Rust never sleeps
So far this year we’ve dealt with bears and frost. Now comes the fun stuff - plant disease. Organic gardening is a challenge, because there’s the ever-present temptation to just “spray it” with whatever the latest insecticide or fungicide is at your local hardware.
In Coleman’s The New Organic Grower, he imparts a bit of wisdom that I’ve attempted to carry through our efforts at organic gardening. The gist of it is this: disease only happens when plants are stressed in one fashion or another. So a disease or insect problem in your garden means something is not to your plants liking, and they’re weak and therefore susceptible. It’s up to you to figure out what the problem is.
We’ve tried the obvious stuff - making sure that
blackberries and raspberries are at opposite ends of the garden, etc. I’ve noticed the rust you see in this picture in previous years in the garden. These are blackberry plants, and this year there was enough of it that I succumbed and pulled up most of the affected plants (rust travels in the root system, so you need to pull the entire plant - there is no cure, organic or otherwise). Had I been on top of it more this year, I would have applied copper sulfate (fungicide) to slow the growth of this.
Here’s a picture of Sal doing rust research on the ‘net.
We’ve had some great help, much appreciated, from Liz and her daughter Claire. 
Below is a picture of them picking snap peas, standing next to our garlic. CSA partners are starting to enjoy not only peas, but amazing greens.
The killdeer were so happy about the environment in our garden that they put in a second nest this year. Four eggs…
