16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
The 4-8-12 mentioned last sounds better than the other two formulas, with heavy nitrogen. My neighbor says he put down MG tomato food as directed, three times. He has no fruit, but two doors down my cherry toms are producing.
I have some slow release tomato food (where the N no. is less than the P and K). Compost and compost tea are my main additives. Only used the tomato food once so far this year.
sawmill farm rt 102 cov. r.i. would have been great, but by the time I called, he was out of the varieties I was interested in. A good place to keep in mind for a BIG variety of tomatoes and I think he said peppers too.
Happy Gardening,
Tom
Cory, based on just your second picture b/c you have some other stuff growing in that greenhouse, if it were me I'd ignore it for now.
It's either physiological Leaf Roll, in which case when root and foliage mass are in more balance it will go away, or it's just plain leaf Curl in which case that can happen when it's too dry, too wet, too hot, too cool, and in such smaller plants such as yours that too might go away as they mature.
If the leaves curl over into a tube structure check for aphids. Aphids love greenhouses.
From that one picture I don't see any evidence of herbicide damage.
Since you say that all of your indet plants are showing it, then I assume that it's more environmental and/or a function of the plants going more towards maturity than anything else.
If any other symptoms show up please let us know.
Carolyn
With temps in the 90's, it's probably that. Plus, those
5 gal buckets need quite a bit of water. Daily if not
more often.
I grew in large buckets (like 30 gal or so) for a while
and had to set them in troughs with water in them. Every
day, I had to water them and fill the troughs with water
before I left for work. When I got home after work, they
were generally empty of water.
In the thread 'Wilt & Leaf Curl. Pics. HELP?!' theres'
some folks discussing watering containers. You don't
have quite the problem that poster has, but it's a similar
situation. Check it out.
If you are growing this variety of tomato without calcium in the soil there is an easy fix:
Pick them when they are green enough to not have started rotting and place them in brown paper sandwich bags ...four tomatoes per bag. It should take only a few days in the bag for them to ripen enough to remove them from the bag. Then leave them on a table or in a bowl to ripen Further.
Speaking of ripening if you do not like these tomatoes fully ripe then use them approximately as ripe as they are in the following photo.
That ripe they are still the best tasting tomatoes I have ever eaten + very juicy. I have not yet tried a tomato of this variety fully ripe .................
I have found out why Marmande tomatoes are the most popular tomatoes in Europe ...When they are fully ripe they are amazing cooking tomatoes with less seeds than most other tomato varieties have.
Amazing and fast tomato sauce without needing any thickening and the taste is amazing.
Put them on pizza without any sauce.
Marmande tomatoes fully ripe with red onions are very tasty.
To enjoy them in salads, in hamburgers or to eat them by themselves they are best not fully ripe. Experiment how unripe you like them when they are not cooked, it's about preference
Yeah, they are just dried out. It is really hard to keep the roots cool in the hot sun. If you use buckets and grow into the summer, white is much better. Also, instead of putting the drain holes in the very bottom, put them about 3-4 inches up on the side of the bucket. That gives you a water reservoir so that it dries out less slowly. Alternatively, you could set your buckets in a trough or kiddie pool in a few inches of water and let them soak it up. As the plant gets more and more rootbound, it is hard to get the water to soak fully into the root ball.
The best irrigation for these plants would be spaghetti tubing and drip on a frequent schedule so that they never dried out. You could also try to shade the bucket as best you can. Burying it in the ground would actually be best, at least from a standpoint of temperature. Roots like it cool.
That's not a bad idea. You would be limited by the size of the container, and it would be hard to fix any clogs in it if it were underground. If you don't mind having to look at it, you can put the container above ground. It's the same idea. I have watered from a livestock trough with a ball valve plumbed into the bottom drain. Just let it drip overnight. It's also an easy way to mix in fertilizer as you water.
Where you can see the veins run through the discoloration, that is a nutrient deficiency. The green veins through yellow patches is from nutrient problems. But where the brown dead spots grow over the veins and destroy them too, that is fungal in nature, likely blight. If the plant is weak from nutrient deficiency, that is going to open the door for the blight.
"regardless how hot it is during the day, tomatoes can set fruit at night as long as overnight temps fall below 75"
I hope you're right, but I don't see it happening. I think the pollen is cooking in the heat. It's 105 with 20% humidity and a breeze. It feels like a convection oven outside. My whitefly infestation probably isn't helping, either, but the only green plants around are my tomatoes and the whiteflies can't stay away.
There has been a lot of research regarding corn pollen and high temperatures. Basically, it's bad :(
I've been growing tomatoes for more than a few years now and I am having the same situation you are. I am about 10 miles south of Pittsburgh, PA. Mine is weather related. I have 4 cherry/grape types that are thriving with fruits ready to pick for the 4th. Of the other varieties I planted this year only Goose Creek is setting fruit as usual. 4 other varieties are 5 to 6 feet tall and have few if any fruit set yet. Blossoms just drop. Not to over simplify it but I think 90% of my success or failure is weather related. We had early warm temps this spring and since then wide temp fluctuations with some cold nights and some hot. Now we are into a heat wave. I had the happen several years ago and still got plenty of tomatoes. They just came later in the season than usual. Time will tell for this year.
If you did plant the whole tomato without cutting it somewhere and some seeds germinated, OK, but having planted the whole tomato without cutting it a rotting process would have started with that tomato to expose the seeds. And that rotting process of all the tomato components I'm sure would have killed any that germinated.
You can take the seeds out of a fresh tomato and without processing them plant them and they will germinate OK. But as others have said, it just isn't the best way to germinate tomato seeds and get good results by planting a whole tomato.
Carolyn
So are you saying you just sprayed it on straight/concentrated? No dilution? Then yes hose the plants off with water and respray.
Or are you saying you added the water to the Daconil in the sprayer but didn't mix it well and didn't keep it mixed? Didn't do the shake-well-as-you-go bit?
Then the end result is the same since the Gilmore sprayers suck from the bottom - the first plants got sprayed with undiluted Daconil and the later plants got sprayed with 90% water.
Dave
Dave - looking back at my original post, I really didn't
explain it properly.
The Gilmour sprayer is the hose-end type that mixes it as you go.
No dilution is needed provided the concentrate is the same
viscosity as water.
You pour in the concentrate, attach to the hose and set
the dilution rate on the sprayer. The sprayer mixes the
stuff for you.
What I did was forget to dilute the concentrate so it
flowed properly. The Daconil, being much thicker than
water, didn't get picked up by the sprayer as well
as it should (if at all).
It's a known situation and, in fact, the instructions
specifically mention thicker than water concentrates and
how to do it properly. I just forgot that part.
You'd better believe I won't forget that little bit of
information again.
Guess I'll wash what little stuff that got on the plants
off and start again from the beginning.
Thanks for the assist and for all your very intelligent
and informative posts.
Need to see a picture of them please including a close up of the leaves. 50 things can cause wilting so much information is needed as well beginning with your zone/location, containers or in ground, if in containers how big are they, age of the plant, exposure to weed killer drift, watering regimen as in how often, feeding regimen, signs of disease, why watering with sprinkers, etc.
The more info you provide the better we can help. Otherwise all we can do is make guesses.
Dave