Hort Oil works great on scale. Read the label! It will tell you about when to spray and when not to spray. Don't spray if it's going to be below 50F consistently (because the bugs are inactive and won't smother from the oil), if it's going to get warm 80F or higher, (because it can damage your plant) or if it's going to rain or very humid (because the spray can damage your plant). So spray the first chance you have for some dry weather, at the dormant strength. And then spray again at the interval listed on the label. I don't know about scrubbing 'dead scale.' I never bothered with that. Just google 'Horticultural oil' and you will pick up a dozen explanations of the process. Here's a specimen label for one kind of oil. Check the personal protective equipment (PPE), and do what they say. Find your plant on the Application Chart and use the dormant concentration. Read all the cautions. In this case, spraying every two weeks is okay, but not more than 4 times. Whatever you are using to apply the spray is a low volume sprayer. Labels are written in a kind of code (legally required), where every component means something. As you can see, the key is covereage: you need to get spray on every part of the affected canes. Spend your time getting the canes completely coated in good, cool but not cold weather. Repeat once, if you have the opportunity, at least two weeks later, as insurance, to nail any scale you might have missed. Here is a link that might be useful: label for Sun Spray Ultra Fine Oil

Well, I applied half the RP I bought to half (a little less - some beds are wider than others) of the new beds. Just as an experiment. I'll till in some old manure and re-test all the beds. But I was doing some more reading, the agent said that a legume cover crop can't supply all the N that a veggie crop will need the next year, but I think I'm going to try it anyway. I told him that I was trying to build the soil, planting there this year would be a bonus, but all the amendments he suggested were pretty soluble and if I don't grow veggies there this year might end up leaching N. So I'll wait and see how much rain we get in May, get the soil tested after the lime and the "humus" and the RP, I *may* plant some potatoes (and use the bloodmeal I have to fertilize just those, hope the bears don't go digging) if the pH is good for them, and just throw my oats or maybe some clover on (oats will winterkill but won't add any N, just OM, but I hate to have to deal with the clover next spring). He was just too focused on feeding the (hypothetical, at this point) crop, and not the soil. What I'm trying to do is build the soil so that I can grow something there next year (and later years) without putting down water-soluble fertilizers every year. The soil test came back from my old garden area we built over 3 years from mostly from decomposed wood chips, kitchen/leaf compost, and lime. Last year the pH was 6.4, N was Medium High, P was Medium, K Medium High, Ca and Mg Very High. I had beautiful peppers (tomatoes and squash were another story but that was b/c of too much rain), didn't grow a cover crop after harvest, and this year the pH is 6.1, N is still Medium High, P is Medium Low, K is High (? Not sure how it got higher), Ca and Mg are still Very High. I *could* throw down a little lime but have to watch the Ca, again, could put some bone meal in with the transplants but obviously just "compost" along with liming the native soil has been sufficient for us to grow some really nice veggies the past couple of years, and will probably do fine this year. I don't know why the new beds are so low in P, K and Ca, soil taken from a different area (same area my dad took some from a few years ago and he says his garden does fine). But I think that if we can just work in enough OM (though it might be 40-yr old manure instead of 15-yr old wood chips) along with lime and the RP I just put in, it ought to be fine in a year or 2. Esp. if I grow a legume cover crop in it this year (and maybe next), and continue to rotate crops including cover crops, and collect more leaves (and compost them with the coffee chaff) this fall.

I find that after the rains we had recently mosquitos are starting to multiply. With the west nile virus threat, that's always a concern. Just in the last few days I had a least 7 bites. During the drought, not one! (Just a few misserable chigger bites!!!!!!!)

Jay, Too bad the rain mostly missed you, but it is a good thing the hail missed your garden. I should know better than to think it is actually raining at your house just because the radar says it is. Y'all are getting rain just like we did last year....in tiny amounts that scarcely wet the ground, but still are better than no rain at all. I have noticed a lot of my tomato plants are starting to struggle in the heat....and not just in terms of heat stress, but also the appearance of various diseases. It seems to be a pretty bad year for tomato diseases. I've had two that I thought had bacterial wilt, but mostly just Septoria and Early Blight here. I was already thinking Pith Necrosis even before you said it, but then I remember that it is usually cool nights + high humidity that encourage the Pseudonomas corrugata. Also, I often have plants 'outlive' or 'outlast' pith necrosis if I leave in the ground, so it does not necessarily kill the plants. So, even though you've had somewhat cool nights, no one in their right mind could say you've had high humidity there! So, if it isn't pith necrosis, how about Southern Blight? Have you ever had plants with it? When I have a sudden wilt accompanied with almost instantaneous plant death without prior yellowing and a slow decline of the foliage, Southern Blight (Sclerotium rolfsii) is often the cause. You would have seen the brown stem cankers that usually completely girdle the stem at or just above soil level. You might have observed a white fungal spore mat on the lesions and even the little tannish-orange sclerotia on the white spore mat and brown lesions. As dry as it has been there, I think maybe your plant wouldn't have had the white spore mat/orange sclerotia. If you are seeing the brown stem lesions and a white spore mat with black sclerotia instead, it could be Timber Rot. What else causes brown stem lesions? Let's see.....how about Alternaria canker (Alternaria alternata)? The only thing that makes this less likely is that you'll tend to see symptoms of stem, foliage and fruit, and not only on the stem, although I am not sure if it appears on the stem first or last or if it appears on everything all at once. So, what else? You can get brown stem lesions on plants that have severe Early Blight (Alternaria solani) but your plants would have looked sickly with EB on foliage for days or weeks before you'd see stem lesions. (At least that's how it progresses in my garden.) Am I forgetting anything that causes brown lesions on the stems? Oh, Fusariuum Crown Rot (Fusarium oxysporum?). With this one the whole plant browns and dies, but I don't think it is quite as quick as 24 hours, and I think you would have seen yellowing of foliage for at least several days before Fusarium Crown Rot could advance enough to kill a plant. Jay, I don't know that I have come up with anything you did not already consider. In my garden, it most likely would be Southern Blight that caused such a sudden death, and I don't always see the white spore mat until 2 to 3 days after the plant suddently dies. I don't have a lot of experience with Bacterial Wilt, but I think it would have been apparent for several days before you lost the plant. I'm not a very good disease detective because when they die I just yank them out, throw them away and replace them with something else. I don't spend a lot of time studying them, so I probably am weak on stem symptoms, and the only stem diseases I see here tend to be Southern Blight or Pith Necrosis. I think this sounds like a case for Craig or Martin or Fusion or maybe someone at the Tomato Forum like Mulio....you need the opinion of one of the "pros", don't you think? I hope you get some weather relief. Our temps are supposed to be 100+ until at least Wed. so not much hope for improving conditions here. When you figure out what you think it is, I hope you'll let me know so I can learn from this conversation. Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't spread. You know, in May and June the tomato plants look darn near perfect and a long, fruitful season beckons. In late June and all of July, the diseases and pests take hold, along with the terrible heat, and the tomato plant decline begins. Some years, I feel like it is July's purpose in life to try to kill every plant I am trying to grow. Any plants that make it to early August probably get cut back to 2 or 3' and given a chance to regrow for fall. To make it even harder, new diseases keep appearing so you never really figure them all out. (sigh) Chances of rain here are slim to non-existent and I am keeping my in-ground plants on a 4-day watering schedule, which probably isn't enough, but will have to do. The container plants get watered once or twice a day and have almost no disease issues. It is temping to switch all my tomato plants next year to large containers. Dawn