|
| Due to a lack of financial resources, we took advantage of the availability of free compost from our city's landfill. It's comprised of yard waste collected from the city residents. I filled plastic pots from trees and planted directly into the compost. So far, everything but 2 of my tomatoes are doing fine. The 2 that are struggling are the variety Big Beef. One is a grafted tomato. There is virtually no difference in the plants other than the grafted one has tomatoes. They both are full of flowers and have grown quite tall. The problem is the leaves are malformed, as in scrawny almost to the point of being stringy, and are curling. The plants look healthy otherwise although the tomatoes on the grafted plant are a fourth of the size they should be. I did use an organic fertilizer at planting. Is the problem too much N or not enough? |
Follow-Up Postings:
|
| container tomatoes need constant water (daily in warm weather) and low dose feedings regularly. |
|
| if it is from YARD WASTES, it should be fine. Question: Did you use just the compost, as medium or added something else to it too? What about the pH of that compost ? I am sure the people in that facility can tell you what it is and/or what can be done to improve it. Soil pH is the most ignored thing among the gardeners. Luckily, most soils have an acceptable pH AND most vegetable can thrive within a pH range (6 to 7, 6.8 being ideal) |
|
| Stringy malformed leaves sounds like herbicide damage. I'd be suspicious of any compost from yard wastes unless I knew the people whose yards it came from. Did the city test it for herbicides (and other chemicals)? |
|
| I agree with ajsmama, it sounds like you have some herbicide residue in your compost. The unfortunate thing about yard waste from unknown sources is that there is a very high likely hood that some of them use something like weed and feed or other herbicides to control broadleaf weeds in their lawns. Since tomatoes are "broadleaf" plants and very sensitive to herbicides, they will show typical symptoms such as mishapen and curling leaves. If you do a Google image search for herbicide damage in tomatoes, I am pretty sure you will see pictures that resemble your tomato plants. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to correct the problem unless you want to go as far as repotting them in some clean commercial growing medium (not "soil" since you are growing in containers) after removing as much of the compost as possible from the roots. The drawback to that is it will probably stress the plants tremendously and set them back a lot. Regrettably, this experience is probably going to have to go into your live and learn file. Betsy |
Please Note: Only registered members are able to post messages to this forum. If you are a member, please log in. If you aren't yet a member, join now!
Return to the Growing Tomatoes Forum
Information about Posting
- You must be logged in to post a message. Once you are logged in, a posting window will appear at the bottom of the messages. If you are not a member, please register for an account.
- Posting is a two-step process. Once you have composed your message, you will be taken to the preview page. You will then have a chance to review your post, make changes and upload photos.
- After posting your message, you may need to refresh the forum page in order to see it.
- Before posting copyrighted material, please read about Copyright and Fair Use.
- We have a strict no-advertising policy!
- If you would like to practice posting or uploading photos, please visit our Test forum.
- If you need assistance, please Contact Us and we will be happy to help.
Learn more about in-text links on this page here
