16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
I personally like to spray copper or make a tea with 1 gallon of water to 1 cup of organic corn meal (let sit overnight until it has a sweet smell, then spray). Neem oil sprays are good too. That is, of course, to spray after removing all of the infected foliage with clean scissors:-)
Apparently it IS a tomato hornworm. Not a very scientific name! Here's an explanation with pictures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manduca_sexta
Linda
And when did you plant them out? In your zone early planting is required to beat the heat and get fruit set. Once the temps are consistently above 95 you'll only get Blossom Drop.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: Blossom Drop FAQ
Thanks Ed, I did notoce beak marks i think, they tried to get in or it could of been caused by the sun. Anyway I pulled 2 more off and I put a "group photo" of the original one with the 2 new "Ramapo's" from today and yesterday. The original one is on the bottom right. The bright green one was a stupid mistake that I pulled off 2 weeks ago. The other small ones are the "4th of July Hybrid" that is growing in ground.
Thanks again everyone,
- Mr Beno
I'm glad to see that my dog is not the only one liking fish emulsion and other organic fertilizers. I caught her lapping up a little puddle of liquid fish before it had fully sunk into the soil of one of my container grown okra plants. I had wondered why she was sticking so close to me while I was feeding the plants-usually she's on squirrel patrol at the other end of the yard. Also glad I hadn't used any pesticides. I almost lost a dog to rat poison pellets years ago. Haven't used them since, dont want another trip to the animal emergency room! I also stopped using the liquid fish because I definitely do not want to reinforce that type of behavior.
Spider mites love hot, dry conditions. I'm keeping them
at bay with plain old water, sprayed on most days. It
keeps things moist and the little buggers don't like that.
I should add that I'm in SoCal where it's generally hot and
dry all the time. Lately, the humidity has been quite high
for us, about 40-60 percent many days. That's probably
helping too.
Thank you for the info! I was spraying them and then there was an outbreak of blight so I stopped but then someone told me that spraying for a very short time on the foliage can actually be good in the morning because even if there is spores, the day heats up and kills them and it prevents spider mites too. I am going to try only spraying them in the morning. I've always felt doing that was important but got worried after the blight. We have been hot here, in the 90s but not very humid. Lots of dew in the morning though. Can't stand spider mites. So new and confused :).
They are the "roots" that I was talking about in a previous thread. No problem at all, but somebody said that they are caused by high humidity.
I would remove those yellow lower (dying) leaves as you don't want the spread of any possible disease.
The fruit looks good!
Linda
yep, this year noted for slow stunted growth at my community gardens whereas at home patio and small patch of about dozen toms have created jungle. So go figure. I had really bad luck this year with septoria but many people did due to weather. No diseases at my home maters yay!
Good to see some neighbors here. I'm in Birmingham!
My plants are doing well, but wilting in the heat. Not the best year, but definitely not the worst. My best year is when I tilled in a lot of compost a couple of weeks prior to planting. Hugh plants and lots of huge fruit. For this year, I put the compost down last fall. I think I'll go back to the spring application. Of course, I know this weather is playing a roll.
Richard, sadly I can't link to other message sites here, but I too did some googling and I did find that some have reported what they called varigation ofCP and there was a really great talk about how commercial growers of plants use growth retardents that can cause temporay variegation but that's temporary, not passed on.
Then I remembered that someone who got Green Zebra Cherry from a seed offer of mine also got some plants with variegation, and whatever it was saved seeds did not pass it on.so the conclusion was thatit was something environmental, perhaps herbicide drift.
Hope that helps,
Carolyn.
M fruit have just set and are hard as rocks so I'm not worried about that yet ;-)
I've got 106 tomatoes, 69 beans, 27 edamame and 49 pepper plants 1000ft from my house that I have to water by hand with gallon jugs filled from 50 gal barrel(s) hauled down in my pickup so if I can afford to wait for rain, I wait!
Depending on the RH, plants need more water at higher temperatures, just as humans do, due to perspiration. Additionally, if the bed is not adequately mulched, with moisture retaining mulch, the plants will need even more water. This issue is very well manifest itself in pot/container gardening, depending on the size, temps, location. Sometimes you have to water them twice in a day.
Agree with Dave, I've been picking mine when they look like that and putting them on my kitchen counter out of sunlight.
Thanks for the comments folks!
I was wondering if I should pick them, in light of people saying that there's no point in leaving them on the vine to ripen as they will ripen just as well on my kitchen counter. (This was something I learned here). I was going to leave them just a little longer, but then I spotted a bunny INSIDE my raised veggie garden with a little fence to keep the dogs out! Buns ran off when he saw me and had no problem squeezing under the green plastic fencing on the other side... I think I'd better grab those maters while I still can!
Linda