August was unusually cool here in Wisconsin. Few were complaining. The weather hasn't seemed to slow down vegetable production to a noticeable degree. Our harvest so far this year is excellent and we've got lots more on the way.

Even in good years problems occur. Tomato leaf blight and Japanese beetles are giving me some grief. Several years ago I lost most of my tomatoes to early blight. I attributed that to spacing plants too closely and some bad luck weather-wise, as many tomato growers in much of the northern United States had similar problems. It was a "not normal" event. Since then, the leaf blight in my garden has not disappeared, but I've been able to stay one step ahead and keep the blight in check just enough by cutting away dead and infected foliage.

This year, the blight is a little worse. And although the harvest has already proved excellent, I'd like to slow the blight down. I'm sure it's affecting overall yield potential. I've been looking for cures online. The most interesting one so far was something along the lines of, "remove all the infected soil from your garden and bring in new soil." Yeah, right.

There are one or several commercial products that can truly stop blight and are "certified organic". I haven't tried them, since part of my garden experiment is to find solutions that don't cost much money, and thus can be used by anyone, so I've avoided buying the patented fix. However, I think after this year, prudence will surpass frugality and I may give the commercial cure a try.

A home remedy I found cited several times online which appears logical and is organic is to spray the infected plants with a baking soda solution. The blight needs acidic conditions to thrive and changing the pH of the plant surfaces to alkaline slow the spread.  I've done several sprays and intend to continue. The method so far is proving to be "maybe".  The blight continues to creep upwards but not moving as fast as it was before I started spraying.

The Japanese beetles are controllable, I just need to show up more often. They are usually easy to keep in check if you don't let their population build up. All that is required is a daily clean off of plants with beetles using a funnel trap. The work involved is no more than a walk through all of the garden on a daily routine, but I've missed a lot of days in the garden lately, so it's catch up time against these defoliating little monsters.

We had a winner of a $50 Gift Certificate for our e-mail sign up at The Mother Earth News Fair West Bend, Wisconsin earlier this month. That person is Theresa Dostaler.  Congratulations and thanks for signing up!

We'd like to remind all our readers that we love to grow our own food and to help others do the same. We post articles about food growing and using home grown food on our website blog, and we almost always have a discussion or several going on about food and growing on our Facebook page. You can help us spread the word by forwarding this newsletter to a friend and if you have any gardening questions, drop us a note. If we can't help you we'll find someone who can.

Thanks for reading our newsletter.

Noel and the CobraHead Team