Basil Blight

Anyone heard of it?  I never had. 

I had been having some trouble with my basil this year which I think I could have attributed to the slugs, originally.  I was devastated because I am trying to grow a large basil crop to make pesto with and to dry for the winter.  Basil is easily my favorite spice and I want a lot of it.  What good is a garden if you don’t grow the foods you love the most?

While at Lowes the other day I saw basil plants on clearance for 50 cents.  Because my plants weren’t doing so well I thought it would be a good time to buy a few more.  They didn’t look great, they were pretty yellow, but I thought it was nothing my garden and some cow manure fertilizer couldn’t fix.  I took them home planted them and waited.  They didn’t get better.  There was no new growth and the plants were looking worse.  I didn’t know what the issue was.

While chit-chatting at work one day, one of my coworkers mentioned that she had heard of a  Basil Blight affecting plants this year.  I had never heard of it but went to work researching said blight.  My results led me to this article.  My stomach dropped when I read this story.  It was a match.  I went home checked the underside of my leaves and sure enough all the signs were there.  I ripped those plants out of the ground immediately and into the fire pit they went.  I removed them so fast I didn’t even think to take a picture of the signs.

I have since purchased 5 more basil plants that I will be planting on the other side of the yard 2-3 acres from my herb garden.  Hopefully I will have better results!

By the way, I have now sworn off buying  food plants from box stores .  As we now know they were a main contributor in last year’s tomato epidemic.  It only makes sense that we will have problems if everyone chooses to plant the same 5 varieties across the country.  When a disease hits every plant is at risk.    My food related plants are just to precious to me to risk losing!

Has anyone else had any garden problems this year?

Herb Garden

Jon’s mother mentioned that an herb garden should always be planted near the kitchen.  Once we started thinking about it, we realized we had the perfect spot for another garden near the kitchen. 

The spot we chose was one of those spots that is impossible to mow.  There were 2 old stumps, an ancor line for the telephone poll and it is on just enough of a slope that the riding lawn mower would often get stuck and the tires would just spin.  Now this spot which was a nussense is a tear drops shaped garden just of our back deck! Two thirds of the garden is an herb garden.  I planted basil (green leaf, red leaf and cinnamin varieties), parsley, dill, sage, thyme, rosemary, chives and cilantro.  The herbs weren’t doing so well at first but they seem to be coming along nicely now.  We did lose a few plants to the dang slugs though!  They are terrible in our yard  

The remaining third of our garden is planted with strawberries.  I bought them on clearance late this spring and hope they will come up for next year.  I’m not expecting much but it is a nice experiment! I love strawberries!

I run out to this garden daily.  I just can’t get enough of the fresh herbs and I hope that by the end of the summer I can dehydrate most of these plants to get me through the winter.  I did plant the rosemary and one basil in pots so that I can bring them in this winter.