Why is almost everything looking bad in my NEW raised bed??

11 years ago

I am reposting this from the Florida gardening forum. I don't know if it's very active and I'm kind of desperate before I pull all my plants for fear of this stuff spreading:

My husband and I started a raised bed over the summer. We have planted in a 9 x 3 1/2 bed: Sweet peppers, Okra, Roma toms and 5 other varieties of tomatoes (for a different post). We made the bed 2' tall, dug into the ground and mixed mel's mix to the top, then mulched. I have attached pictures, and you can see that basically ALL of our plants have yellowish / dead spots on them. We have sprayed with BT on numerous occasions for armyworms, Neem oil thinking it would stop the yellowing, fish emulsion for growth, and most recently compost tea that was to the T ready to be spread. Is this blight, and should I pull all effected plants, or could it be something else? We are researching daily, following the threads on here, and basically staring at the plants like they may fly away if we're not careful enough. I dream about them. What do you think?

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Comments (5)

digdirt2
11 years ago
Can you post pictures of some of the plants? "Yellowish dead spots" could be caused by many things - lack of nutrients, soil or mulch contamination, over-watering, disease, pests or in this case over-application/spraying of chemicals and stuff.

Neem Oil has no "stop the yellowing" benefits, fish emulsion sprayed on leaves during the heat of the day or in direct sun can kill the leaves, so can compost tea.

Then there is problem of you are using organic supplements in what is essentially a sterile bed with no established soil food web to convert those nutrients to a usable form so the plants could simply be starving. And planting times for many of those crops are different so when exactly was each planted?

So there are many possible explanations and much more specific and detailed information is needed.

Dave
Amisoup
Original Author
11 years ago
Thanks, Dave. I attached a link to the other post. I seem to have some replies now.

You hit the nail on the head - I'm thinking I've either overfed them, or neglected something. The peppers showed the yellowish rims on the leaves before I ever touched them with a fertilizer, and I've never applied fertilizer during the heat of the day.

I'm in North Florida and our tomato planting season was to get them in the ground NLT 9/1. I ended up getting them in the ground about a week before that. The peppers have been in the ground since 8/13 or so, and were planted from seeds saved from a container pepper with no deisease. The rest planted on schedule according to the UF planting guide site.

I read that Neem was anti-fungal, and thought the yellow spots could be some infection in the plants, and therefore the spraying would help keep it under control.

Could the compost tea have burned them? I don't think I have seen any additional effects after spraying the tea, other than them getting taller.

Should I scrap the pepper plants, and plant beets or carrots, and cut off the lower yellowing tomato branches?

Thank you SO MUCH Dave! I wish you had a TV show!

Could the compost tea

Here is a link that might be useful: Other post with Pics
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gardenlen
11 years ago
g'day amisoup,

everything looks a little dry to me but then i'm not there to see 3d in real life.

all i can suggest is look at our presentations they work well for us, your mulch looks a bit lacking, look for hay mulches or sugarcane mulch and lay it 6-8"s thick

also no need to do any digging with raised beds

anyhow check our presentations

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens straw bale garden
Donna
11 years ago
Not disputing anything the others have said...it sounds like you have an awful lot of plants in a fairly small bed. I would take a look at the real possibility of overcrowding.

In the deep south, a good mulch is essential to grow well in raised beds...and then there is the issue that this is year one. Hang in there, build your soil, space things better next year and I bet you'll have a better harvest. My beds are four years old now and they are light years better than year one. (I amend my soil with homemade compost, composted manure, and blood meal; adding green sand and rock phosphates every five years.) It would be an extremely good idea to have your soil tested this winter so you take the guessing out of the soil building process next year. Best $5 you'll spend all year.
bb
11 years ago
did you get a soil test done? that's one of the first tasks with a new garden bed. you could probably get one done quickly and still have time to make some ammendments to the soil if needed, and have a harvest.

keep in mind that veggies are programmed with one thing in mind, procreate. they will do everything they can to fulfill their needs. short of them dying, they will make a comeback with the right help.

Why is almost everything looking bad in my NEW raised bed??

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digdirt2

Amisoup
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Why is almost everything looking bad in my NEW raised bed??

Comments (5)

digdirt2

AmisoupOriginal Author

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gardenlen

Donna

bb

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Amisoup
Original Author