16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Anyone have an update on the cross between NAR and Brandywine?

Yes, any updates on the cross?

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.

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

Thanks everyone for the replies, guess I'll be spraying from day one next year.

Thanks again Dave.

I checked the link you provided and they are brown mar orated stink bugs! I'm just glad I found them before they all hatched and created real damage. I will have to be really vigilant and check all my toms everyday. At least they are pretty big and easy to see!

So what is in your pic is actually instars - hatched eggs? We are seeing the black bugs not black eggs? Sorry you hadn't mentioned they had hatched and I read it as a pic of the eggs instead.

Dave

@ Dave

Good point and well explained, although i think that the length of the growing season is one of the major factors in play. For someone with short growing season, growing multiple steams can lead to plant setting a lot of fruit too late in the season (because of the energy being used on developing additional stems), without enough time for the majority of fruit to mature.
That been said, i now realize the OP bigpinks is from Ohio, so Dave has made a good point considering the climate there.

On the other hand, UK has a very different practice which i tend to follow here, with some changes to adapt to my climate - they train to a single stem and stop growth (pinch the top off) after 4-5 trusses.
I usually let mine grow to 6-8 trusses depending on variety, then pinch the top off, and when the final truss starts ripening, i pull the whole plant out and replace it with another that i've planted a bit later during the season, which is about to set fruit. It can be a bit tricky to get the timing right and it does involve more work, but last season i got better yield this way (i experimented on sungold plants, 1st was trained to two stems, and the other was treated like i said above, then pulled out and replaced). It is actually 2 plants vs 1 plant but those 2 occupy a single spot throughout the season so space-wise it does produce more. The two-stemed sungold had set a lot of flowers/fruit in early - mid september, and none of them made it since the season came to an abrupt ending in october.

Also i should point out that the total difference between those plants in the amount of fruit gained at the end of the season made sense to me, since at the time i had a lot of free time and didn't mind the extra work involved. It doesn't necessarily mean it is the way to go.

Cheers,
Djole

although i think that the length of the growing season is one of the major factors in play

I agree. And thus my original post's question and point.

There are so many variables involved in this "comparison" that it is anecdotal info only. No conclusions of any kind can be drawn.

It is 'happenstance', what has happened at this particular time to these 2 plants in these 2 containers in this particular grower's drive, in his zone given his particular weather that past couple of weeks, etc. etc. etc.

Interesting to observe but no valid methodology conclusions result.

Dave

Thanks everyone the tomatoes are starting to blossom and the ground is staying moist a lot longer with the grass clippings I put down. This is the first year of a garden in this soil so it might take a season or two, to get it in the right state for growing vegies.

You may get pretty good results since your garden has
never been a garden. I got good results the first year
I was in this house. I think since nothing much grew
there, there was a lot of nutrients available.

But the stuff was hard to dig and would get hard as a rock
when dry. I used lots of Kellog's AMEND in the garden to
loosten things up so digging was not such hard work.

I used to have to stand on the spading fork to get it though
the dirt at first. Now I can push the fork in with arm
pressure only!

Actual dirt should never be used in containers (drainage problems). [I'm not exactly a newbie gardener, but I learned that on this forum.]

When the word "soil" is used on a label, that bag usually contains dirt.

But "potting soil" on a label is ambiguous. Is it for containers ... or is it dirt for the garden? Hopefully somewhere on the bag there will be a list of contents.

Sometimes on this forum we use "soil" to refer to a non-dirt mix which can be used in a container. This confuses people.

Mine is called Miracle Gro Potting Mix. It doesn't say on the bag what is making it up, just the nutrients in the mix. It claims to be good for containers. I mixed it with perlite.

Wow. Very interesting.

I was wondering exactly what "phenoxy herbicides" are, and whether they're more likely to be used by farmers than lawn-care people or homeowners. But then I looked it up.

Wikipedia's definition: "A phenoxy herbicide is any member of a family of chemicals related to the growth hormone indoleacetic acid (IAA). When sprayed on broad-leaf plants they induce rapid, uncontrolled growth, eventually killing them. When sprayed on crops such as wheat or corn, it selectively kills just the broad-leaf plants in a field, the weeds, leaving the crops relatively unaffected."

2,4-D is the one we've heard of, plus a bunch of others. [Most of the formatting below came through when I copied it, though not all. Everything after the first bold heading was indented, so all are listed under "phenoxy herbicides." Many of the names should be indented to various degrees.]

No, you don't have to read through the whole list.

phenoxy herbicides
bromofenoxim
clomeprop
2,4-DEB
2,4-DEP
difenopenten
disul
erbon
etnipromid
fenteracol
trifopsime

* phenoxyacetic herbicides
clacyfos
4-CPA
2,4-D
3,4-DA
MCPA
MCPA-thioethyl
2,4,5-T

* phenoxybutyric herbicides
4-CPB
2,4-DB
3,4-DB
MCPB
2,4,5-TB

* phenoxypropionic herbicides
cloprop
4-CPP
dichlorprop
dichlorprop-P
3,4-DP
fenoprop
mecoprop
mecoprop-P

- aryloxyphenoxypropionic herbicides
chlorazifop
clodinafop
clofop
cyhalofop
diclofop
fenoxaprop
fenoxaprop-P
fenthiaprop
fluazifop
fluazifop-P
haloxyfop
haloxyfop-P
isoxapyrifop
kuicaoxi
metamifop
propaquizafop
quizalofop
quizalofop-P
trifop

The list is from this site (with interesting links at the bottom of the page, if you need to look up herbicide names):
http://www.alanwood.net/pesticides/class_herbicides.html

Now mind you, I am not an agricultural chemist. So I cannot say whether 2,4-DEP should be in two different categories (which it is). [I was looking for glyphosate, which is listed in the organophosphorus category: i.e. not with the ones I copied to this page.]

I had a neighbor whose lawn service (and he did it too) sprayed 2-4 D every year after I put my toms out. I would run get the hose and immediately wash them off and that keep it at bay...but only when I saw it happening, if I didn't I'd get the gnarly toms, most of the time I had to pull them....I also planted a row of something tall like zinnias that acted as a buffer zone, zinnia didn't care whether there was drift or not. Easiest was to move my plants to inner part of my yard so my tree and shrub line between the properties caught the drift...lost 5 redbud trees to drift. Finally got mad, called the lawn service company...told them the problem, and stop spraying my stuff or else....services insurance paid for my trees and hasn't come back to spray...the property owner does do some spraying still but no issues with my toms as of today. I do glare at him or ask him what he is spraying each time I see him...must be getting the idea I am not happy. No one has the right to spray on others property or cause drift damage to your property. Key is to catch them in the act and find out what is sprayed and when...they have insurance to pay for damage.

Very nice looking plants. How high do you plan to let them get and how will you support them?

Aha!!! SneakyP, you bring up a good question...one that I've been grappling with. I think what I will end up doing is allowing the plants to get as high as the house (just above the edge of the photo), which has a flat roof. I will rig a support system, probably of twine, that attaches to the roof ridge and ties off at the bottom, probably every 12-18". Anything above that will be topped off...I think. I've never had this problem before, so I'll have to keep ya posted. LOL.