Quote:
Originally Posted by bower
One thing I've learned here is to give the plants fertilizer once they start to ripen fruit. My foliage health was going downhill as soon as they hit that point of ripening. Feeding them weekly or biweekly stopped that from happening to a large extent.
It actually seems as though individual varieties will just start to get whichever of the local diseases they're susceptible to, as soon as they started to pull nitrogen out of the old lower leaves to fulfill their fruiting needs.
OTOH there are diseases that can do the plants in, but fertilizer has at least removed one cause of decline for me.
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My son grew different varieties in that same locations and did not have the same problems. He did fertilize every week--sandy soil. And those plants pumped out fruit until mid OCtober when he pulled the plants during fall clean up.