16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Each hornworm comes from eggs laid by the Hornworm (or Tomatoworm) moth. The moth tends to be relatively large and brown. How many hornworms you get depends on how long the moths visited your garden before moving on to greener pastures, so to speak.
As I said in a previous post, go out to your garden at various times of the day and try listening for the hornworms eating. It sounds kind of like a medium-low pitched "crunch. . . crunch. . . crunch." If you hear them it can help you track them down.
One tablespoon of Tomato Tone is nowhere near over-fertilization. Actually it might be under-fertilizing. They can take alot more than that especially when the plants are growing at maximum. I think the instructions say that you can apply 3 tablespoons, 4 times per year. And that's a minimum...many people apply more. So,yes, correct the situation and add 3 tablespoons per plant now. Don't feel bad, I have a bias toward underfertilizing my plants too :-)
In my experience, you dont generally need to do much for blossom end rot, except pull off the tomatoes and throw them away. They rarely taste good when ripe, unless the blossom end rot is very minimal and involves only a small fraction of the tomato, which is NOT typical.
It tends to occur more with the very first few tomatoes on a plant, and probably is just caused by the plant not quite being strong enough or healthy enough to support the growing tomato. Yeah, it could be triggered by cold, fertilizer conditions, lack of water, etc, but with time the plant grows and improves and future tomatoes are less likely to have BER.
weird- I posted a reply and it did not show up. I trimmed off the end rotted tomatoes, and I added a little more fertilzer, this time with a fertilizer more geared towards tomatoes and claims to reduce blossom end rot. I probably added two table spoons to each plant close the base and mixed it in to the soil a little. I was limited in what I could do without taking the trashbag cover off the soil. In brighter news I noticed a fruit on the taller plant finally! See attached picture and video link
Here is a link that might be useful: Video: First fruit of taller plant etc
seysonn - not sure what's causing the leaf roll. Temps
have been in the 80's and the soil is nice and moist.
Maybe because that side faces the sun?
fireduck - yes, a lot of planning and it turned out a lot better
than I expected. My soil (before I started working on it) was
also a clay-type called caliche. Mix caliche with water and straw
and let them sit in the sun and you get adobe brick. When
dried out, it's as hard as a rock. Lots of Kellogg's AMEND,
grass clippings and coffee grounds did the trick.
HeyJude2012 - the bottom upright is pounded into the
ground about 12 inches. Very stable. And the cages
are really quite flexible. It all adds up to a nice system.
Mike - the lack of marine layer this year (May grey and
June gloom) is the answer. I'll have plenty of seeds in
case you need them....hope not!
What you have is most likely a hybrid throwback anyway so the taste may never be any good. You mention you have always grown "run-of-the-mill tomatoes all my life" so I presume hybrids. And most all the grape types are hybrids.
So since hybrids don't breed true but revert to something else and you can't have any idea what the parent stock was no telling how it will ever taste. Just leave it on the vine or let a few of them ripen inside on the counter until they turn soft and then you will have an idea of the proper picking color.
Dave
I'm in New Orleans and here we grow Creole tomatoes, some of the best in the world- huge, squat and lobed with a large crown and very juicy, very ugly. Gardens here use types like Celebrity, Better Boy, etc. when planting, or whatever seems to hold up to the intense heat. There is really no required pedigree or cultivar type. It's actually the climate and soil that make the tomatoes better here, believe it or not. Long story short, that's what I meant about run-of-the-mill. I have grown cherry tomatoes with great success, but grape tomatoes can't seem to stand up to our mid-90s Spring weather here. Like I said, this was just some random plant that showed up in my garden, I assume as a result of a bird hanging around, and I was curious. Thanks so much for all the information
interestingly, the chlorine in the water thing may be something...i water the plants right from an outside tap and i live in scotland, where im sure there is chlorine in the water..????
i dont want to dig this out, i still, william wallace style, think i can beat the odds and revive this!!
however, is there literally ZERO chance?
No idea why my last post repeated...sorry bout that.
You know, with tomatoes, there is rarely ZERO chance of survival...they can be tougher than we think! Whether it will ever be productive and healthy is a different story. :)
Wilted leaves are one thing, but its the look of that lower stem segment that makes me think its kaput. If you gently squeeze it near the soil level, does it feel squishy or hollow? If so, give it its last rights and put it to rest. (Sorry!) At any rate, with the looks of it, the best you could hope for would be to leave it alone and see if it limps along and revives. Even if there is a disease to blame (grey mold?) if the whole plant looks like that then any treatment plan is too little and too late. (sorry again!)
It looks very good. Your maters look healthy.
If your mulch was wood chips, probably you did the right thing. However manure compost on the roots might be too strong. I like mulching with straw and pine straw. The purpose of mulching and its benefits benefit are threefold. One: can help prevent weeds growth. Two : can help prevent the surface from drying out quicker: And third : I warm climates it ca help to keep the roots cooler, specially if the plants spacing is wide and you get all day direct sun, which from the picture I can tell it is the case here.
Good luck for the rest of the season.
Thank you to everyone who's responded. Your input is greatly appreciated. I did a soil test a few days ago and discovered that, aside from my cherry, which is at 5.5 pH exactly, all my tomatoes are ranging between and 6 and almost 7. So, could the problem be in the somewhat alkaline soil? If so, how do I fix that?
The soil itself seems to be properly moist to 5" down. Neither sopping wet, nor dry. And the temps here have been ranging mainly in the 80's - though that's soon to change, as forecasts are predicting temps in the 90's to the low 100's next week.
Not much has changed since I posted last. The top tomatoes on all the plants are still small and don't appear to be getting any bigger, blossoms are falling off and the leaves on the Black Krim are now not only curling, the edges are turning black. Though, on the positive side, the three largest (and lowest set) tomatoes on the Krim are starting to ripen.
"I did a soil test a few days ago and discovered that, aside from my cherry, which is at 5.5 pH exactly, all my tomatoes are ranging between and 6 and almost 7."
How did you test them? (And why?) Home testing kits are notoriously inaccurate as are the Ph Meters. You could probably test the same pot in the same spot six times in a row and get six different readings.
As for the "and why," you shouldn't have to test commercial mixes for nutrients and/or Ph, they should be ok to begin with and you should have to feed the plants because the nutrients wash away every time you water. That's why container growers fertilize their tomatoes so often with a balanced water soluble plant food.
Granular fertilizers may not break down rapidly enough into a usable form to support you plants (if they break down, see the info on the micro-herd link above.)
Sorry we can't be more specific.
Betsy
Cherry tomatoes are prone to splitting. Sweet 100s seem very prone, especially when the get a surge of water when they are ripening. There are some varieties less prone to splitting.
I think there was a fairly recent thread on here that had some info about cherries and splitting. Try doing a search.
Here is a link to another discussion about it currently on the Vegetable gardening forum. See the pics there.
dave
Here is a link that might be useful: Herbicide damage discussion
About four years ago I grew a sun gold tomato in my home garden. I usually only plant tomatoes in my community garden plot. Well, as summer progressed I wondered why I was getting so few cherry tomaotes to harvest - until I saw a chipmunk up in the branches carrying them off! I used to think chipmunks were cute. Now it's off with their heads!
That year we had a very high number of chipmunks (the year before had a huge number of acorns come off our oak trees). They had burrows all over the yard, under the decks, in the retaining walls. You couldn't open the door without seeing some run for cover.
I used a "Rat Zapper" to get rid of more than a dozen chipmunks in about a week. I also noticed a red tailed hawk a lot. Then that fall there were scarce acorns, so we had far fewer chipmunks for a while.
The population has come back somewhat this year, I may have to get the Zapper out of retirement.
Tomato plants bought in the spring or started from seed are relatively inexpensive here compared with the work of bringing them in. I have had sweet potatoes as perennials left in the ground, and the occasional pepper plant. But I no longer have plants in the house except a few in a small aquarium, and that would include tomatoes.
How do I know it's not overwatered? I mean, I want the soil moist, but if it's well drained soil, it won't be soggy. So what this means is well-watered, but well-drained soil?
First I stress soil-less mix, not potting soil. Crucial difference. Some think they are the same thing but they aren't. Soil-less potting mixes are sterilized, potting soils are not. They contain only peat, perlite or vermiculite and some lime to balance the pH so soil-less mixes drain better too.
What I teach in the Master Gardener course for properly wet potting mix is dump the dry mix into a container, pour in enough warm water to cover it all well, let it soak for a few hours stirring now and then with your hand, when it is all sloppy soaked wet then grab it by handfulls and wring it out in your hand just to the point it starts to stick together in a clump, fill the containers with that wrung out mix and lightly tamp it into place with your fingers. make sense?
If the containers are kept indoors out of the direct sun then you shouldn't have to give it any more water for 3-5 days. After that if you stick your finger in it and if feels dry bottom water only and don't let the pots sit in water once the top of the soil surface shows any signs of moisture absorbtion.
i don't agree with the plastic bag as that can encourage damp off or the windowsill as it can be too much sun and heat but that's your choice.
No recommendations of magic sauce or incantations?
I suppose you can always try the voo-doo magic BER cures of TUMS, aspirin, milk and crushed egg shells or recite the alphabet backwards while turning in clockwise circles. :-)
Dave
Thanks, Dave. That's very useful. I would have used sterilized potting soil, but maybe the soil-less mixture is indeed more moisture-appropriate.
I'll hold off on the sauces, but maybe I'll try that incantation. Nothing to lose. I'm on travel for a week, but I'll start in on this when I return. Takin' notes as fast as I can ...