If you are talking about fungal-type diseases, you need to realize that they are the toughest of diseases to treat, whether you mind poisons or not. Also, the metallic carbonates are true chemicals, not placebos. They deter by making the environment not so hospitable for the spores, and they add nothing toxic to humans. Buying harsher chemicals will probably be a waste of money. Not every productive remedy involves clobbering the problem with a sledge hammer.

Hank, With a new lasagna bed, I tend to just pile stuff on the first couple of years and don't start using a cover crop until all the lasagna ingredients have broken down and mixed together over time. However, if you have any reason to think that your bed is nutrient-deficient or is deficient in organic material, you can plant the cover crop of your choice. It might be difficult, though, to have a cover crop and to add the manured hay.....and if I had to choose one over the other, I would choose the 6" of manured hay! You also can pile up leaves on top of the hay.....the more the better, and the leaves will help keep winter weeds from sprouting in the manured hay. Around here, winter grasses and broadleaf weeds begin sprouting in late September. They remain quite small, especially the broadleaf ones which tend to form small rosettes of leaves down close to the ground. Then, all of a sudden, one winter day you will discover they have suddenly skyrocketed in size and become monsters. Thus, anything you do in the fall to keep down the weeds in your garden beds will make life easier later on. I like to shred the leaves by running over them with the lawn mower and catching them in the grasscatcher bag. Then I pour them over the beds and wet them down with the water hose so they won't blow around. The leaves break down fairly fast over the course of the winter, if shredded, and add organic material to your beds too. I don't know where you get garlic in OKC to plant at this time of the year, but most likely you would find it at any of the full-service nurseries. Or, if you can find organically grown garlic in any grocery store, you can plant it. Organic garlic should NOT have been sprayed with a chemical to keep it from sprouting, so it ought to sprout just fine. I also have planted plain, old, non-organic, cheap garlic from the Wal-Mart grocery dept., and it has sprouted just fine. (If if sprouts if left in the pantry too long, why wouldn't it sprout in the ground?) You can plant any of the cool-season annuals you want for winter color: pansies, violas, dianthus, snapdragons, ornamental cabbage and kale, etc. I usually wait until it cools down enough so that they high temps are only in the 80s before planting them. Or, if you want autumn color like mums or asters, which are usually perennial here, you can plant them now. It also is a good time to scatter seeds of early spring bloomers like poppies or larkspur that sprout in the fall or winter and bloom in early spring. It is a great time to purchase tulip or daffodil bulbs as soon as you see them in the stores. By the way, tulips will need to be pre-chilled in your fridge before planting. Dawn

Dave, I can see spraying for tomato foliage diseases on a preventative basis, but not so much for bugs and insects unless you know they're waiting to zoom in abnd do every year. Most folks I know spray with the Ortho product b'c it's excellent at preventing tomato fungal foliage diseases, which are usually worse than the bacterial ones, for which there aren't very good products anyway. You say you think you had blight, but blight is just a general term and doesn't relate to any one specific disease. When talking about "blight" are you talking about the foliage infections that are so common for everyone or something more serious as in a systemic disease ? Try Pyrethrin to try and control the cuke beetles but the best prevention is to use floating row covers and then take them off when blossoms appear so that pollination can occur. Even if the cuke beetles transmit disease at that time you'll still have time to get fruits before plant death starts b/c it takes a good month from time of transmission until symptoms appear. Carolyn

If you are looking to go a different route, using beneficial microbes can help to boost a plants natural defenses. Mycorrhizal fungi can help a plant to fight off fungal diseases, while other fungi release toxins which help to destroy bacterial diseases. You can get one bottle of a root growth "innoculant" at many specialty plant stores (try a hydroponic store if you cant find this) which will contain 30-50 different beneficial microbes. The downside to using these (if you want to call it that) is that you have to dechlorinate your water before using it to water your plants or else it will kill the microbes present. All of these are naturally present in the ground in places where there has not been chlorinated water poured on the ground to water it, and plants of all sorts will benefit from adding them. Using dechlorinated water will allow you to also use other biological control methods such as Bacillus thurgenesis. This bacteria lives in the soil and can infect the larval form of mosquitoes and fungus gnats, and will kill them before they can become adults. Also, you can use nematodes (microscopic worms) to control any pest which spends part of its life cycle in the ground. These little worms are applied through watering, and will begin to seek out intruders immediately. They will reproduce inside their hosts, leading to lasting protection. From a nutrient standpoint, you can use silica to decrease the plants' susceptibility to a number of diseases, as well as to increase their overall strength. This results in larger plants, stronger stems, and less damage from insects. It is not an organic additive as it is extracted by chemical means,but I cannot find any problems with it so far. If you have a pest problem and cannot get rid of it, or are looking for a preventative pesticide, use neem oil or pyrethrin spray. These are both pesticides which come from plant sources, so they break down in a matter of weeks. Neem oil can even be poured into the ground, where plants will absorb it and it will become effective throughout the entire plant. This keep pests from even wanting to feed on the leaves of treated plants. The bad part is, these also affect the good bugs when they are sprayed on the leaves, so try not to use them unless you cannot solve it through other means. There are lots of organic means of pest control which do not wipe out the local pollinators and pest control bugs (ladybugs, parasitic wasps, beetles, praying mantis, bees, etc) These can be even more effective than taking the "easy" route and just spraying to kill everything.