Greenhouse Update

I noticed a few dots of powdery mildew starting on the tomato plants in the greenhouse. Time to clean them up and do something about it. So I removed all affected leaves, thinned out the foliage on the bottom of the plants, removed a lot of spindly sucker branches, and removed some of the excess foliage jammed in the center of the plants. On the way I harvested a number of tomatoes. Plus I picked the sweet peppers that were ready for eating. Most of them are the mini peppers which appear to be earlier producing than the regular blocky types.

Lots of little peppers, 4 different varieties. Plus the two last cucumbers from this planting. 

What to try next on the powdery mildew? I've tried milk with little success. And various urine concoctions with limited success. I was going to experiment with compost teas, but I'm not prepared. So I went to the Ace Hardware store and bought some sulfur spray. With the sun not shining.....it's actually raining, yet again.....it was the perfect time to spray. Everything in that greenhouse got a nice shower in garden sulfur spray. We shall see what happens with tomatoes. The sulfur worked ok on the cukes. I plan on spraying once a week initially. 

A medley of tomatoes, plus some blue potatoes. Yes, blue! 

Checking in the other 2 greenhouses, I saw that they needed work. #1 needed to be completely cleaned out and redone. Removing the old cucumber plants, I found two cukes hiding....one fat green one and one white one. Ah-ha, cucumber salad with dinner tonight! I wasn't expecting to get anymore cukes. Anyway, I got this greenhouse cleaned out. Over the next couple days I'll drag in some bags of compost and till it in, refreshing the beds. I'll also add some dolomite lime, since I know from experience that my soil is deficient. (The tomatoes told me so with blossom end rot showing up on a few of the fruits.)

#2 still has lima beans growing, but things are going downhill. The Succotash variety is pau, so I removed them all plus their string supports. The Dixie Speckled Butterpea and Jacksons Wonder look to have one more picking left to go. By next week I'll pull them all out. But on the opposite bed, the Hawaiian  black & white landrace is just getting going. So of course I'll be letting them stay. 

One thing I discovered that is pretty cool. The Dixie Speckled Butterpea is sending up a second flush of flowers! I wasn't expecting that. Neither Succotash nor Jacksons Wonder produced more flowers. So it appears that with Dixie, I could manage the plants for a second crop. Interesting. These particular plants haven't been managed correctly for me to do this. They have sprawled every direction and flopped out into the walkway. So I will be pulling them out and starting over again. But this time I'll keep in mind that they might be producing a second flush of flowers. 

Last thing of the day, go check on the potato boxes. Blue Adirondack was ready to harvest. I got 4 pounds of tubers from only 1 pound of seed spuds. Not bad considering how wet it's been lately.