16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

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.

To reitterate
"
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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.

No problem, I had same questions couple years ago, and my ugly and disfigured Black Krims actually tasted better than normal ones.

But it could be because most of the pretty ones were given out to friends and family :)

Peaches do the same thing.

Isn't it funny how the "right way" to garden is determined by the weather? Which, of course, none of us can predict, especially lately. If I knew it would be cold and wet, I'd plant in a ridge of soil and cover it with black plastic. But then the weather changes, and the 100 degree sunshine comes out to cook everything.

A large-scale tomato farmer near me puts out about 40 acres of tomatoes every year. This year he switched from black plastic to the kind that is white on top and does not get so hot. They have a single stake holding up each plant. I know they have a lot of sun scald this year.

My shallow-root tomatoes not only did not grow well, their taste quickly went downhill as the plants got worse. Sweetness went down, skins got tougher, and there was less flesh to the inside of the fruit.

My main concern was the need to fertilize and not over water, sooo not an issue three days later. They got their dose, and no rain, so wait for the sun to drop and give the poor things some H2O. They hold up in this heat a LOT better than I do, I wilt after about 45 min.
I guess I didn't add enough 'organic matter' last winter.

"Maybe add a little Tomato Tone in the potting mix."

Whoops. When I said "Floramato," I meant Tomato Tone. My fault.

I am pretty sure if I put fish juice and molasses in my potting mix that the Ecoterrorist (Squirrels) would dig up everything I have. Probably would call in the raccoon's at night also.