16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Should do fine. It has for me and I have the same heat issues as you do just not as much drought problems. I checked all the previous discussions here about that variety and there are several zone 7 growers who report good results with it.
Most any variety does well in Texas or any part of the south as long as we plant them early enough and can keep them adequately watered because we have such a long growing season. Of course none of them will set fruit in the worst of the heat no matter where you live.
Dave
Well, I have a trick regarding heat that works for me. Right now I grow in containers. I move the plants out for morning sun and then put them under cover when I go back to work after lunch. when I get home I put them back out, getting about 8 hours of sun a day and avoiding the afternoon highs.
Next year I'll be switching to EarthBoxes, which should allow me to do the same since they are wheeled.
Is the ground around them well mulched so all the dirt isn't splashing all over them? If so then as long as the soil drains well so the roots don't rot they should be fine. Maybe a little bedraggled looking for a few days but they will bounce back.
Dave
It has to be an issue with water or specific spots. Just recently my container plants showed stress (waited too long to water) across multiple varieties of heirlooms and hybrids. My raised bed toms are all monsters, mixed hybrids and heirlooms. Now if we were talking production, I think the hybrid vs heirloom my ply in, but more importantly the variety.
As others have said, there is nothing particularly different with growing hybrids or heirlooms. Heirlooms and Hybrids can both present resistance to certain types of plant pathogens, but hybrids do have "hybrid vigor" and can sometimes tolerate a little more stressful conditions - the difference has not yet been particularly noticeable based on the heirlooms I grow.
That being said, what else is different about your plants? Did you grow them all from seed? If not, were they all purchased from the same supplier? Were they all the same size and of similar health at planting time?
I really like the smell of the cherry tomatoes. The Sungold leaves have a sweet smell about them.
Just an FYI, these plants were put out on March 19th.
Ernie: The wind pollinates the tomatoes by moving the flowers and that gets the pollen to fall. If it isn't windy or I have the building closed up for some reason, I will walk through the building and shake the trellis posts.
Dave: Lose the girls, heck sometimes I get lost!
Jay
Totally normal experience as stated earlier. I think that if you restricted full sun exposure when you noticed this situation you handled the situation properly.
But this can re-occur. I set a few hundred plants (well hardened plants) in my farmers' market box van (total darkness) around noon so I wouldn't need to load them in the rain pending. The next day at the market the sun was bright and the tomato plants wilted. Lesson: Even a day out of sun and you need to readapt plants to it.
I have a Rapitest PH meter that read below 7 most of the time. Then after not using it for a year, I took off the back panel to see if it had a battery that needed to be replaced. Well, no battery, but one of the two wire leads was not even soldered, just wrapped around the terminal. No wonder these meters always read 7!!
Char35:
I get an annual soil test for my garden. My garden is amended and fertilized uniformly. I sample my garden soil from several different locations, mix them in a bucket, and scoop several cups of the mixture into the sample bag the extension agent provides.
I believe the measures I use to till my garden every year negate any benefit of paying to test soil from different areas.
He sends it to KS. State Univ. Lab and they test it for the attributes I request. I tell the extension agent I would like amendment and fertilizer recommendations, and I get a report on the condition of my soil, (NPK levels and pH), organic material level, amount of fertilizer I should add initially and how I should side-dress crops through the season, and if I need to add sulfur to reduce the pH.
Cost me $16.60 this year, including postage for the sample sent to be tested. I realize my state income taxes probably also included a charge for this service, but that would have been paid if I had not used the service.
Hills and mounds have a new life Carolyn regardless of the seeds. :) Mounded rows aka wide-row gardening and hill planting to control weeds and improve soil drainage made a big come back right about the time of the raised bed revolution.
And yes they can make a big difference when it comes to preventing BER in in-ground planting IF one can anticipate the spring weather accurately. Not to mention they warm the soil much faster for spring planting. Hill planting also benefits vining vegetables in that they better support the vines and you get less stem breaks.
Regina - is that landscape fabric in the bottom of those beds? If so it is slowing your drainage. One reason why many recommended against using it under raised beds is because you can get water pooling in the bottom of the beds. Often if there is a poor performing spot or plant ramming a metal rod down through the fabric several times will eliminate the problems. And what is the soil like under the beds? Was it clay or rocky and slow to drain? If so then drainage given all your rain is even more problematic.
Just some thoughts to consider.
Dave
Dave, the landscape fabric is not under the bed with the problem. It's only under the new bed -- the plants in the new bed with the garden cloth are doing beautifully. We decided to try the cloth in the new bed b/c we have a problem with bermudagrass coming up in the 2 older beds. We also decided at that time, to spread the cloth all around the outside of the older beds in preparation to put down pebbles but then later pulled it up after deciding that the rocks would be too costly. The soil under the beds doesn't have much clay or rock at all.
Too little water is a possibility. Root damage during transplanting. Another possibility is bacterial wilt.
Here is a link that might be useful: My garden and tomatoes
Some transplant shock is normal. And drooping (loss of leaf turgor) of the leaves, as opposed to actual wilting, is common in the worst heat of the day. It is the leafs physiological way of conserving moisture, preventing/restricting transpiration (loss of water through the stoma of the leaves). Assuming soil moisture levels are sufficient and consistent, then as the plants mature and the roots expand and develop the symptoms are less noticeable.
Without a picture or more details it isn't possible to know if there something else going on but if they are fine in the morning and perk up again in the cooler evening then that is the likely explanation.
Dave
We have many great FAQs here. Well worth exploring all of them.
Pollen-producing plants are any and all of the so-called bee attracting plants - herbs, especially borage, as well as most annual flowers and many of the flowering perennials, flowering shrubs, and of course fruit trees.
So asters, clover, marigolds, zinnias, bee balm, lavender, cat nip, sunflowers, blueberry bushes, apple trees, etc.
Dave
I agree with Dave, but no matter what you plant to try and divert pollinators from cross pollinating, it's never perfect, actually far from it.
Remember that some pollinators like sweat bees and others can and do fly for miles. So it's best to save seeds from fruits early on if you have the most pollinators later in the season and vice versa. I always saved seeds from the fruits in late summer and early Fall for that reason/
How careful a person wants to be in preventing X pollination depends on what they intend to do with the saved seeds. If for home use only, OK, but if trading seeds, which I never do except in rare circumstances and only with a few friends whom I've known for decades, or listing them in the SSE YEarbook, then perhaps more care should be taken.
The only almost 100% method of ensuring pure saved seed is to bag blossoms. I never could do that b'c I was growing many 100's of plants and varieties each season, but my cross pollination rate was only about 5% where I lived, which means that 5/100 varieties with saved seed could be expected to have some cross pollinated seed.
And of the hundreds and hundreds of varieties I've listed in the SSE Yearbook as well as offering in my seed offers, I think there are less than 20 that turned out to be cross pollinated.
Never save seed from just one fruit of a variety, better is many fruits from one plant, better still is fruits from several plants of the same variety, etc.
I can have maybe 2000 seeds of a variety and distribute seeds and only after a certain number are distributed does an offtype show up.
And that's b'c all it takes is ONE fruit where self pollenization has not resulted in all ovules in the tomato ovary, seeds to be, to be cross pollinated.
Carolyn
You need to let us know if there are any signs of pests - either spider mites or aphids - as that is the most likely cause given the symptoms displayed in the photos.
But no it isn't early blight or any other disease. Have you sprayed with with something? Perhaps over-fertilized them?
Otherwise I'd agree with environmental damage of some sort.
Dave
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I can breathe a sigh of releif now I know it is not any kind of blight. There is no sign of any other pests around. I have had aphids and white fly in previous years, but nothing else is clearly visible. I'll get my magnifying glass out and have a closer look. These tomatoes have only been fertilized once or twice with a very weak solution of soluble fertilizer, but they are really overdue for planting out and probably a bit over crowded. They are still indoors because we have been having such cold weather. I probably should set the fan on them a bit. I have not done that this year. I will clean them up and start hardening them off over the weekend. I was so proud of myself it would have been very hard to take if I had to toss them. Happy Gardening, all!!
P.S. Enjoyed your site Kr222, gave me some ideas for my salvia seedlings. N.
I don't have a reference, but I have an anecdote. My plants are arranged in a straight line from east to west, with afternoon shade from the west.
The size of the plants are small to large like Russian dolls, with the smallest plant on the east end getting the most sun and the largest plant on the west end. I've also noticed a little leaf roll on the two plants that get the most sun, so I just put a makeshift covering on the tops of their cages a few days ago. The leaf rolling seems to be getting better since I did that.
But each of my plants is a different variety, so it could just be a coincidence even though it seems to be sun-related.
As mentioned above you must remove all of the affected foliage and dispose of it. Fungicides don't cure they just help slow the spread and they must be used weekly per instructions on the label.
If this was the only infected plant I'd recommend pulling and disposing of the whole plant to prevent the spread to other plants. Since it isn't all you can do is slow the spread as much as possible.
The only way to prevent fungus infections is to spray the plants from day one of plant out.
Dave
Healthy plants, lots of tomatoes but they all get the bad spot that rots the whole tomato. What is going on ??
That could be many different things. Tomatoes don't get the disease that roses get called "Black Spot" but there are many different things that can cause a 'black spot' on a tomato - some of them serious, many of then nothing serious at all.
Can you provide a picture of what you are talking about? More details and description?
There are lots of photo tomato problems solving websites with pics to help you identify exactly what you might be seeing. I linked one of them below.
As for giving away extra plants, I do it and so do many others here. Same goes for giving away tomatoes.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: TAMU Tomato Problem Solver
Betsy, I think you need to distinguish between black spots on the foliage of which the most common are Bacterial Spot and Bacterial Speck, as opposed to BER ( blossom end rot), which is almost always found at the bottom of the fruits, the blossom end.
BER usually doesn't cause the whole fruit to rot, just the blossom end but there's also a condition called internal BER where there's no indication of anything wrong with a fruit until you cut it open and it's all black inside. But internal BER is the rare form of BER.
BER and the common foliage diseases have been around forever and ever, so I'm not sure why you suggest that either BER or the bacterial foliage diseases seem somewhat new to you ( "black spots")and by implication, perhaps some of your friends.
The TAMU Problem Solver that Dave linked to is a good one and I'll link to another one I think is good, which is the Cornell one, below.
Carolyn
Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell Problem Solver