A vegetable meadow?

[Did67]

Mh mh, but does not this lead to an earlier and stronger fragility in the face of drought, when the lack of water (probably unavoidable) arrives?

My answer was incomplete. You're right to raise.

From a "root development on the surface" point of view, I think (but this is only a conviction) that this will not change much. The tomato will go where it finds food (and as I said, bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi probably too).

But you are absolutely right about the fact that the tomato produces "adventitious" roots (roots that grow on the stems). The more stems you put in the ground, if necessary by laying the foot down, the better the plant will be rooted - or even, no doubt (but I'm still guessing), mycorrhizal - and therefore resistant to drought.

[to be chafoin]

They were there.

several circular galleries appear under the hay, piercing the ground vertically

anecic?


Today unfortunately I have the impression that there is no one except a few small green starved depigmented

size 5 cm max, the head is a bit green

2018-10-12 09.51.25.jpg (395.93 KB) Viewed times 1922

endogees?

[Did67]

The galleries are most likely the work of anecics, indeed. If it was dry, they were in "diapause" (rolled into a ball, in a slower state of life, so as not to dry out). With the return of humidity [still not at home; always great weather!], there will be a period of activity before the winter cold ...

I can't recognize worms directly. The two in your photo are probably 'endogés'.

The "anecics", except with the flashlight in wet weather around 11 o'clock in the evening, you will not see them often: they go out at night, eat, mate in season, and wisely descend to depth, dragging a few strands of 'grass as food. That's all their interest: thus they maintain the galleries. Easy recognition is the castings they leave [the endogenous eat the mixture of earth and organic matter at the front and reject the mixture at the back: their galleries are closed behind them].

[to be chafoin]

Yes, I saw a lot of them - probably endogenous - for example in one of the "blown" clods of earth that I associate with voles.

Have you (you and other readers) any signs of earthworms at home? I see these galleries but I do not really see casts for now (I'll see tonight to 11h), but maybe the earth is still too dry and temperatures too high. Here too, apart from a first rainy episode, still little water and summer temperatures (29 ° announced today!). How do worms come out of diapause? I'm going back to Bouche to see if he talks about it but I do not think so ...

Suddenly the earth is so hard that I tend to find the old reflexes: I water copiously after removing the hay, I growl, I claw and I finish crumbling by hand before sowing.

[to be chafoin]

that's it I found in the Bouché (Worms and men, which I finished a few days ago): the diapause ends when the internal clock signals that the nights are long enough.

[to be chafoin]

Some news of voles. There's no picture.

The gallery comes to park upright just along the root, a kind of drive-in?

This is what a perennial plant pays for relatively expensive garden centers.

Is the physalis part of the list of plants adored by voles?

I did not understand why he had more than vegetated, giving no fruit ... By lifting the hay: the plant is on a molehill (certainly vole).

[to be chafoin]

Always the voles. It seems to me that I am beginning to better understand how they work: like parasitic fungi, they puncture the plant (nibbling the roots a bit, the young roots?) Without even killing it because it serves as eat.

The beets are down on the fresh molehill.

The vegetable is not attacked, but the roots do - I imagine - which causes stagnation in the growth of the plant. For my celeriacs, this looks even more serious because it seems that the underground part of the vegetable, the one we eat does not "apple", so that I think I really would have nothing to eat, while I can eat (small) beets (even beets!).

[to be chafoin]

A photo of the two tomato plants. The one who had been attacked by something did regain so much vigor that he overtook the other, who was in better health.

It's the right one, it even produces bigger tomatoes.

To compare with the pictures of the same plans in August like this one:

[to be chafoin]

Seedlings are hyper recalcitrant. I feel I have wasted large amounts of seeds (and effort). Rye and spinach have hardly risen, whether sown in rows or on the fly. Last year I had the same problem with rye but this year it seems to be worse.

Only the beans (and the vetch that was mixed with the rye) come out, and even very easily it seems to me.

First line of beans.

[Adrien (ex-nico239)]

A photo of the two tomato plants. The one who had been attacked by something was so vigorous that he overtook the other, who was healthier.2018-10-13 11.08.57.jpg
To compare with the pictures of the same plans in August like this one:

Actually beautiful resilience .... like nothing is ever lost ...