16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Aren't those tomato horn worms just the cutest little beasties????? Once you find one, your eyes will become accustomed to finding them. BT dust is the best -- hand-picking/squishing is fine but it is hard to find them all. I have heard that taking a black light out at night is also a great way to find them all - they turn day-glow green. Still - BT is perfectly safe, so use it.

The way I find them is if I happen to see their black "droppings" which have usually fallen to a leaf below. If I look to the leaves or stems above the droppings and I usually will find one. Pulled off 6 so far this year using that technique.

this happened to me years ago, i had huge green plants but no tomatoes,i haven't had it again. i really think excess nitogen is usually not the case. i use many high nitrogen elements to prepare the soil milorganite,cotton seed meal,chicken manure,ect plus compost. would i started doing was planting further apart sun and air circulation are very important, i also mulch with straw to keep the soil moist.. how close are they planted?

Thanks for all the support. No more water!!!! We have had more than enough VERY regular rain - fortunately the tomato garden is on a slant so it runs off. Also - I will not be adding anything at all to this soil--- beet greens are an indication of healthy soil and those are a rich green.

Today, I am noticing flowers starting to form and a few small tomatoes so maybe the plants were just over-stimulated by all the rain and are now going to perform. I have 12 plants (each a different variety) and were planted 2' apart in rows 8' apart. I have reinforced concrete wire cages around each. With all the foliage, they are growing very close together but the path between the rows is wide enough to walk through.

I think I will have a tomato crop after all unless we have a very early frost. Thanks again all.

Any plant, regardless of age, that is getting a major shift in environment needs to be hardened off first.

Dave

I had a cover crop of hairy vetch growing on the barbed wire fence near a tomato. I left it because it was pretty and blooming. I pulled it when it went to seed and the tomatoes sheltered by it got sun scald. You have to protect them from shifts in environment as stated above.

From what I understand that could be normal . When the plants is developing fruit, it's sucking the nutrients out of the bottom leaves first. The white spores I have no idea.

You don't show the rest of plant !!! How is the rest of plant doing ??!

But as far as those leaves are concerned, they are partially dead and drying up slowly from the edges towards inside.

3-4 weeks for ripening is totally unrealistic - think 6-7 weeks instead. Patience.

Am I watering too much? Is there some fungus, disease? Not enough sun? Perhaps the soil quality isn't nutritional enough? All I know is the tomatoes aren't ripening.

The ripening isn't related to the rest of this stuff and we can't really help you without a photo of the plants and affected leaves or at least many more details. Otherwise it is just guess work and likely wrong.

It could be disease issues or a watering issue - either over or under - or lack of nutrient issues but you'd need to tells us what the bed filler is, what fertilizers and other amendments you have added, how often you have fed them, how much, how long and how often you water them, etc. etc. etc.

Dave

I waited more than 2 months from flower to ripe tomato. AND that was EARLY girl. haha. But the first month was cold and rainy. The second month was not that great either.

So, I thing it has to do with HEAT. Here at the PNW, supposedly is zone 7B, but in terms of heat it is ZONE !. Down south in zone 7B, heat zone is 10. If here it takes 8 weeks, it will take 6 weeks down there. I know, I have gardened for years in GA, 7B.

Is that 1 tbsp per gallon of fish fertilizer per plant or all of them?

Just water normally with the 1 tablespoon per gallon mixture until you are convinced the soil is saturated with it. You might go through several gallons to water everything depending how many plants you have.

This post was edited by edweather on Fri, Jul 12, 13 at 18:34

Thanks all! I'm going to dilute a bit and go spray now. These tomatoes are in PITA this year.

buy the concentrate and use a pump sprayer. I think the premix is to thick, might want to thin it out a little with some water.

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EXACTLY that is what I do. And use an adjustable sprayer bottle (can change from mist to stream). This is very handy and you can aim exactly where you want, how much you want. If I had to spray a big field then I would use a gallon pump sprayer.

Thanks the responses. I'm still looking for more info. If they are simply leaf hopper markings that would be a relief but I'm not sure.

I am a very amateur gardener and my mom thinks I'm paying way too much attention to the leaves. Last year I think we had some kind of blight that hit in August so I want to stay on top of them. This is the first year with cages as well.

I took more pics and added them to the back of that flickr set and added descriptions to the pictures. At the end of the set are closeups I cropped so they'll show on flickr.

I noticed last night when I zoomed in on the pics I took I would see blue/black spots near the white. Here is one example.

I have been looking at google search pics of "leafhopper damage tomatos" for a few hours and I'll admit it my problem looks very similar to some of the pics, right down to the blue/black spots. Much more similar than disease/fungi/wilts.