Difficulties

As always when gardening in a warm climate in poor soil, problems keep popping up.

I thought I had the parasitic nematodes under control with my system of soil fallowing and crop rotation, but apparently that was not the case.  Lately I've had trouble with the containers again...the plants do fine for about two months, then suddenly get sick and die. In some cases okra plants never did bear pods before they started declining.

I pulled an eggplant today that had started dying back and the roots were a mess...totally infested with root-knot nematodes.  The plant was wilting in moist soil because most of its root system was just gone.  The same thing happened with long beans and okra...roots missing and big lumpy galls from RKN in their place.

A lot of it is this heat.  We've had record or near-record heat for nearly a week now, and there really hasn't been any cool weather at all, just a slight moderation of the tropical heat at times in past weeks.  Parasitic nematodes aka PPN, thrive in tropical heat.  In temperate zones, there are maybe two species of PPN...in the tropics there are hundreds of them.

But there's hope for me yet...some of the container plants are soldiering on and still producing peppers and okra pods.  Also, I should mention that the sweet potatoes I tried to grow in the planting beds, including a variety that is supposted to be resistant to PPN, were mostly ruined by them.  They make lesions on the tubers and rot infiltrates.  Even if they look impressively large, the tubers taste really bad if you try to cook them and eat them.  Cutting out the bad parts doesn't work, the tubers still taste bad because they seem to secrete nasty compounds to fight off the infestation and rot.

If the weather finally does cool down, the PPN will be held back, they hate cold soil.  So far the pac choy are still growing slowly, at least most of them are.  I've had problems like this before and got past them...so maybe I'll do so again.  I have some soil that's been fallowed in garbage cans for years so roots can't get to it.  Maybe I'll mix some compost with some of that and see what I can grow.

Nothing is ever easy here, especially when the weather is acting weird.  Last year in November it was actually chilly, so maybe the heat will break and I'll turn the tide against the PPN.  

And the air has been really polluted here lately, most likely from smoke.  So I haven't been able to do much gardening.  If I try to work in it, I get a lot of chest pain and coughing fits.  So I'm biding my time and waiting for the weather to change and the winds to shift.