16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Yes I totally agree! A very common saying around here if someone complains about the weather is "Don't worry just stick around and it will change in fifteen minutes!"

It can be very challenging for a gardener!!

Carly

I had volunteer tomato seedlings that were frost burned back to surface of the ground in April. Didn't really care. Ignored them. I just noticed that one of them is thriving.

BUT the underside of those leaves has a grainy-webby look, that may well indicate the presence of spider mites.

In any case, Jean is correct about the spray of water. THAT can't hurt anything, so why not just do it? From under the leaves, mind.

I did notice webs on my other tomato that I didn't show pictures for. I think that the one I showed has a bad aphid problem, and the other one might have a spider mite problem. They are about three feet away from each other with a sidewalk in between, and I've been making sure to spray water AWAY from the other tomato plant so I don't blast the aphids/ spider mites from one to the other. Is that enough distance or should I scoot them further? I've been blasting both since neither one looks "healthy" to me, and I've seen signs of insect plant parasites on both.

I've been spraying the foliage everyday with a firm water jet for the past few days (focusing on the bottoms of the leaves, since that's where the sucking insects tend to... suck). I'll keep it up until most (90%?) of the leaves aren't curled. It's probably still around 50-60% curled right now, but most of the curling is improved with a few days to a great extent.

I might try the diluted soap in a sprayer solution (1 tablespoon in a gallon of water) if it's not getting noticeably better after a few more days. In the future, at least, I'll know the symptoms and treatments.

We had a hot dry stretch, and then we had a rainy week. Oddly, my other plants are looking great (except for the sunflowers), but my tomatoes have been looking worse and worse for maybe 2 weeks. I think I over-fertilized at the start (making them more attractive to aphids), in my ignorance-- I'll be more careful next year.

Thank you for the advice, jerijen, jean, and digdirt. :)

This post was edited by livreosa on Sun, Jun 15, 14 at 0:15

Interestingly, I was out in the garden this evening and I noticed that the 'Sweet 100' in the garden has tomatoes! Just two or three but I came back and checked the container plants and nada.

I have noticed the same thing. Since tomatoes need warm soil I assumed the warmer soil in the pots and the looser growing medium were the reason. However, mine on the my driveway, and I did find last year, that the garden plants catch up and outperform the potted ones later in the season, which I believe is because the pots on the driveway actually get too hot for the roots. I have placed 2" thick boards under them so they are not in direct contact with the asphalt this year and we will see if it helps. I have a small lot and I just don't want to kill my grass by having many heavy pots on it all summer, so on the driveway they go. Maybe when it gets too hot I will see if there is room for them dispersed
among my flower gardens. :)

Was this a recent thing of some time back. If recent then I agree with Lucille, call the company or have the neighbor call the company and make them dig it out.

If this happened some time ago then you are likely too late to claim damages or repairs and will have to dig it out on your own.

You don't indicate where you live or even you garden zone so it is impossible to know if you already had plants planted there or what.

Either way it is your property so someone other than you has trespassed to do it.

Dave

You could serve your neighbor a "Knuckle Sandwich" instead of a "BLT"!!!, ! also serve it to chew that dumped the stuff in your mater bed!

Gary

Sorry for the wait but I still don't have all the answers. Burpee sent me a new brandywine, it arrived on Thursday and it was planted a few hours ago.

I called Burpee on Wednesday and asked if the horticulturist could tell what it was that I sent a picture of. They said I would get an email but I have yet to receive one.

When I dug up the defective plant the root system looked very strange to me. I took a pic just to show what I found.

The root is gnarly, but the stems don't look like tomato either. Maybe a turnip or daikon type radish (I think I see a larger root behind the tangle)?

Thanks Dave. I believe I'll take your advice and just let things grow. Until now, I have used the typical wire tomato cage and experienced a lot of vine breakage once things got above the top of the cages. That was what I feared would happen as well with the new supports and why I considered topping off the plants. Based on your response, I assume this is less likely to occur with the higher supports.

As my supports are about 12 feet long and 4 feet apart, would it be of any value to add some additional horizontal support to the system to assist holding up the vines once they begin to cascade downward? I'm thinking a trellis net hung between the two supports, or possibly bamboo poles laid perpendicular to the main supports. I have access to all the bamboo I can cut down.

would it be of any value to add some additional horizontal support to the system to assist holding up the vines

Sure. You can do it by just adding more strings horizontally. Look at pics of a Florida weave. It is easy to convert stringed plants to Florida weave supports. You can also tie the tops to the horizontal bar so they run parallel to the ground.

Keep in mind for next year that the more you prune the laterals off an indeterminate the taller the central core plant will get to compensate. So leaving more lateral branches (aka suckers) and stringing them generally results in shorter plants (not short but shorter :).

Dave

As for the aphids I was trying to attract them to the vinegar which kills them.

And that is the primary mis-understanding. You never want to attract them to anything for any reason. They may or may not come all on their own and if they don't why attract them. Plus plain water can kill them too without any risk to the plants.

So please get rid of these vinegar and soap containers from near your plants. They pose much more of a threat than even aphids do.

While flooding the area will dilute the soap and vinegar it will also flood the plant roots. Since they are only a week old I'd probably move them to an uncontaminated spot.

As for seeds it may have contacted, I'd plan on having to re-seed once the area has been flushed out well.

Dave

@ digdirt

Thank you very much!

Yeah, got rid of all the vinegar containers, and I didnt actually know "just water" would kill them. Now I know thanks to you!

I flushed the area well with water and its all leaking out, which is what we want!

Going to home depot and will buy more soil and repot the big plants just to be on the safe side. Dont want all my hard work going to waste.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and help.
Will let you know how I get on.

If you have more plants and would like help from the very experienced people here to protect the remaining plants from a similar fate, I would suggest posting pictures of your plants and supports. If there is a situation that would increase the risk of breakage in the remaining plants, they might be able to see it and offer advise.

I agree that this was not caused by the short cages. Every year I have plants that outgrow my 5 foot cages. Rarely ever do the plants snap off limbs. Rather they just bend over and even crimp where it rests on the top rung of the cage. But they rarely snap off.
I think the OP needs to tell us more details... varieties, fertilizer regimes, irrigation, and amount of sunlight. As of now, my vote is something to do with fertilizer and / or the amount of sunlight.

If the long sides of the beds are east/west rather than north/south I would plant the SM along each east side, where they will not block the majority of the sun from the smaller Romas planted along the west side. Of course that's assuming you don't have a building or something to the west that blocks afternoon sun.

Dave grows in a much hotter climate than I do, so if he says you need to shade the Romas then ignore what I said about sun.

But I do think you're better off building 2 trellises and spreading the SM across the 2 beds rather than trying to squeeze them into the 16ft bed. Then plant the Romas in front (meaning sunny side, or whatever Dave recommends) of them.

If you plant the SM 3-4ft apart along 12-16ft beds then you might not have to prune them - or as much. If you put all 8 along a 16 ft trellis you will need to prune them.

Does the SM tag say they're determinate?

Hi ajsmama,

Thanks for the advice. The long side of the boxes face east and west with the 4 foot wide part facing north south. There are trees to the west but they don't block the sun until about 6 pm so the tomatoes will get full sun for about 9 hours. I like the idea of spreading out the SM over the 2 beds so I won't have to prune or at least keeping it to a minimum. I just went out and looked at the tags on the SM and the Romas and the SM tag says indeterminate and the Roma tag says determinant. I'm glad you asked because I missed it. I read on a food site recommending a variety of paste tomatoes for making sauce with and they said paste tomatoes are determinant which made harvesting and processing tomato sauce easier because the tomatoes would all be ready at about the same time. Oh well, that's ok, good lesson to learn. :) Next year I'll know what I'm doing! LOL!!

Chris

Good luck with the new specs Carolyn (LOL).

Glad to hear that you will be safe from Woolly Mammoths - as long as that isn't the name of a new tomato variety!

Linda

Some years ago, in a town not far from Carolyn, I grew my best tomato crop ever when given permission to plant on a section of pasture land. I mowed the grass low, planted the tomatoes 4' apart, laid black plastic secured with stones and bricks around each plant...and allowed the weed growth between each row and around the plot to mature and blossom. The tomato vines just sprawled on the black plastic, free to wander. It looked messy! But, no blights, no damaged plants and an extra heavy yield. Lots of beneficial insects.

About the first week in September DH proudly told me he had cleaned up the ugly tomato patch, weed eating everything around the black plastic. Two days later the plants began to yellow and disease problems appeared. Further years of experimenting leads me to encourage the OP to surround the plants with black plastic, let the plants sprawl and allow the pasture weeds to grow up around the planting to protect the tomatoes.

You ask what the norm is for blossom drop?

I haven't the faintest idea since I don't count all new buds just opening up and then go out and recount to see how many have dropped.

What I do know is that given the many variables associated with blossom drop it always happens and can't be predicted. So honestly, I don't know how anyone could give you an answer to what the normal percentage of drop might be. ( smile)

Carolyn

Right now I'm at 100% blossom drop on my Brandywine Sudduth's. Drives me crazy to watch it, but at some point it will set fruit.

Yeah it is called "Tomato Leaf Roll" (lots of info available on the causes). Stress on the plant of some kind triggers it and it is usually related to very inconsistent soil moisture levels. No long term threat to the plant.

Dave

Thank you both!

Yeah they are called 'volunteers' and there are many discussions here about them the search will pull up as most all of us get some of them every year.

Years of experience with them has proven to me that 80% of the time they aren't worth the space and should be pulled and fresh, known variety plants planted in the space instead. If they were either hybrids or cross-pollinated plants then as Linda said, they won't breed true or in some cases, even develop fruit.

But others prefer to give at least a few of them a try if they have the room just to see what happens/develops and what it tastes like. But they shouldn't be considered you only source of tomatoes, just a side line experiment.

I certainly can't recommend selling them or even giving them away since you can't have any idea if they will even produce fruit, much less fruit that is edible.

So if you know the name of the varieties you planted last year and can find out if they were hybrid varieties or open-pollinated varieties, you'll have the answer to keeping them or not.

Dave

So if you know the name of the varieties you planted last year and can find out if they were hybrid varieties or open-pollinated varieties, you'll have the answer to keeping them or not.

********

And even if you do know the names of the ones you planted last year, and some were hybrids, you can't tell the difference between a volunteer that was OP (open pollinated), or a plant that resulted from the F2 seeds of a hybrid that overwintered.

In the Spring just for the heck of it I used to take about 10 volunteers from my main tomato field and move them to a side garden, just to see if I could ID them.

Sometimes I could, and sometimes I could not, and the other variable here is that some of the OP's could cross pollinate thus the volunteers from those cross pollinated seeds could not be Ided.

Anything you want to do with them is your choice, but as Dave said, I certainly wouldnt give then to others, and if you are curious about them, do what I did, just for fun. (smile)

Carolyn