16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Is it possible you can post a photo?

I can try to post a picture. It was getting dark by the time I'd thought about it. I'm sure to have more leaves like this tomorrow.

I don't think it's too little water because the leaves never droop or wilt. They stand tall and strong.

Are we talking about in-ground plants or container plants? They have very different fertilizing needs.

Dave

digdirt Mine are in the ground and forgot to mention that I use a watering can when I apply MG for Tomatoes.Very healthy looking plants but will see later the volume of fruit they produce.

My variety is the Toma Verde I believe which as far as I can tell is a pretty standard version.

I actually dont have another tomatillo plant and have no issues with getting the fruit. Its the fruit itself that is tiny. I do however have a tomato right next to it, and the plant is in the crux of the local Hummingbird Interstate. Its covered in hummingbird poo--they love to perch on the cage to rest as they zoom between my fountain and the olive tree just above. Would they be the reason it is getting pollination?

I am wondering if the fruit will get larger as the summer goes on? Or if I am just stuck with micro-fruit. I did puree some of them for salsa this morning, so I can use them... Just would love to know if there's anything I can do to beef them up a bit.

tundrah, I don't know if you're asking about the hummingbirds or the tomato as possibly being involved in pollination, but neither one would be. Tomatillos are in a completely different genus and species than are tomatoes and tomato pollen can't pollinate tomatillo bloosoms. And Hummingbords are not known to pollinate either tomatillos or tomatoes or anything else that I know of.

But if you read some of the links I gave in that Google link you'll find that almost ANY Physalis ( same genus as tomatillos) can serve to pollinate tomatillo blossoms if within so many meters away, I forget the exact distance, but it's in that Purdue article.

Often folks will ask about the little green nubbin that can be seen inside a tomato blossom which is the tomato ovary, and I think what you might be seeing is the ovary inside the tomatillo blossoms. And no, it isn't going to enlarge and form a normal size berry b'c pollination has not occurred.

Carolyn

Glad you see it too! Ok, so all of my plants (Save 1 CP) were started from seed that I purchased from Tomatofest. I started them all in a flat in little rows and then transplanted into plastic cups. The stupice and Homer Fikes had lower germination rates than some of the others, but the ones that did germinate did well enough once I potted them up.

And actually, my Homer fikes which only 3 survived were very small when I planted them out and they were planted out weeks after the Stupice as I was still trying to hand sift dirt to fill my last two beds. The Homer Fikes though are just as big, if not bigger than the stupice and have decent foliage.

I think thats a different topic alltogether, but perhaps it's possible that there was some stress as a seedling that is still effecting them? It is weird though because they have so many fruit trusses. You can see the tops of the stupice plants there is a lot of yellow. I am a little concerned with the fruits getting sun scald.

One other bad thing is that they are on the furthest south/east side of the beds, so they only get shaded by thier neighbors in late afternoon.

CH

Here is a possible scenario I just thought about. Being as this is the first year on these raised beds, perhaps I inadevertantly layered the cardboard thicker under that paticular spot, and maybe the plants are just having a hard time getting the roots to grow through it? It's just a little strang because they have so much more fruiting clusters than any other of my varieties.

CH

If you cant manage to get them off the ground by staking then might be good idea to maybe put a couple inches of pine straw or similar underneath them.

Agree. If your plants were all heavily mulched with straw or hay or one of the many similar mulches as they should be then it wouldn't hurt anything for them to contact the ground. Not to mention that your soil moisture levels would be stabilized and less likely to affect the quality issues of the fruit like flavor, splitting, cracking, tough skins, etc.

Dave

These might be the brandywine tomatoes. I pulled two of those and two cherokee purples.

I did notice at the start of the season that the tops of my brandywine had been either eaten or something.

Would a rodent eat the tops of the beans too?

You can easily have hornworms and not see them. You don't see any slug slime do you? The tomato of the left looks like it has sun scald.

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I have had good luck finding and getting seed from E-bay sellers. Like all E-bay things let your second sense warn you of bad ones. Better luck than with one well know highly publicized seller who's last order was two wrong out of eight. Its so easy to find the one you are looking for with out hunting through a bunch of catalogs.

Hey dave, you mention contaminated soil, I think I have that. I get a blight/fungus every year. Now I rotate my tomatoes as best I can but with a limited garden size rotation consists of a few feet here and there.

Now, lets say my soil is sick, how can I cure it? Any advice?

I crushed a probiotic pill and mixed it with some water and sprayed/rubbed it all over my tomato plant as well as watered the remaining amount at the base and my plant seems not to have gotten any worse.

I tried it bc half my tomato plant at the time was yellowing and I pretty much thought I would have to pull it out in a week or so. I also cut off the yellow/spotted leaves that were really badly afflicted and now it looks like the yellowing/spotty spreading has slowed down. I see more green than yellow. So I at least extended the life on it by a few weeks.

Just so you know it will leave a white residue/powder on the leaves that I just leave on there. Hopefully it keeps the fungus away.

I wish I had taken a picture so I could show everyone how bad it looked before ... it isn't great now but it is looking much better so I at least will have this tomato around for another 5-6 weeks or longer if it actually gets better.

I have a little one that gets into everything so I didn't want to use any fungicides.

Did you add any manure? Fresh or composted? Bagged or from a farm?

If so, check the info about contaminated organic matter, the clopyralid issue mentioned above. (The same effect with several related compounds also.)

See the extensive info here: http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/soilmgmt/clopyralid.htm

And do the easy bio-assay to determine if your soil is contaminated.

Here is a link that might be useful: contaminated manures, etc

manda: Ontario has pretty strict rules on herbicides. For the most part they are banned, but allowed for health reasons such as poison ivy elimination. Townships are allowed a bit of leeway for road maintenance, but not pathways. If you have neighbours using them, you have good reason to tell them to stop. It may be that if you can identify the source, you can ask them to stop for legal reasons.

Great report bigpinks! Just the inspiration I needed to hear at the start of our summer weather pattern. While many of you have had warm & dry weather it's just beginning here in WA state. Our forecast finally has all suns & O% precip for over a week! We'll dry out a bit & put some more growth on tomatoes.

I removed all my plastic surrounds just yesterday. Lots of blooms. Some fruit set. Some fruit turning lighter green. That's how far we are behind most of you with warm weather. Overnight lows will still be in 50s, but no longer 40s. July & August are our summer months with sometimes extending into Sept. until the fall rains begin again.

I'm going to out do some finger pokes to check soil moisture. I want those plants to start off well watered & ready to grow.

Corrine

Best of luck Corrine

Removing excess leaf stems removes excess weight causing broken stems and allow more air and light into the plant.

Removing excess leaf stems removes excess weight causing broken stems and allow more air and light into the plant.

It also increases sun scald of the fruit and decreases the plants ability to photosynthesize energy for growth and production.

chuckby - why not browse through all the other discussions here on pruning for more information? There are many of them that already detail all the reasons - both pro and con - already running. I linked a long one from this front page below.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: to prune or not to prune

Chris,

Sorry...meant humid, not "humis"!! Google tomato plant diseases or something to that effect. There are lots of sites that show good pics of different problems. Then you can compare to what you've got. Also, "DIGDIRT" is very knowledgeable (much more so than I). Give him another yell. There's early blight, late blight, bacterial spot and a bunch of other problems. I've gotten blight this year and just took up my first plant which has wilt, I believe. Have never has any problems growing in containers but think the very hot and humid weather this early has caused some of this.

cheers and good luck

Bing

My Better Boys are not doing well. I have one plant that is stunted. It does have a few tomatoes that came on early. But the plant has not grown much since and has just a few "small" flowers. The other Better boy is not flowering. Between the two Better Boys are Early girls which are doing real well. I also have four heirlooms that are beautiful, tall and filled with fruit. My soil was perfect in the beginning. I sent a sample to have it analyzed before planting and amended the soil according to the university's advice. I only fertilized once about a month ago with MG tomato and veg food. I water (with a soaker hose twice a week for 40 min. each time. We are not having much rain and the temps have been in the 90's for two weeks. Any suggestions? Thanks!

You were absolutely right about the catfacing. Posted a pic in a separate thread. Unfortunately I had already picked them fearing it was some big bad disease....ugh. Oh well. Thanks for the great advice!Whatis funny is thaty you can actually see a catface in this picture.

One can use catfaced tomatoes for a Rorschach test ;)
Last year i've seen my aphid population on peppers migrate completely once i've put a container with nasturtium majus (tropaeolum) next to it - they just switched from pepper to it and made it much easier for me to remove them. It's also edible, you can add it to salads, both flowers and leaves.