Florence Grovida Gardening

Directions Yaq

• The Most Practical Guide To Orchid Care To Be Found

1. Pick 10 tomato leaves from a healthy tomato plant and chop them into small pieces.
2. Combine the onion with the tomato leaves in the rubbing alcohol. Steep the mixture overnight.

1. Make a cotton swab by wrapping a picce of the cotton batting around the stick. The idea is to make a swab that is large enough to let you apply the mixture easily.
2. In the morning, remove any diseased leaves from your roses. Dip the swab in the tomato-onion solution and wipe the entire-plant, including the tops and undersides of all the leaves.

Yield: About Vi cup of black spot-stopping Tomato Leaf Tonic

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Black spot (Diplocarpon rosae) is a disfiguring fungal disease that infects roses during warm, wet weather. The disease causes black spots ringed with yellow on rose leaves. While black spot is rarely fatal, a severely infected plant may drop all of its leaves.

Luckily, you can thwart black spot with good gardening practices. Every time you visit your garden, clean up fallen leaves and organic debris to remove places where black spot spores collect. While you're there, prune off and destroy infected leaves and seriously infected canes.

You can also keep black spot off plants by being careful not to splash spore-laden, muddy water on them when watering. A mulch of disease-fighting compost actually kills spores in the soil and keeps them from splashing onto plants.

Good air circulation also prevents black spot spores from taking hold. To open the center of rose bushes to air and sun, carry pruners on garden visits and cut out any inward-growing shoots. Crowing roses in full sun and spacing them far enough apart for adequate air circulation can stop black spot troubles before they start, tf

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For a disease fighter that's cheap easy, and proven effective, look no further than your kitchen cabinet. This recipe, offered by Dr. Thomas A. Zitter, a professor in the Cornell University Department of Plant Pathology, includes lightweight oil that acts as a spreader-sticker to help the baking soda stay on leaves. By keeping the baking soda on the leaves, the oil makes the spray more effective.

Use this recipe when you have to spray only occasionally—some plants may be injured by repeated applications of oil.

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