The judge of the crops and garden show at the Otoe County Fair said the humidity and heat were perfect this year for a lot of garden diseases, but local growers appear to have found patience is the remedy.
Tomato plants across the region were hard hit by blight, that spread each time a drop of water was splashed from leaf to leaf. Many onions rotted in the moist ground where they were planted.
Peppers, which flourish under hot, dry conditions, put their energy into foliage as rain swelled rivers and streams.
Otoe County gardens produced good quality, however, said judge Larry Germer. He chose red tomatoes grown by Rose Garey as the show’s top vegetable, elderberries grown by Walter Sugden as the top fruit and yellow corn grown by Griffin Goering as the best grain.
Sugden said rainfall on soaked land posed some trouble getting to the garden and made it hard to keep weeds at bay. Watermelon was the best producer, he said.
In fact, watermelon was the star of the show.
Junior and Marlene Watermeier hauled a 125-pound watermelon to the fair that had been grown on a farm northwest of Burr by their granddaughter Camryn.
Watermeier attributed its tremendous size to selecting the seeds from the largest watermelon each year. He said the seed came from Ohio, but he would not reveal the location of the patch.
“I won’t tell you, but you can see them if you fly over with an airplane,” he said.
Judge Germer said it was the biggest watermelon he has seen after judging 10 county fairs this summer. “It was the biggest by far. The others were in the range of 20 to 25 pounds,” he said.
Bill Bottcher of Syracuse says he plants Charleston Gray watermelon because the plant is disease resistant and its fruit tastes good.
Germer said disease resistant varieties help gardeners, but good air movement and careful watering are also important. He said a thick mulch under the tomato plants will help keep water from splashing up into the leaves.
Garey, who had 21 entries in the garden show, said the problem with growing heirloom tomatoes is that the blight and disease gets them.
“The hybrid plants are supposed to be resistant. It doesn’t mean they don’t have these problems too, but it’s a little slower,” she said.
Garey said crop rotation is key to staying ahead of insects and plant diseases, but says she doesn’t have enough room.
“I call myself a frustrated farmer because I don’t have a farm. I garden a little patch and that’s my farm,” she said.
