I am going to add some polystyrene boxes to plant tomatoes in.  Large tomatoes don't do well here - we have bacterial wilt in the soil, and I think a myriad other diseases that are commonplace here.  I like tomatoes though, and I did get some free seeds to experiment with.  I am going to try a sort of wicking bed system as in the past I have had blossom end rot as well which indicated uneven watering.   I am putting some boxes front and centre.  They are resting on the front of the the asparagus bed, making use of every inch of the garden.  I hope I wont be disappointed. assemble what you need: The idea is to drill a  drainage holes about a quarter of the way up the box.  Add drainage rock - I used quincam, scoria is another good one to use.   Below this line the boxes are filled with small rocks for drainage. . Now I am not sure if there should...

A very common problem in the wet tropics is bacterial wilt.  This affects any plants in the Solanaceae family, tomatoes, capsicums and eggplant specifically.  The almost wild  cherry tomatoes seemed more resistant although last year even they did not do well, but that could also be because the dry season was very wet. I think we are overdue for a good dry season so I have planted a lot of vegetables in anticipation. I started a new bed along the back fence in order to practice crop rotation and also imagined that if I grew them in pure compost, the problem would not occur.  Wrong - I bought a six pack of "tropic" which is supposed to be resistant and they all keeled over,  along with all the eggplant. There are a few cherry tomatoes that seem to be surviving.  Funny though that I have an eggplant that has been growing for over two years in the front garden, and although it doesn't look that healthy it...