This is a pic of some blooms on the Husky Red. All of them on the plant look great, except the one on the far left, it looks like it might be getting a ring around it and might drop, otherwise this plant is doing great.

Here is the Bonnie Patio Container Tomato. This little tomato is crazy. It is not even a foot tall and has at least 10 tomatos on it. Ive already picked 3 or 4 from it. Or maybe it was 2. I cant remember for sure......

No leaf roll or curl, but Im having major blossom drop since the bloom booster

Here is a close up example of the blossom drop on the Patio container plant

This container plant I THINK is called super Fantastic. I think.

It has 8 or 10 tomatos and not a blossom one. It has some babies forming, but Im guessing they will drop like all the rest have dropped this week.

Again, bloom booster on the same day as the others. No leaf roll. There is a little bit of tips rolling under in a few spots, but overall this plant seems very healthy.

Ok, here we have one of the tomatos in the raised bed. It has bad leaf roll and wont keep even one blossom. I will post pics of the blossoms on this plant next.

I have them on a 1 week watering schedule right now, the top 1/4 inch of the soil seems to be dry fast, but when I poke my stick in the soil, it is moist all the way down 4 or 5 inches. I almost never see them looking wilted since they have been good and established. The plant directly to the right of this one is looks identical to this one. Same leaf roll, same blossom drop, I wont post pictures, you cant tell them apart.

This post was edited by Erod1 on Thu, Jul 4, 13 at 21:06

This is what they ALL do on this plant.

I took one of the bigger ones that had fallen and picked the rest of the bloom out of the middle, and you can see it had actually pollinated and formed fruit, then dropped.

This is actually 2 Plants. I had my first ever cut worm, I must have found the plant immediately, because I took the top that had been cut off and stuck it in the dirt and I'll be darned if that and the stem that had not a single leaf on it both took off and grew back. This plant has no fruit, no leaf roll, and continuous blossom drop.

Ok, last plant and the only one that I am sure what it is of the plants in the raised bed. It is called parks Whopper. Has several fruit on it, has been doing well with no leaf roll, but has developed the same blossom drop as the other plants in this bed.

Emma, count your blessings, I have 18 tomato plants left now. One of my plants looks like it might be almost as healthy as yours. The rest of them are pitiful. I cant tell you why you have blossom drop, but I can tell you that your plants are in much better shape than mine.

Larry

I have noticed blossom drop on one tomato and one hibiscus (in that the stems look like someone took nail scissors to it, not that I had been looking too closely at the blooms). I also had a small squash plant cut off this morning, likely cutworm even though I had a two-toothpick defense. Leaves curl in response to temps, to reduce the surface area exposed to the sun and evaporative area, I believe. I don't worry about it. My plants have been "sweating" for several weeks - I brush past and they leave moisture on me. If I water well with soakers in the evening and first thing in the morning the leaves aren't too curled, I ignore it, as it's likely environment and not disease.

In hotter temps, blooms and even fruits will abort. Different types have different tolerances for the heat, so some may drop while others don't. If the temps are hot or wildly swinging, I don't expect too much and just wait it out. After feeding bloom boost about a week ago, I have fruit set on all my big plants (18-19 plants in the garden, I think) but two or three, all heirlooms i think, as opposed to only two having fruit. Hybrids are going gangbusters. Three other plants are still pretty small, so I'm not worried they don't have fruit yet. So, 12 out of 18 isn't bad since I didn't plant until May!

I fed my whole garden bloom booster, and now have cukes every day, squash in development, flowers on the peppers and cantaloupe. I would say your plants may be stressed from the fertilizer but it may just be time of year. Watch and wait is what I'd do. Good luck!

Thanks guys.

Larry, im really sorry to hear about your plants. I guess im lucky i have the fruit that i do have on 4 of the 8 plants i have because i dont think im going to get any more.

Mia, i did bloom booster hoping it would help, but it didnt. I havent been able to get a single fruit set from 4 of these plants and they were all planted at the same time, get the same watering and fertilizer, same amount of sun, etc. it just makes no sense at all to me.

I guess i will just keep watering, stop worrying about it and see what happens!!!!

Sorry bout the pictures being sideways, they didnt look like that when i posted them:(

Emma

Emma, if I can get the pictures to post I will show you what sick plants look like.

The sun is just coming up and you can see under the plants better now. This end of the row has more fruit than the other end. but all look bad and I low fruit set on all plants, plus a lot of disease.

This next picture is my best looking plant, A seedless of some king that was given to me and planted as a small healthy plant on 5-27 in an area that had not grown tomatoes in the past. You can see it has leaf roll and blossom drop also.

Emma overall your plants look fine. The second plant looks a little lighter in color. Also the blossom stem on it looks different than usual. The rest of the plants all look very healthy. In my opinion it is probably weather and stress related. My curling was more severe than yours. I noticed another plant last night I may have to remove. All the rest are still looking good. The next month will tell the tale. The month of July determines a season in my opinion. At least here in my garden. If I come out of it without losing many plants and with at least some fruit set then I'm normally ok. What concerns me more than the heat coming back and is the wind has returned and blowing harder than they predicted even yesterday. This will make the second day of it. Hopefully it won't blow all month long. As plants get fruit set and the fruits start growing the heat and wind puts more stress on the plant. The plants that weren't growing much really started to jump over the last 5-6 days. This will slow them down. All we can do now is keep them watered and wait. Jay

Emma, Your plants look fine to me. There is not much wrong with them, especially considering the weather conditions they've had to deal with. I agree with all of Mia's comments, so won't repeat everything she already said. I have a lot more leaf roll on some of my plants than you do, and I am not the least bit concerned about it. It is hot, it is dry, and we never even made it out of drought, so of course the plants are stressed. Even feeding plants stresses them. Some plants in the front garden that had leaf roll for two weeks are fine now, but other plants in the back garden that didn't have leaf roll have now developed it. It will go away in a week or two, or maybe not, but either way, the plants still will produce fruit. I just don't worry about leaf roll or leaf curl unless it presents with other symptoms that indicate a disease is present (and I see no indication that your plants are sick with something like Curly Top Virus).

Your plants fall into two categories: in-ground plants and container plants.

First, let's talk about growing tomato plants in containers. I have grown tomato plants in containers for many years, and unless you have an incredibly large container, you're not going to get nearly as many fruit from any tomato plant, any variety, in a container, as that same plant, same variety, will produce when grown in good soil in the ground, with all other variables being equal. The plants cannot produce, set and mature as many fruit per plant when grown in a container where their roots have considerably less space in which to grow as they will produce in the ground where the roots can ramble and roam endlessly. So, unless you grow tomatoes in containers that hold a minimum of 25 gallons of soil-less mix, you're always going to have diminished productivity with the plants that are in containers. This is especially true with indeterminate varieties that produce large fruit. So, part of what is going on is that the tomato plants are doing as well as can be expected given the apparent size of the containers in which they are grown, and I think you probably need to adjust your expectations for the plants in containers. The container-grown plants also get hotter than plants in the ground, so they stress more easily and produce less fruit per plant. When stressed plants in containers already have fruit on them, they are working hard to enlarge and mature that fruit, so that is where the energy is going and that is why they aren't setting more fruit. Whereas a plant in the ground can keep growing and setting more fruit on newer foliage, often the plants in containers cannot do that because of their smaller root system, smaller overall size and level of stress. After you harvest a lot of the fruit that is lower down on the plant, often you will get new fruit set on newer foliage higher up on the plant. That is just one of the limitations of growing fruit in containers in our hot climate.

With your in-ground plants, they look fine. Ignore the leaf roll and just focus on keeping them evenly moist. They'll produce fruit both now and again in the fall if you can keep them well-watered and healthy. Some varieties produce later than others. Super Fantastic always sets fruit really late for me, so I started growing Fantastic instead, which seems to set fruit earlier. Park's Whopper only sets fruit well for me in April and May. After that, with hotter conditions and more stress, it just focuses on maturing what it has set. If you can keep it healthy, it will produce well in the fall.

With most tomato plants, the larger the fruit that the plant produces, the less well it sets fruit in hot weather. For that reason, I don't plant a lot of varieties that set huge fruit...though I grow a few that do. I mostly focus on slicing types that produce fruit in the 8-12 oz. range for production all summer long. I grow a handful of plants that will produce 1 to 2-lb. tomatoes from blossoms that set fruit in April and May, but they very rarely set new fruit after the temperatures heat up.

Most of the tomato varieties that produce bite-sized fruit will set fruit almost all summer long, and some of the types that set smallish sized fruit, like Jaune Flammee and Fourth of July, produce much more heavily than the varieties that produce really large fruit. That's normal in our climate. My sister-in-law, who gardens in Pennsylvania, can grow varieties that produce huge tomatoes all summer long, but those varieties don't grow well in our climate where our daytime highs routinely are 10-20 degrees higher than hers.

If you want heavy production all summer long, chose plants that produce fruit in smaller sizes. If I only cared about how many fruit per plant I could get, I'd plant a variety called Super Boy. I planted six of these plants one spring and they produced oodles of fruit all summer long and never slowed down. I gave away hundreds of fruit per plant. They barely had better flavor and texture than a grocery store tomato, but if heavy production was my goal, they would be the fruit I'd choose.

Blossom drop is simply a fact of life when growing tomatoes. The hotter the weather, the worse it is. The more humid the weather, the worse it is. The more stressed the plants are, the more they drop blossoms or even fruit. The more fruit already on a plant, the more the blossoms will drop. You cannot do anything to change this, except maybe move to a milder climate.

I think there is wisdom in not trying to change things that cannot be changed and in, instead, accepting the plant limitations that exist.

Larry, It has been a tough tomato year in our part of the country. There's been plentiful disease because of all the weeks of heavy rainfall. I'm sorry it has affected your plants so badly, but some years are just that way.

I have some tomato plants that look every bit as bad as yours, and some plants that look perfect. Both sets of plants are producing just fine, though, so I don't care about how they look.

Jay, I hope the wind is not too hard on your plants.

In my garden (not surprisingly since I am so far south), it is June that determines what sort of tomato year we will have. June was a great month and I cannot keep up with the harvesting, so need to yank out some plants just to save my sanity. This is the second great tomato year in a row, despite ongoing drought, and I am grateful, but we're overdosing on tomatoes. Next year I'll plant a lot fewer. I thought I had planted a lot fewer this year (and I did) but it wasn't few enough. (grin) How ironic is it that for the second year in a row I am complaining about too many tomatoes? Realistically speaking, though, when you have more than you can eat in a timely manner, they become a burden. One year soon we'll have a horrible tomato year and I'll feel like I brought it on myself by saying we had too many tomatoes in 2012 and 2013.

Dawn

Dawn,

Thanks for the well thought out post ad the explanation. I completely understand what both you and Mona have said, and feel i havent explained myself well. I am not as concerned with the leaf roll as i am with the blossom drop.

I am getting really nice sized crops from my container tomatoes, 2 are in 23 gallon pots because they are dwarfs i thought this would be fine and the other is ina 24 gallon pot.

My big problem is that all the plants in the raised bed have not produced a single fruit. Every single blossom drops. Except for the Parks Whopper plant.

I know no one can probably tell me why, im guessing its just one of those things that happens from time to time, especially with the weird weather we have had this year.

So, i will do as you suggested and keep to my watering schedule, not too wet, not too dry amd see what happens.

Im just happy to have gotten the fruit i have gotten.

I have 6 or 7 ready to pick tonight, im waiting for the grandkids to come over so they can pick them, im trying to teach them where food comes from.

And get this, those kids would have told you they hate tomatoes until about a week or so ago when i let them taste a fresh picked tomato. Now, when they go somewhere they try and eat a tomato and then try and spit it out because its not what they expected. They are 2 and 4 years old. So tonight we learn about store bought and home grown.

Thanks again everyone for trying to help, i appreciate it.

Emma

Emma, Blossom drop simply is a part of growing tomatoes and many other fruit as well---peppers (sweet ones more than hot), eggplant, and even beans all suffer from temperature-related blossom drop. Once daytime highs are above about 92-95 degrees (it varies a bit depending on the variety and the humidity) and nighttime lows are above about 72-75, the pollen is affected and the result is that fertilization fails to occur. There are several ways the pollen can be affected. One way is that it is denatured by heat, rendering it sterile. Another way is that it can become 'sticky' and then it fails to move around inside the flowers and, because of that, fertilization does not occur. You cannot do much of anything about pollen that is denatured by the heat, although if you shade the plants in the worst part of the summer, you may be able to keep it from happening as much. You can do something about the stickiness though. Every day, shake your flowers early in the day so the pollen will move around inside the flower. You can thump the flowers with your finger, you can grab the tomato cage and shake it gently, you can walk down the row of plants with a tennis racket or sturdy stick in your hand and give each cage a couple of whacks to shake up the pollen and make it move around inside the plants, or you can use an electric toothbrush to 'buzz' the flowers, similar to the ways bees do. Using the above, you sometimes can achieve fertilization that otherwise might not have occurred.

The only way to get good fruit set is to get it before the temperatures get into that 90s/70s range. The best way I have found to do that is to start my seeds in January, put the plants in the ground in March (this requires tons of protection during cold spells), and have the plants large enough to flower and set fruit in April and May when the temperatures are in the right range. It doesn't necessarily work all the time. In the horrible year of 2011, we were hitting the hot temperatures in early May when the plants hadn't had time to set much fruit. This year, ironically, we still were freezing in early May, but my tomato plants were growing under hoops covered with 10-degree frost-blanket row-cover to keep them from freezing. I had great fruit set in April and May. Why do I go to all that trouble? In an attempt to avoid the frustration you're experiencing now.

Here's the thing. The blossom drop isn't some sort of curse or annoyance...it is science. It happens for a specific reason and you cannot prevent it from occurring once the conditions are right for it to occur. Plant breeders have attempted to fix this 'accident of science' by breeding tomato plants that will set fruit despite high temperatures. How has that worked out? Are you curious? Well, they have developed heat-setting tomato varieties that set fruit at only slightly higher temperatures than regular tomatoes. Many of these have names that indicate they are heat-setting types, including Sunmaster, Sunleaper, Solarset, Summerset, Phoenix, etc. One of the early heat-setting types, Merced, was really tasty. What did they do? They discontinued production of the Merced seed and replaced it with inferior varieties. Most of the heat-setting types will set fruit in June and July of an average year here in Oklahoma, but not many will set fruit in August and not many of them produce fruit that my family and I find tasty. Phoenix has been an exception. This is our third year to grow it, and it has set fruit when we had temperatures around 110-112, but only when the relative humidity is low. The texture is decent and the flavor isn't bad.....not great, but not bad.

Maybe someday breeders will give us heat-setting tomatoes that set good, tasty fruit even when temperatures and humidity are high, but until then, we are stuck with dealing with blossom drop. All the wishing and hoping in the world simply will not prevent blossom drop. It is real, it occurs, you cannot override it. Sometimes you get lucky and get a cool front in summer and the blossoms then set fruit, but there is no guarantee.

There are a few varieties that seem less prone to blossom drop, but I don't remember seeing any of them on your list of plants. With them, though, it often is still a case of the humidity needing to be fairly low in order for them to set fruit in heat.

At the rate our humidity is plunging in the afternoons (at least down here in my part of the state), we may start getting fruitset again because, for the most part, the heat is high but the humidity is lower than it was a month ago. The lower humidity helps.

I would bet that your blossoms are dropping because high heat, high humidity and maybe poor wind flow is impeding the movement of the pollen inside the flower, thereby preventing pollination from occurring. Maybe the plants in the ground have less wind flow than the ones in pots? There is some reason they aren't setting fruit.

Sometimes excess nitrogen impedes fruit set by keeping the plants in an intensely vegetative growth period. By that, I do not necessarily mean that you are giving the tomato plants too much nitrogen. Maybe nitrogen lawn fertilizer is available to he plants in the raised bed, for example. There is some reason the blossom drop is occurring. My first guess is that, at least in June and July, it is weather-related. However, if it was occurring even in May and if the plants were large enough to set fruit in May, they may have been getting too much nitrogen somehow. And, I am assuming they get 6-8 hours of full, direct sun daily. If they are getting less, that could be the reason they aren't setting fruit.

Most people (including tiny, young ones) who say they do not like tomatoes have never had the luxury of eating fresh tomatoes. You know, if grocery store tomatoes were the only tomato I'd ever eaten, I wouldn't like them either. To me, fresh-from-the-garden or fresh-from-the-farm tomatoes bear very little resemble to the mealy, poorly textured, poor flavored roundish-squareish reddish-orangeish things they sell at the grocery store.

I have some tomato plants out back that haven't set fruit yet, but I planted them in mid-May, hoping they would be setting fruit in July when nothing else was. They were left-over plants that I was going to compost. To show how much variety matters, some of those late plants have produced ripe tomatoes already, some have lots of green tomatoes, some haven't set a fruit yet.....but they were going to be compost, so any fruit they set is just bonus fruit....and in a year when the last thing we need is more tomatoes.

I grew up with gardening grandparents, parents, other assorted gardening relatives, and tons of friends and neighbors who gardened. It is a blessing for a child to learn where food comes from, as well as how tasty fresh fruit is. What you're teaching your grandkids is so important. They'll never forget the time they spend gardening with you or the time they spend eating food from your garden. Every child I've ever invited into the garden has been completely fascinated with harvesting and eating the produce. One of them told me once "Who knew you could pick watermelons right out of the garden?", and he was grinning ear to ear as he loaded his own watermelon into his grandpa's truck to take it back to grandpa's house. Until he came to our house, he'd only seen watermelons in stores and restaurants. For the next few years, every time he came over in the summer, his favorite activity, next to gathering guinea eggs and watching frogs in the lily pond, was the harvesting of the watermelons. He's all grown up now and is about college age (a stunning realization!) and I just hope his memories of watermelons from the garden encourage him to have his own veggie garden someday.

There is a danger in teaching your grandkids what real, fresh home-grown food tastes like. After they get used to it, they won't want to eat anything else!

Dawn

Dawn the wind is taking its toll and it will be a few days before I know how much. The good thing is I don't have any plants loaded down with fruit set like I did this time last year. That is when it hurts them the most. As of this morning only one weather source was predicting any days over 100. They have 3 in row starting tomorrow. Another source added one day I believe Tuesday this morning while I was outside. But even at that it looks hot for the next 10-14 days and then more seasonal. Although I know that will change. It does look better than the temps last year if they hold anywhere close. I had several blooming heavy during the cooldown. Some started just a day or so late. The later plants will be ready for the next cooldown. I've been finishing up planting and starting to prepare the largest of the spots where I will plant garlic in the fall. I'm tilling under 2 inches of mainly decayed/composted alfalfa. Will till in another inch of compost and minerals and deep soak it. Then when the buckwheat arrives that I ordered I will sow it and let it grow till mid Sept and till it under. I have never used buckwheat as a green manure but several of the garlic growers do and one encouraged me to try it. I've about finished the drip system. Hopefully I won't have to do much next year. I already have figured out where I will grow most things next year. So hopefully I can get things planted earlier so I can fight the heat with everything. LOL. I had good germination on the okra I planted on 6-26 but it was slow. I'm blaming the deep soak I gave the rows after I planted it. I think the water may of cooled the soil temporalily enough to slow it down. Some of the seed was 2008 seed. The only variety I had less than 90% on was Stewart's Zeebest. I've had problems with it evey year. I had around 60% on it. I planted 3 seeds to a spot and still have a few bare spots while others have 3 plants. Overall everything has germinated well. I've filled in a few spots on the beans The cantaloupe, squash, cukes and watermelons are just now germinating. And unless we have an abnormally early freeze I will be ok. It was a combination of working on the drip system as I planted and also by plan. I felt the drought was going to continue and didn't want to have a whole garden to try to keep alive in the heat and wind. The late tomato plants I started myself have passed most of the early plants I bought. A few of the early plants are doing good. The Bonnie plants overall are doing well. The Cheff Jeff's not so well. I have replaced over 50% of them. And the ones remaining aren't growing as good as they should. All but one I've pulled have poor root systems. I think a lot of the roots were dead when I bought them. I'm blaming the care they received at the retailers. I will make sure I start most if not all of my plants next year. So far the grafted plants are looking good. I won't judge till I'm eating tomatoes from them. I have 7 total. The Mortgage Lifter I bought late from a local greenhoue has 6 fruit set and may of set some more during the cold spell. It sure looks better than it did a month ago when I purchased it. The fruit was all set after I transplanted it but within ten days of being transplanted. I watered the raised bed on the 4th. The first watering of the whole bed since a deep soak on 5-29-13. I did water in the those I transplanted after the 29th. The grafted plant got watered 3 times. So impressed with it. I contacted the people at SM and they said it is the coconut fiber that helps it retain moisture so well. It has in the containers also. Nothing more to do now but wait and see what Mother Nature brings. They have chances of rain scattered thoughout the next 14 days. Hopefully we will receive some. Jay

Jay,
Our heat continues unabated, but not quite as consistently hot as yours perhaps. It is 100 degrees here right now, but we started out at 73, so at least I was out picking corn in decent temperatures early this morning. There's no rain in our 7-day forecast, which made Tim say "what?". He watched the news a couple of days ago and they had us at a 10-30% rain chance for 3 or 4 days or nights, and then abruptly, the next morning, all that was gone from the forecast. I told him "Silly man, you cannot trust the forecast!" lol

I hope your nights are dropping cool enough to allow fruitset. I had tomato, pepper, bean and cucumber blooms during the recent cool spell, but haven't watched the tomato or pepper plants closely enough to know if the flowers fertilized and formed fruit or not. I've been so busy with the harvest that my mind can only focus each day on harvesting/eating/preserving whatever it is that absolutely, positively must be picked today. I'm actually staying more caught up than last year, but not on the canning tomatoes. A lot of them are new plant trials and I can see they are loaded with fruit, but haven't managed to catch up enough yet on the peppers and cukes to have time to evaluate the tomatoes.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a tomato day. We'll see. Today was going to be the big tomato day. I was going to harvest all the paste types and process them, but then I noticed just before dark last night that the 4th and 5th succession plantings of corn were ready to be harvested, so it turned into a big corn day instead. I'll just do the tomatoes tomorrow. In that way that Mother Nature has of messing up your plans, my five carefully-planned and timed succession plantings of corn all more or less caught up with each other and ripened in rapid succession so I would barely have time to finish harvesting one variety and then the next one would be ready. Sometimes I get a week or two between harvesting each successive variety, but not this year. The raccoons didn't get a single ear. It's been a long time since I could say that.

Okra can be so vexing. This year, for the first time in ages, I had voles get into the big garden. Apparently the tall fence that keeps out the deer also keeps out the bobcats and the voles have figured that out. They ate all the okra plants (why?) and all but two sweet potatoes and most of two beds of Irish potatoes. I resowed okra seed and got 2 plants. However, little volunteers came up in the area where I grew okra last year and the year before, so I dug up and moved the volunteers and they are performing better than the ones I raised from seed sown directly in the garden. Our pet cats usually control the voles, moles and gophers well in the yard and the garden, but since the cats are inside the house at night for safety reasons, the voles are having a field day in the garden. It just figures that the volunteers are growing better than the plants from seed I sowed, so now, when a volunteer pops up, I leave it wherever it pops up since it now is too hot to dig up and move any seedlings.

Stewart's Zeebest does really well for me in a wet year, but not so much in a dry year. I think that since it was selected/perfected in the Houston area, it clearly prefers more rainfall that I can give it....and it must be wondering how it ended up in your dry garden. (grin)

I started used buckwheat as a cover crop or even as a companion planting about 3 years ago. I like to plant it near winter squash and pumpkins at the same time I plant them or within a month of planting them. It seems to attract a lot of beneficial insects, and I think they help control the pests that normally attack cucurbits. This fall I am going to use clover as a winter cover crop.

I've been in cucumber and squash heaven, but the cantaloupes have been slow to set fruit. They have lots of flowers, though, so it is just a matter of time. I planted an excessive amount of pickling cukes so I could make lots of Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles (a Mrs. Wages mix) to give as Christmas gifts and that has worked out well. Usually the cucumber beetles have spread bacterial wilt around by now and the cukes are failing, but so far that hasn't happened this year.

It is funny how much you and I think alike sometimes. Expecting the continuation of drought (which has occurred), I didn't want to have to water everything all summer long so I planned and planted accordingly, and zoned together the plants I felt worthy of summer watering so I can water them and not the others. Abhorring empty ground, though, I've been sowing either flower seed (mostly sunflowers and zinnias) or southern peas ('we don't need no stinkin' irrigation') in empty beds after a crop has been harvested. It is easier for me to shut off the valve on the drip lines for beds of flowers or southern peas than for most other crops, so I can abandon them more easily than I can abandon tomato plants or pepper plants.

So far, this has been a pretty typical summer, but it feels really "easy" compared to the last two summers. My tomato plants are a mixed bag, mostly because a bunch of them got hit when somebody spilled a herbicide in the road in front of our house. No one came knocking on the door to say "oops", but we suddenly had a big dead patch of grass about 20' x 20' in the grass alongside the road just a bit north of the driveway and mailbox. Before Tim noticed the dead grass and asked me about it, I'd already seen the telltale signs of 2-4-d damage on about 30 tomato plants. I feel like the herbicide drift that originally hit them came from that spill, but then two more times since then, random plants have suddenly been damaged. The important thing is that the plants are producing tomatoes, but the plants themselves look really awful. I hate to even stand at look at them. They aren't up to my usual standards for appearance, but the fruit are still tasty.

Next year all the tomato plants likely will go into the new garden area north of the barn. I might be able to keep them safe from herbicide drift from at least the east and south since the house and garage, as well as the trees and shrubs planted nearby, might block them from herbicide drift from those two directions at least. When you live in an area with lots of agriculture.....well, herbicide drift just happens sometimes.

I am still waiting for you to declare that grafting is "worth it" and then I will try it. I'm not in any big hurry though. My springs always seem overly complicated anyhow and I'm worried I won't have time to graft tomato plants.

I like coconut fiber and have added it to some of my container plants. I think it makes a huge difference. The one thing that worries me is that in a wet year it might hold too much moisture, but we haven't really had a wet year since I discovered it.

Because I planted pretty early and covered up the plants on cold nights, we have had an excellent harvest and I've been busy making salsa and also pickles. Now that the heat is setting in and getting fairly hot, I'll likely cut back my garden time to only early morning harvesting, and minimal watering, weeding and mulching. I like to hibernate in the air-conditioned house as much as possible in July and August.

I bought fall tomato plants from Bonnie Plants. I wasn't in the mood to sow seed and raise them this year, so the fall plants won't be anything special. If I hit "tomato burnout" stage early enough in the year, as I have this year, I find it hard to get enthusiastic about fall tomatoes. However, I always plant them because the plants that still look good right now might not look too great a month from now and, if that is the case, I'll be glad I have the new fall tomato plants.

I love my garden, but I've canned about 90 jars of "stuff" this week and have frozen an equivalent amount, and I think I need a vacation from the garden---not that I am likely to get one.

Dawn

Dawn after being on the forum for several years, reading your posts and then the drought I have changed some of my gardening methods. I did either cut back or cut out several things. This is the first year I haven't grown onions in a long time. I did manage to cut back on the number of tomatoes. I ended up with 47 in the ground and 11 in containers until yesterday. I started cleaning out the greenhouse and the plants I had moved to the shade from the hot frame. I ended up dropping two of them in the ground. Both earlier maturing varieties so they will have a chance of producing a few anyway. Can't stand to throw a decent plant on the compost pile.
I forgot to mention my sweet potato situation. I have only grown 5-6 plants the last few years and they have been slips I grew off of tubers left over. This year I didn't take a couple of nice medium sized ones down to my sisters. I've been doing more succession planting after reading your posts about it. I have been using the garlic bed after I remove it to grow my few sweet potato plants in. So about a month ago I stuck 3 tubers one small and the two mid sized ones in plastic containers and covered with potting soil. The small one rotted. When I finally decided enough was enough I had filled a 65' at 18" spacings. I have been spacing them 2' or further being I was only growing 5-6. I planted the first ones 3' apart so just added one in the middle. So far have only lost two during this heat. The first ones planted are uncovered now and looked good even during the peak of the heat today. The last plants went in Thursday morning so I will cover them for another 7-10 days. I ran out of shade cloth so just used a good cover of straw over the rest and they are looking fine. I've never had two potatoes produce so many slips and they still had shoots coming. So if all goes well I should have a good sweet potato crop. It is one of the rows where tomatoes will go next year. I amended it heavily last fall for the garlic so it is still in good shape.
You know me I always have to try something new. When I was buying some of the raised bed mix and some garden soil builder the lady tried to sell me some worm castings. I have always read about them but felt they were high and that I really didn't need them. Being the season is winding down at the nurseries/green houses she said she would not only sell me it at a reduced price but also for every bag I bought she would give me one free. I decided what better time to try them. That was about 3 weeks ago. So everything planted/transplanted since then has been on top of SM worm castings. I also have mixed a little in the soil around the top on the transplants. So far everything has seemed to take off well. I can't say for sure it is the wormcastings but it didn't hurt for sure. I've never had beans take off like these have. I did inoculate them but did last year also. The early plants where I just pulled the mulch back and planted have done well so far. I have tilled some recently in areas that were packed down some and areas where I wanted to mix the compost and mulch in a little. But I've done about 15% of the tilling I have in the past. Better head out and do a little bit now that it is cooling off some. Jay

Jay, It is exciting to try new methods. I hope the changes you've made show some positive results. I went outside for a few minutes, but only to close the garden gates, put up the chickens, etc. because a doe had brought her two tiny twin fawns to the compost pile to scavenge for yummy goodies....not that I had put anything in the back pile today because I put it in the front pile. I watched the deer and slipped back indoors, and then 5 bunnies came running through the yard. I watched them run, roll, tumble, jump and play until more deer came. They stood by the compost pile but stared at the window through which I was watching them. I wonder if they can see me inside, watching through that window, from over 100' away? So, I will try to be outside at sunrise tomorrowto work before the heat, and the wildlife, arrive. My back compost pile doesn't produce a lot of compost, but it feeds a lot of wildlife.

I think that worm castings are great, and the more worms I find in the garden, the better the soil in that area. Nothing has attracted earthworms directly to the garden more than cardboard used as a barrier between the soil and mulch. Sometimes I am surprised to find so many earthworms in my garden soil. If I was an earthworm, I'd be in the woodland soil....not in the garden soil.

Sometimes I succession plant more than I have this year, but I did succession plant watermelons after the brussels sprouts and cauliflower plants came out of the ground in May, and those late plants have more melons on them than some of the plants that went into the ground 3 weeks earlier. I won't plant anything else, other than the fall tomatoes, in July, but will plant a lot at the beginning of August when the September cool-down is in sight.

Now, I am headed off to the kitchen where I am going to cut up a JD's Special C-Tex, a Gary O Sena, and a Brazilian Beauty for a late evening snack. I figured out that if I would eat 9 tomatoes a day, they wouldn't pile up on me as much as they have been. Do you know how hard it is to eat 9 tomatoes a day?? It's killing me. (smile)

Dawn

I didn't get a lot done this evening. Almost got what will be the garlic bed this fall covered with the alfalfa. Then set on the kitchen porch and started trimming roots and tops off the first garlic I dug. All of it is close to being dried down. Some need another day or so. The skins are dry enough. The stems on some still have some moisture in them. I put them in the web flats the 1020 inserts go in. Those that need a little more drying I will leave under the carport in them a few more days. They allow the air to circulate and with the heat we will be having they should dry just fine. I barely got started and trimmed up 54 bulbs. I've been saying I had over 300. I think now it maybe way over. As I don't think I'm no where close to being a 1/6 done. I'm keeping count so will know soon how many I have. Jay