I was on the back porch this afternoon, working on my sprayers, when Cousin Roger came driving up on his lawnmower. He had a plastic deli meat bowl in his hand.
"Brought you some watermelon. Whatchoo doin'?"
"I don't know," I said. "Never worked on a sprayer before, but I have to get these working right because the blight is wearing my tomatoes OUT."
Roger said, "Reckon that's what's wrong with my tomatoes?"
I asked him to describe the symptoms, but because Roger's not very articulate on a good day, I ended up saying I'd just go over and have a look at them.
Roger built himself a raised bed for his tomatoes, one tall enough that he doesn't have to bed over to tend them. It's about 4 feet long x 2 feet wide x 2 feet deep. It's made out of slats and lined with black plastic, which he brought up all the way up the sides and stapled to the top rim.
He had SIX Big Beef tomato plants in it. They looked rough, spindly. The tops of some of them were almost crispy brown. The lower leaves were yellow and spotted. It also looked like there were some tiny bugs walking amongst the leaves. I said, "Roger, I'm not sure what all is wrong with these tomatoes. This black plastic might be absorbing the heat and cooking them. But I think we could start with a dose of fungicide and bug spray." I said I'd be back over to spray them, later in the afternoon when the sun wasn't so hot, if I could get my sprayers to work.
I did get the sprayers fixed. Earlier in the day, I'd been to the hardware store and bought some rubber o-rings to replace the felt ones that were between each screw-on piece on the sprayer nozzle. After I installed them, I cleaned out the nozzles with a pipe cleaner, put everything back together, and they worked. I filled up one of the sprayers with some experimental peroxide/water solution, and filled the other one with fungicide and bug spray. After I did my experimental spraying, I headed to Roger's house and sprayed his tomatoes.
He came out while I was spraying and said that his dad (who lives next door to him) wanted me to come do his tomatoes, too. And he wanted me to take a look at his mother's rose bush by the front porch. Said he could see through the leaves. I knew what was wrong with the rose bush before I laid eyes on it. I'd seen Japanese beetles on my roses earlier in the day. They'd had a dose of what was in the sprayer, too.
Uncle B came scuffling outside when he saw me drive up. Roger had made Uncle B the same kind of raised bed that he'd made for himself. Uncle B's tomatoes were crispy, too. I mentioned the black plastic and the heat, and said it might not hurt to cut that plastic down to about an inch above the soil. Uncle B said that if I had something to cut the plastic with, have at it. I took out my pocket knife and cut the plastic away. I didn't see any fungus or bugs on those tomatoes, but I sprayed the tomatoes anyway, because if they don't have fungus and bugs now, they will have in a day or two.
Uncle B said I could spray the rose bush, too, if I felt like it. It's a Knockout rose. What worried Roger and Uncle B were all the dead blooms. What worried me was the lacy leaves and the beetles copulating on the dead blooms. I cut off all the spent blooms and hosed the rose bush down. Hopefully, it'll bounce back.
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