16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

My recent most favorite tomato fertilizer is Texas Tomato food. All I can say is wow about it, great stuff. One has to order it on line though unless in the area, but customer service is superb and delivery is in couple of days.

Here is a link that might be useful: tomato food

1- Variety is the first factor.
2- Care and growing conditions:
---- This includes a lot of things : Temps, Sun, Soil, Ferts,
Climate, Watering,
3- Reducing burden on the plant. Obviously, a plant growing wild, no trimming, no pruning, with zillions of flowers, tiny fruits.. is not going to produce many large fruits.

did not notice any aphids, but I picked up a couple of fat hornworms. However, hornworms usually just chew the leaves and new tender branches away..????

I don't use any pesticide at all. I am not aware of neighbors using it either, and they are far away

Pesticides wasn't the question and isn't the issue. Herbicides is. Weed killers?.

Dave

PS: hornworms will also eat into fruit.

Do you have other varieties growing under the same condition ? If yes, how are they performing ?

I have one tomato plant (Pineapple, seeds from heirloom fruit), planted out about 75 days ago that is just flowering while the rest of my varieties have many fruits. So I think that variety makes a difference.

As stated earlier it may be too much nitrogen which will produce robust plants but few fruit. Also if the temperature is constantly very high it may reduce pollination. After 70 days there should be tomatoes forming.

Recent professional advice I've heard says to wait a month after the last frost date. I tried it this year and my heirloom tomato plants are doing great.

I can't imagine waiting until June 30 to plant my tomatoes. Jiminy Cricket. If I plant on the "last frost date (May 31st)" I know I'm already late and will get a reduced harvest.

I hate peat pots. They seem to be great at growing mold and fungus but not the plants we want. If I buy Bonnie's plants, I completely remove the peat before planting.

The plants in your pictures are not happy, clearly. Definitely remove the peat pots and make sure they have the fertilization needed and not excessive water. Plants that look like that in NJ early summer don't need water.

Your plants may recover. But I never accept compostable material from neighbors. They lie. But at least yours admitted using them.

The first (or second?) year I planted tomatoes, full of beginner's fervor, I had some big herbicide damage midway through the season. I recalled that my neighbor (who is a wonderful neighbor) sprayed Roundup on gravel driveway areas (some of which were right next to my beloved tomatoes). Neither he nor I knew at the time how sensitive tomato plants were, and he probably didn't even know I was growing something like tomatoes at the time. Heck, I was using herbicides in my own yard at the time.

I believe my neighbor has every right to tend to his issues as he sees fit. Fortunately, he is the most amazing neighbor one could hope for, so when I explained to him what I had learned, and asked him if he would let me try to fix his weeds the next spring to see if I could solve both of our problems, he magnanimously agreed.

I settled on trying Preen pre-emergent on all the areas of his driveway that I thought were in drift-distance to my plot, and it turned out that he was even happier with those results than the Roundup results. He asked me what I used so he could continue it in the future.

I would do as Edweather said: clean up the yellowed leaves and give them a good soak with some fungal spray (neem oil, Daconile ... ).
In the first picture, appears to ME that the leaves had gotten sunburn and subsequently died and dried up. Yellowing is just normal course of dying and I don't see a typical concentric rings there.

I trim any lower leaf as soon as I see one getting yellow. In that condition that leave is just a burden on the plant and might harbor disease.

I first posted this a little over a month ago. Since that time I have removed all the affected foliage and sprayed with daconil. It didn't help and this just kept spreading so I started pulling plants. Finally, today I pulled one of the affected plants and took it to my county agent to see if he could tell me for sure what it was.

He said that it is tobacco mosaic virus(which is not what I expected!) I have spent the last hour doing some research on it and it does look exactly like what is going on with my plants. Then I came here and did a search for it to see if I could find any more info and found several posts in reference to it that stated that TMV was practically non-existent in the US.

So now I am confused! Does my county agent know what he is talking about or is there some small chance that this is actually TMV?

Also if anyone can recommend any good TMV resistant varieties or other suggestions I would greatly appreciate it!!

Thanks,

Carly

Hi there,

I'm the OP, with an update (and what an informative thread this turned into!).

I fertilized and am doing the finger-in-the-soil method to discern when they need to be watered. Happy to report that growth has resumed. They're getting bigger, and more maters are popping up each day.

I believe I'm supposed to fertilize weekly now. True?

One last question--some of the leaves (I believe on the Amish paste, not the Brandywine) are large at the ends of the branches, and tiny in the middle. Is that normal?

As for the fertilizer, I think that depends on which kind you use. As for leaves being much larger on the ends, that should be because they have more sun access while the interior leaves don't get much.

Only kidding John. Yours are the best tomatoes in Z5 so far this year that I've seen. Thumbs up.

That is impressive! Would love a BLT on the 4th of July...
(Might need to replace the heater with an ac unit this year.)

Looking at my garden notes this morning i noticed in 2005 i had first blush July 25th and two full salad beds thriving...
Way ahead of that this year but nothing near what you have. But i'm NY5a in a mountain altitude valley...warming up and don't think i'll have salad much longer....

@ Plaidbird - yes the inner city garden is full of its own challenges - I have spent the last three years turning the narrow lot next to my house into a productive garden and usable outdoor space - I am lucky I purchased it when I did because it would have a house on it now If I did not. its not easy but it is rewarding. I am going to loose some sun this year to new construction too. Part of the problem is not having workable soil and part of the problem is trying to cram too many things into a small space conditions are never ideal.

Incidentally this morning I turned over the offending container to open up some draining and it was very dry - even at the bottom - I cut out the fabric enlarged the holes and watered - and water actually came out of the bottom this time - I think the problem has been the fabric no more of that stuff in that application - and perlite for vermiculite in the future -

I only container grow for the most part and use the 5-1-1 mix that you will find on the container growing forum and the link was given to you. The other option is to use something like Promix BX or HP, whichever is available to you. However, you need to add a slow release fertilizer and then fertilize with a weak dose every few days. Drainage is important with containers growing. I agree with all of the above, ditch the landscape fabric in the future.
Good luck!

Looks normal, atleast to me!

fruitee

I did transplants, not direct seeds. Started my cukes and squash indoors. The squash just exploded as soon as they got in the ground. Cukes were a bit slower but very quickly grew. Beans I direct seeded. I have raised beds, don't have any plastic or mulch. I worked in some fertilizer when I prepped the beds in the spring, did one liquid feed a month or so ago... The tomatoes I'd started were in 1 gallon nursery pots when I was able to plant them out. I started them in March.

I'm growing the toms this year SFG style, so I have them pruned to 1-2 stems and have each in 1sf. They've been doing quite well, though I am noticing some blossom drop on the brandywine and cherokee purple.

Ah, so the tomatoes were pretty big (flowers?) when you planted them out. Mine weren't started that much later, but were in 4" pots as transplants so were maybe 6" tall, some may have been 8-10" but I planted deep.

No time today, but I will post pix on the picture thread this weekend. They're growing very thick stems, lots of leaves (had to take some lower leaves off when weaving yesterday). Took flowers off a few that had them (1 Gardner's Delight I planted yesterday actually had a small fruit).

I've got pretty good soil in most of my beds so I planted the peppers app. 15" apart, indeterminates 20-24", and determinates in 1 side bed (experiment) 12" apart. But that's in 8" of composted manure. The last 19 I threw in yesterday are also in compost (leaves and kitchen scraps) but 2ft apart since the bed's not very wide.