We got the official report from Iowa State today on the geraniums: they reversed themselves, or somebody misrepresented their earlier findings, because the official report reads, in part: Microscopic examination revealed that the spots were caused by blistering of plant cells, not by damage from an insect or pathogen. We consulted with [redacted] and [redacted], both of whom said that the damage looked like edema, which is consistent with our microscopic observations. Edema occurs when plants take up more water than they can transpire through their leaves, and it can occur after humid, overcast weather, or occasionally in response to some chemicals. So the official word from Iowa State is edema, and jean001 wins a prize of some kind. Jean, please let me know if I own anything that you might want. But you cannot have my Yuccas. We've found new problems since then, one of which actually looks more like a more typical form of edema to me, but various people are concerned about bugs instead. There'll be pictures at the blog tomorrow.

Mia, Yes , I think it will work. Interplanting tomatoes with other crops is something I do all the time. I often grow smaller plants like lettuce and carrots underneath and between tomato plants, essentially using them as a living mulch beneath the taller tomato plants. I also mix all kinds of herbs into the tomato beds as well, and think those herbs help explain how I grow so many tomato plants and yet only rarely see even a single tomato hornworm or fruit worm. You sometimes will get less yield per plant when you interplant multiple kinds of crops together using close spacing, but since you have a lot more plants occupying the soil, you still get a good harvest . The best carrot crop I ever had was a result of me broadcast sowing lettuce and carrot seed randomly into the tomato bed after the tomato plants already had been transplanted into the ground. My garden was smaller then and I had run out of space, so was packing as much into each bed as I possibly could. I just thinned carrots and lettuce after they sprouted. When I grow onions with tomato plants, normally I hammer a stake into the ground where each tomato plant will be planted later, and leave a small unplanted spot there as I plant the onions. When it it time to transplant the tomato plants into the ground, I put one tomato plant next to each stake. If I have to pull up a couple of onions to make room for a tomato transplant, it isn't a big deal . We eat those onions as scallions. I started interplanting multiple types of plants together long ago, after reading John Jeavon's book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." book. It is amazing how much you can pack into even a small space when you interplant. Even when I grow tomato plants in molasses feed tubs, I generally have pepper plants, herbs and flowers mixed into each container with the tomato plants. Look at how Mother Nature mixes everything up together. On the eastern edge of our woodland, for example, we have native pecan and oak trees growing as the dominant plants, but underneath them we have wild cherries, American persimmons, possumhaw hollies, and redbuds, and beneath those understory trees we have American beautyberry bushes, native blackberries, inland sea oats and brushy bluestem, peppervines and several native wildflowers which ebb and flow with the seasons. All of them happily co-exist. Why can't our gardens be the same way? To garden bio-intensively in this manner, you need to pay careful attention to soil fertility and irrigation (if adequate rainfall is not being received). Obviously when you interplant several types of edible crops together, the plants will be competing with one another. I get smaller onions in interplanted beds than I get from onions grown in a monoculture with recommended spacing, but still get tons of onions. We still have several dozen onions from last year's crop, though now they are starting to sprout. There pretty much is nothing grown in our veggie garden that isn't interplanted with several other things. If I ever were to plant even one single monoculture bed, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like the way it looked and would be out there trying to fix the bed by adding more stuff to it. In fact, I do have my onions planted as monoculture beds right now, but that is because they are the only thing I've put into the ground so far this year. The onions will not be alone in those beds for long. Hope this helps , Dawn

From your initial description of the issues your plants are facing, I was leaning towards thinking your plants were having a root rot issue. I still sort of lean that way, but not as much as I was in the beginning. Root rot is very common on heavy, slow-draining clay and you have fast-draining sandy soil where it is much less common. The specific root rot I had in mind often progresses in a linear manner. For example, if it hits a row of shrubs, you'll see it move from one to another in a linear manner. However, in field crops it also progresses in a circular manner. However, you're in OKC and it is more common in the southern OK counties, and not so much in OKC, I think. If you did find the stringy growth I described in the root zones of dead plants, or observed a white spore mat on the soil surface near those plants, though, I'd go back to my original feeling that it sounds a lot like cotton root rot, which I just happen to have battled here in our heavy red clay. One question that would help rule out cotton root rot is this: when the leaves die, do they cling to the plant or do they drop? Cotton root rot can affect plants very suddenly, it affects over 2000 known species, it is very fast-acting (i.e. quick to kill plants), it moves in a linear or, in crops, in a circular fashion, and it is common in clay soil. So, it might not be your problem, but a similar root rot might be. Keep in mind, there's the disease type of root rot caused by specific fungal diseaes and there's the physiological kind of root rot caused by plants standing in water/wet soil until their roots literally rot and die. The folks at Horn's seemed to lean towards the physiological form of root rot when they expressed their opinion that your plants are being overwatered. You're the one who has to decide if they are right. I still think it is very hard for fast-draining sandy soil to stay wet enough to root rots. One way to figure out if the plants are dying because they are too wet is to dig up a dead plant and look at the roots. Do they look healthy and alive or dead? Since you have sandy soil, I think root knot nematodes could be an issue, but I don't have a lot of experience with them. If you have root knot nematodes, you'll see knots, galls or swellings on the roots of an affected plant that has died. You can google and find a photo of roots with root knot nematode damage. I am inclined to think you need to take a three-pronged approach. 1.) Feed your plants if they haven't been fed in the last couple of weeks. Fast-draining sandy soil that is being heavily watered may not be providing the plants with enough nutrition, and plants that are "hungry" or underfed are more vulnerable to diseases and to heat stress. 2.) Spray with a fungicide on a regular schedule as the fungicide labels direct. Watch to see if your plants improve. 3.) Treat for insects in whatever way you're comfortable using, but I am not convinced they are the issue. And then there is the watering issue. You want your plants to be in moist soil, and you want it to be as uniformly moist as possible. It is better to keep it somewhat moist at all times than to alternate between very dry and very wet because both those extremes stress plants. And, if it were the heavy April/early May rains that were the issue, I would have thought the plants would have showed symptoms long before the heat wave arrived last week. As long as you water with a sprinkler system, your plants are going to be more vulnerable to fungal diseases, so a regular preventative spraying program of fungicide during the growing system probably would be a good idea. You didn't mention if your beds are mulched, but if they aren't, they need to be. Mulching helps keep fungal spores in the soil from being carried up onto the plants by water splashing up when the sprinkler system is in use. I am a little worried about the roses. Look at the undersides of the leaves. Do you see spider mites? Both the fine webbing and the discolored leaves sound like spider mite damage. Look at the photos in the link below and see if they resemble your roses. The ones in the linked photos may be further along with the mites than yours are, but your plants still ought to look similar if it is mites. I don't really know what the answer is as far as plant death. I think it is still likely to be a fungal disease, but without seeing the plants can't rule root knot nematodes in or out, or anything else for that matter. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Spider Mites on Roses

Well, I chunked up my purple taters, peeled them, boiled them, and then I put them in the blender. I was trying to mush them enough so I could make a pie filling. However, those things kept getting thicker and thicker, and so I added some nice fat free half and half....and instead of sugar, I put in a cup of Splenda. And the color is the most gorgeous lavender. I've done no further cooking, but it takes a big spoon to dip this out of the blender container. I think about 48 ounce size too. And my parrots love it, the dogs love it, and I love it. I mean, what is not to like about this smooth concoction, which tastes and has the texture of a pudding. I did not add any vanilla, but I suppose I could have but I wanted to see the taste of the natural sweet potato. Also, I could have left out the Splenda and had a veggie smoothie. I've downloaded a book on my Kindle which is a book about making green smoothies, out of raw foods. The blessed thing about such food, so many of the green foods are "free" foods that do not count against your diet if you are diabetic. That is one reason I've begun eating more dill pickles, sauerkraut, jalapenos, mustard on any sandwich, and then the SaraLee 10 carb whole wheat sliced bread....sometimes just one slice for an open faced sandwich. But the green smoothies are espousing the raw food diet, going beyond vegan to raw, and eliminating cooked foods of any kind. You can go part way with this sort of diet, which is what I would do, but I will give it a go because by eating raw greens, I've already lost 8 pounds. Hard to take it off, but great when it happens.