16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
A good example of another gardener-created problem and if I recall correctly this issue was pointed out to you as a potential problem when you first posted this "experiment".
Since it isn't a fertilizer anyway logic would indicate that you should correct the real problem - getting rid of the cat food - instead of killing something.
Dave
Now is when your common sense should kick in. You proved to yourself that your bright idea (as you put it) doesn't work the way you'd hoped. Time to try something else. And have some compassion. You did put out food so someone hungry came along and tried to get at it. Cause and effect is evident.
Thank you Dcarch and thank you for inviting me to the Cooking Forum. I usually cook meals for everyday or parties based on what I am harvesting...so next time that I have something interesting to post, I promise I will post there like I regularly post in the Florida forum.
A simple tomato salad, I have to learn how to make it prettier since it is already tasty.:)
Silvia
Jol, I'm going to answer you and Rita at the same time.
jol, first, why not romas? Because they don't have great tastes, with few exceptions, and as with other paste varieties they are more susceptible to BER and Early BLight, as you already mentioned.
There are many many threads here about BER so I'll be brief. There are many conditions that can induce BER , all of them stresses, from using too much N or growing in too rich soil which cause rapid growth which is a stress, to uneven moisture conditions, etc., but the major stresses that cause Ca++ to not get to the blossom end are weather conditions and no one can control the weather.
So variety X might have BER in one season and not the next time it's grown.
The same situation obtains with non-paste varieties but more often with paste varieties.
Rita and I post at another site and when she said that her new one had no BER I pointed out and shared with her that for sure this season b/c she's only grown it for this past season, but who knows for the next season, so you can't say that this paste OR non-paste variety is BER prone or not until you've grown that same variety several times over several different seasons.
Paste varieties do have a different physiology in terms of water and nutrient transport within the plant and that's what some tomato physiologists think causes them to be so susceptible to BER.
I'll let you look at some of the many threads here at GW about BER by doing a search but will say that it's NOT lack of Ca++ in the soil as used to be thought. Addition of Ca++ to the soil can only help if a soil test shows that the soil has NO Ca++, which is rare indeed and Ca++ from the soil isn't taken up if the soil is too acidic, which can easily be fixed by altering the pH of the soil, and even that situation is relatively rare.
Summary? it's just my opinion that the best sauces are made from the fruits of the best tasting varieties, and preferably beefsteak and heart varieties that have very dense flesh with few seeds. All one needs to do is to cook them down a bit longer than using only paste varieties until the desired consistency is reached. Or consider using half pastes and half non-pastes for sauce, and a few of the former to consider might include Heidi, Mama Leone, Martino's Roma, Opalka, Sarnowski Polish Plum, Kenosha Paste, to name just a very few that have worked out well for quite a few folks.
You can look them up at Tania's wonderful website which features pages for over 3,000 varieties and for most of them there are comments from others, the traits of the variety,histories where known and if you scroll down on a page seed sources if known.
When at the MAIN page for the link below scroll down to where you see the link for searching by the alphabetical method which works wonderfully if the name of a variety is known.
Hope that helps.
Carolyn
Here is a link that might be useful: Tania's Tomato Data Base
I grew Amish Paste tomatoes this year. They were great! Large, meaty, tasteful fruit. I also grew Whopper tomatoes. I thought they would be juicy, but they too were a very meaty, tasty fruit. They also lived up to their name -- these babies were real whoppers! I plan on growing both varieties next year.
If it were me I'd call it a season, harvest what you can and then dispose of the plant since you haven't indicated what disease you think it might be that's affecting the stems and I suppose leaves as well.
My guess would be one of the two common fungal doseases, either Early Blight ( A' solani), which can occur early OR late in the season, or Septoria Leaf Spot, and not Late Blight ( P. infestans), which can also occur early or late in the season, b'c if it were the latter no new stems would probably be appearing.
Carolyn
You must also be talking to someone else, because no one on this thread said it was sick with a virus or bacteria, and that you should pull it. If it's been alive for 1.5 years as you say, leaves don't live forever and some yellowing, even dying can be expected. I say it's not sick because yes, you pulled a few yellowing leaves, but the plant I see in the picture has leaves that look good, and if it's been alive for a year and a half you must be doing something right. I'm just wondering how come it didn't grow all last year if it's getting full sun. Are you using potting mix or potting soil? I asked about pot size, because it's kind of hard to tell by the picture. I'm assuming that it looks about 5 gallons which should be big enough. All I can think of is that you might have used potting soil and have some perched water in the pot which might be stunting the growth. I use a skewer to tell if my containers need water. I insert the skewer about 12" down and remove it to see if the bottom of the pot is wet or dry. You also might considering posting this on the "container" forum and see what answers you get. Other than that all I can suggest is waiting and see if the fruit develops. What kind of tomato plant is it? Where is Adelaide? Must be in Southern Hemisphere somewhere.
It depends what you want out of this tomato plant. If you are expecting a good crop then that isn't going to happen after all this time. If you are doing it for fun then it doesn't look too bad to me. I always cover the pot with comfrey (not sure if you can get that in Australia. It grows wild in England and breaks down giving nutrients to the tomato and keeps it from drying out. Redo again in a month.
If you desperately want to grow this variety again then wait until the tomato is ripe and collect some of the seed from it and try again next year.
I've had exactly the same problem and assumed it to be late blight. We have had an appallingly wet summer (haven't watered the Toms all summer). This was followed by a rise in temperature and minimal rain. This is when it appeared. I have removed one plant completely and all infected leaves (not to compost heap). I assumed I would loose all my tomatoes but nothing has got worse in 2 weeks so figures crossed.
Well, it's supposed to rain for the next 3 days (no watch yet but TWC says potentially severe T-storms coming this way today). So I'll see if the leaf roll on the Krims gets better with more water.
Naturegirl - I'd love to see pix of your foliage to compare. My plants did bear a few fruit last year, but never got bushy - don't know if it was where they were (though soil tested OK), too much water right after planting (and bathtub effect in the trenches), not enough water in July?? But they drowned in Aug. Suckers got away from me on all the tomatoes this year - at least the first 75 or so that I planted - they just grew so quickly and I was busy planting squash, cukes, etc. up near the house. I've just been pruning lower leaves (esp. on BW) and tried "weaving" the plants against the fence since I'm not ruthless enough to prune a sucker that has flowers on it LOL.
The fruit really are striped and not spotted as you might expect - here's an actual photo (small) from Fedco:
Here is a link that might be useful: Fedco Speckled Roman
Must add a few shots of our tomatoes!
Left to right: Black Cherry, Snow White, Sungold, and Galina's
German Giant. Just over 1 lb., there are bigger ones on the plant:)
Dagma's Perfection
Orange Russian 117. Very happy with these!
Overall, a great season for tomatoes....even with getting the plants out at least 7-10 days into June!!
I've been watering every day unless the soil looks obviously wet. Fertilizing never happens (since I don't know what to use), and the weather's been cold for tomatoes at night - the low this week is 34 degrees.
The plants are inside now, and the German Queen is pretty much completely dead - the tomato's the greenest part, all the leaves are wilted and/or yellow, and she's bent in half where I'd fixed a break earlier in the year. Mr. Stripey still stands a chance, though. I'm planning on using a grow light over the winter to see if I can keep her going until spring.
Honestly I wouldn't make the effort to try to keep it growing. Your choice of course but not only is your zone an issue for winter-growing but relatively complex conditions for indoor growing are also needed.
Add to that it is a heavily stressed plant already and has been nutrient deprived for some time apparently so is both root bound and anemic in appearance, the odds of any cuttings from it being healthy are slim to none.
Better to spend the winter months learning more about proper container growing methods rather than spending time and money on trying to salvage this one.
Dave
Good news; I have no fungus or any other problems. As per some other post I'm deficient in organic material. I'll be adding some leaves, some chipped tomato plants along with some 10-10-10 fertilizer. Come spring time I'll add some more 10-10-10, some peat moss and some organic compost and should be good to go.
CArolyn 137 ,are you serious you don't know what Pox and Flex are ? And yet to laugh about it. Well you could take a break from patting your self on the back for all the tomatoes you grew,introduced,named and gave birth to,sent seeds of ,new the parents of etc. to Google search,
*****
I know Flex as Gold Fleck, not flex.
Yes, I know Fruit Pox as well, but just couldn't connect the two to your MDiv title and since no photos were shown to illustrate that. And just b'c, I've never seen Gold Fleck nor Fruit Pox on any of the MDiv plants that I've grown.
TO me it's interesting that neither of those conditions has adequately been described as to a proven origin,but a good Gold Fleck variety is Depp's Pink Firefly, and it's remained stable for that variety, but Gold Fleck can come and go and not be heritable
So yes, at first I did LOL it, b'c Flex to me is Gold Fleck, I have several links in my faves about it.
And yes, I suppose I sometime do pat myself on the back but mainly living to the age I am and still being active on a couple of message sites trying to help people with questions. And I mean help and trying to always do it nicely.
And yes, when someone posts about a variety and it's one that I originally did introduce I often do say so, but not all the time, b'c then I can give the history of where I got it from b/c that seems to interest quite a few folks, and besides, I like to keep track of what some folks think of what I call my tomato kids.
Back in the years 2003, 04 and 05, things got nasty here at GW, anyone who was here during those years knows that, and it's one of the reasons that someone who was here at the time set up a new message site in Jan of 06 and a good number of folks switched at that time. A few come back here from time to time, myself included, but if things get nasty here again, I'm gone in a NY minute, as I have recently with a couple of other message sites. I want no part of tomato politics, no intertribal warfare between message sites, and prefer a site or two where courtesy in posting is extended to everyone.
Carolyn
Been doing this for 40+ years, and I've never run across "Pox" and "Flex" before. Learn something new every so often!
Lots of 100+ temps here in Indiana this summer, but my toms. never had anything unusual happen. Grown on 4' black plastic and watered weekly, though. Virtually no cracking until the rains came back in August.
-WC2K8
I think I've got it on the border of Hartford/Litchfield counties. The Glacier tomatoes are about finished anyway, will pull them this weekend, but I see stem lesions on the Bloody Butchers next to them. Do the spots scrape off with a fingernail, or do they go deeper into the tissue? Not seeing sporulation. Might not be LB since I can scrape the discoloration off pretty easily, but the garden is looking pretty bad after 2" of rain on Sat and a couple of nights below 45.
The only plants really hanging in there are the Sudduth BWs, and since there aren't that many left of any size, harvest will pretty much be over next week. BKs are about done for (lots of dying leaves though no stem lesions), Speckled Romans are falling off the plants (though plants don't look too bad, these are supposed to be Ind. but I wonder since there don't seem to be any new fruit forming), cherry tom stems look really bad (exactly like the picture on usablight website) and aren't scraping off as easily so I'll probably be pulling everything but BB this weekend.
My second planting in another area is looking good, but I really should have suckered and strung them up (vertical string) better, lots of green tomatoes of all varieties, again maybe no time for BWs to ripen but might get some Bloody Butchers and Black Krims over the next month if the weather cooperates.
And the few potato plants still alive look great!
Been awful lately for fungal diseases though - I pulled almost all my pumpkins last weekend b/c of downy mildew (the cukes went long ago), the zukes are on their last legs so will be pulling those as well this w/e, but my second planting of yellow straightneck and my gourds are getting it, I don't even know if I'll get anything off of them.
Time to just pull all the annuals I guess and start putting the perennials (berries) to bed for the winter...
I started pulling all my plants this weekend - found fruit lesions on Bloody Butchers. Stems on cherries are almost all dark brown/purple (not small splotches) but I'm confused - split one open and no brown inside, looks healthy green/whitevascular tissue. Still pulling them today, but isn't LB a vascular disease?
Also some suckers and leaf clusters are dying (brown, dessicated), but I have some leaf clusters and fruit clusters that look healthy and green, even have flowers! Is this just because I'm catching it early (regardless of how bad the stems look)? I thought the dry leaves were just from the dry (pre-Isaac) weather, so many green leaves and fruit still on the plants last week I didn't notice the stems of the cherries when I picked them earlier in the week.