16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Over watering a likely cause?

Very much so. It also can cause cotyledons to fall off while still green because the tap root is water-logged.

I grow thousands of tomato plants each year for sale and the thing that retards and/or kills more seedlings than anything else is over-watering. We go through discussions of this topic over and over every year at this time here and consistently over-watering proves to be the cause of the problems.

Everyone does it even when they are absolutely sure they are NOT doing it. It becomes compulsive. If a little is good then more must be better, right? No. When they can be convinced to cut their watering in 1/2 they are always amazed how quickly the plants improve.

Sure plants won't grow if the soil is too heavy but they also won't grow if it is too wet regardless of how heavy it is or isn't because the roots are lacking in air. All the water has forced it out of the soil.

Prove it to yourself. Cut the watering on 1 tray and see how the plants do when compared to those you continue to water as you normally would.

Dave

Will do Dave. Thanks VERY much.

I was also thinking about seaweed, too, but would be concerned with possible salt buildup unless you give it a few rinses with fresh water. Just a thought.

I am in Canada & sent down several varieties of tomato seeds to trial in St.Lucia recently. A Lucian friend was going to grow them in his & my parents garden. Strangley, that gardener has now been chosen to come up to Canada to work for a while - so I have lost my main St.Lucian garden experimentor!

You could try cheating a bit with your compost - put it in a black garbage bag & roll it around to mix it every day. It will be ready VERY quickly in the heat. If you have any wood char from fires/BBQ's you could add a bit to the soil.

Are you in the north or south of the island? If you are close to the rainforest try bringing home some of the soil from that area. It looked quite rich & "hummusy" to me.

Good luck!

I also had little birds rip up the leaves of sunflowers. I wouldn't have believed it either except that I caught them in the act. They were sitting on the stalks and ripping into them until the leaves looked like lace. I really don't know why they were doing that because I don't think there were any bugs on the sunflowers. They almost seemed to be eating them -- I know geese eat grass, but I'm don't know about other birds.

Sorry I don't have an answer for you, but at least we are all puzzled together!

My mom has found birds pulling up marigold seedlings. She was blaming neighborhood kids until she saw it. I wonder if it's part of the nesting/brooding process, since they don't seem to bother the plants later in the season. She replanted a couple of weeks later and they left them alone.

I have direct seeded tomatoes with success in early June in zone 7. I usually set out plants about May 1st, so any head start you can give inside should be fine.

I am in zone 6 and haven't started my mater seeds yet. Last year I did start in March and they got a bit bigger than I wanted before I could plant them, so I am waiting until this weekend to start. One thing I do is presprout the seeds. They germinate very quickly and you can save time by doing that. I put the seeds on a damp paper towel inside a plastic baggie. Maters sprout within a couple days or so.
Keski

Azoychka - it's among the earlier yellows, and also has the citrusy tang. Not for people who like sweet tomatoes.

Carolyn has a list floating around somewhere, I think New Yorker and Wisconsin may be on it.

ddsack - Good to know about Azoychka, I am growing it for the fist time this year.

Jean, I know it helps so much when there is a pic. I just don't have a camera.

I'm going to hope Dave is right about the tomato leaf roll. Mostly because it just doesn't look like herbicide damage.

The link that missingtheobvious posted above (showing the herbicide damage from manure), that damage showed on the entire plant. A drift kind of damage will show in sections of a plant--entire sections, and eventual growth from those sections will be deformed.

Our beds are filled with our own compost, a little wood ash, cedar chips, some bagged manure, and sandy soil from our yard.

That manure/herbicide information -- thanks.

I had what I am pretty sure was herbicide damage caused from bagged manure I purchased at a very reputable nursery last year. At first I thought it was 2-4d damage possibly from drift from the neighbors lawn care company. I had a state agricultural agent come and after his investigation he ruled that it was probably in the manure I had worked into the soil. Not all of the leaves were effected right away. But over time the entire plants were effected. Hopefully this is leaf curl and will clear up.

Do the leaves truly wilt, or are they just gradually drying from the edges inward and crumbling? Opalka is quite spindly and wispy leafed compared to other tomatoes, the older leaves tend to point and curl downward, so they never look as healthy and vigorous as broader leafed varieties. As a wispy leafed, it's very prone to the indoor seedling malady called CRUD (which Carolyn named :-))

If you have the drying and crumbling of CRUD, the plants will outgrow it once they get outside into the garden under summer conditions. I often get CRUD on many of my wispy leafed seedlings while they are still in the house.

I once gave a friend some really nice large Opalka seedlings along with a bunch of other varieties. When I asked him later how he liked them, he said he pulled them because they looked sickly. Guess I forgot to warn him about the droopy leaves.

They truly wilt like the leaves are soft. This is my 3rd year growing opalka so I am used to its wispy growth but never saw this type of wilting before. I separated the two from the rest two days ago. One of them seems to be happy now. The other one continues to wilt but the progress is much slower. I hope at least one of them pulls through.

This year I am also growing san marzano redorta which also has a very wispy growth. Wonder if this is just more common among paste type tomatoes.

I like Sun Sugar better than Sungold.

I've grown both, though not in the same year. Last year it was Sungold (which has outproduced every other cherry I've grown in the past couple years). The first ones of the season had an odd flavor, then in the middle of the season the flavor improved, but later on either I got tired of them or the flavor got odd again, so I started cooking with them instead of eating them in the garden. I don't think I'll grow it again -- too many other tomatoes to try! When I grew it 3 years ago, in a sunnier location, it produced even more and I think I liked it more.

Two years ago I grew both Sun Sugar and Galinas, which had a similar taste that I never got tired of. If I were growing from seed, I'd choose Galinas because it produced more and is OP. But locally, I found only Sun Sugar transplants this year, so that's the one I'm growing again. I didn't grow Sun Sugar before that, but I did occasionally eat a few from a friend's plant.

I have read that Sun Sugar's skin is thinner than Sun Gold's but others say that it is thicker. It would make sense that it is thicker if it cracks less.

Any other opinions out there as to which tomato has the thinner skin - Sun Sugar or Sun Gold?

Brandywine Sudduth's strain and Cherokee Purple.

It sounds like we live in the same area, I had great luck with Sweet 100 and SunGold last year as well as Brandywine, which I planted in late April. Unfortunately mine succumbed to pests and some kind of disease by August; I didn't keep up with my tomato plant defense strategy as much as I should have. :( This year I'm trying Lemon Boy, Green Zebra, Sweet 100, San Marzano, Brandywine, and an as yet to be determined hybrid.

According to some reading, Champion is supposed to be a great tomato for coastal SoCal, both in terms of taste and ease.

Thank you very much for the information. I am sorry I did not do my homework first, that would have been the thing to do.
Ann

I think you will also find that your plant out date differs greatly where you are now from when you planted in NC. That alone can reduce much of the stress on your plants.

And as always when trying to garden in a new location, other local gardeners can be a wealth of info. If there is a local Farmer's Market that is a great place to meet them and don't hesitate to ask them questions. They love talking gardening with customers or even browsers.

Dave

I use a spray bottle to water them every other day and am sure not to soak them.

Top watering encourages shallow rooting and poor root development. The tap root of the seedling which lies deep in the soil dries out quickly with top watering and growth is stunted.

That is why bottom watering is the standard recommendation they have germinated. You'll find several discussions about this over on the Growing from Seed forum here.

And every other day can still be too much if it isn't needed. There is no set rule to how often to water because it can be affected by many variables. But using the surface soil as an indicator can be very misleading since it is the moisture in the soil down at root level that counts. Checking that moisture level in one of several different ways like using your finger or a Q-tip or piece of tissue on a stick before watering is also a frequent discussion on the G from Seed forum.

But since your plants have not developed true leaves after 4 weeks the odds are that the problem lies with your water method and regimen. True leaves will usually begin to show with 4-6 days after the cotyledons develop.

Hope this helps.

Dave

I like and use the Burpee mix with good results, so that's probably not the problem. As for watering, I treat seedlings like other plants, when I water them, I do a thorough/soaking (not drowning) job, discarding any accumulated water in the bottom tray. I do not water again until the seedlings really need it (as I've mentioned before, I use the relative weight of the sixpacks I plant in to judge when they need water). One tip is that if you water well when you plant, you may not need to water again for a week or more. As they grow bigger and develop more roots and leaves, you'll find they need water more frequently. Also, the Burpee mix comes with fertilizer that will carry the seedlings to planting out - you don't need to add more unless you're holding them inside for a lot longer than the normal 6-8 weeks.

Often one of the hardest things for folks new to starting plants from seed to learn is when to let them alone.

Is the skin hard to chew on these?

I meant to say, is the skin of the Momotaro hard to chew? I like sweet but I don't like chewy, plasticky skin.