Best varieties for coastal California?

[Structure]

Never had late blight myself. So maybe there's no controlling it, but I've certainly read about tolerant varieties and spraying. However, I sort of doubt the original poster had late blight. Have you heard of it in Southern California? Isn't it spread by spores and wind? Seems like the sea air wouldn't be a big source, but maybe it becomes endemic in other yards?

[venturabananas]

Well, I'm not a plant pathologist, but I am a professor of biology. It sure looked exactly like the photos I've seen of late blight, particularly the firm, green fruit, with hard, brown lesions. My neighbors have been growing tomatoes for years, and probably the previous owner of our house did, since volunteers pop up all around the yard. So, I would guess there are plenty of local sources of spores -- and Lord knows we have lots of wind to disperse them.

Thanks to everyone for all the great suggestions so far.

About the trellising suggestion -- I looked at some of the photos of how it had been done, and it didn't seem too different from staking or the weave. How exactly are the plants supported? Does it involves painstakingly tying individual vines to a support every week?

[Elizabeth]

I don't know about how it would handle late blight, but I can tell you my Carmello came through this winter looking the best of all my plants. The rest really got nailed by powdery mildew and are on their last legs, but the Carmello is still green and more leafy than anything else out there. It's a tough one. It looks way better than my hybrid Celebrity, which is usually the last variety left standing in the yard at the end of a season. Hopefully it will stand up to whatever you have floating around up there.

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by venturabananas

Well, I'm not a plant pathologist, but I am a professor of biology. It sure looked exactly like the photos I've seen of late blight, particularly the firm, green fruit, with hard, brown lesions.

I've never experienced Late Blight, but the fruit is the last place I'd look to diagnose it.

I believe that Late Blight typically exhibits as the plants going from healthy to dead, with black leaves and stems plus a foul odor in about ~48 hours. The entire plant basically turns into a pile of black mush.

A few green fruit with black bottoms could just as easily be Blossom-End Rot in the absence of any disease symptoms in the foliage.

[venturabananas]

This is what late blight looks like, and that's exactly what my plants and fruit looked like.

http://www.google.com/search?q=late+...w=1842&bih=946

[janezee]

Yep, I have plenty of experience with late blight. We get it every year, and I live on an island. Lots of sea air.
Two years ago, we had 2 straight days of rain in September. The stinking, rotting, black, slimy, disgusting mess is impossible to diagnose as anything other than late blight. It's devastating to see lush, productive, seemingly heathy vines disintegrate before your eyes.

Last year was very dry. Blight started in early September, and progressed slowly until killing the plants a month later. Since it supposedly doesn't survive on dead plants, I took a chance and cut the healthy parts off, and hung them up. The smaller tomatoes continued to ripen, but the larger ones browned up and had to be discarded. This is why I only have until Labor Day to get my crop in. Late tomatoes are not an option, although we often have a warm fall, into November, two days of rain in September will always bring the blight. That's why I'm building a hoop house for half of my tomatoes. I hope to keep them drier this year. Hope it helps.

[venturabananas]

Thanks Janezee. I experienced the same thing. We had some atypical (for So Cal) thunderstorms in September that allowed the late blight to get the upper hand. Undoubtedly, my letting the plants grow into a giant sprawling mass (despite ineffective efforts at something like the Florida Weave) with little airflow contributed to the problems hugely. On the upside, it was the first year that I didn't have powdery mildew on my tomatoes. Some of my friends who have more experience growing tomatoes in my climate take the attitude that death by disease is the fate for all tomatoes and you just hope to stave it off until after you've got some fruit.

On the upside, like Elizabeth mentioned, you can replant, and in this moderate, coastal environment even keep them growing year round. I'd like to find varieties that reliably fruit throughout the winter, and she mentioned some. Black Cherry kept producing until the end of January, when some rain gave disease the upper hand and took it out. I had another unidentified variety that had beautiful foliage, made lots of flowers, but set not a single fruit, I assume because it was too cold for it, mostly being in the 40's at night -- temperatures that didn't seem to keep Black Cherry from setting.

Anyway, thanks again, all.

[Structure]

I'm going to just shut up about late blight since it's not something I've dealt with and I didn't even know it was in the area. I will keep my fingers crossed for you though.

I'm not sure how much space or interest you have, but I built a hoop house last year and am growing in it again this year. There are some challenges, but it was an amazing way to get ripe and excellent tomatoes in early June last year. There are pictures from last year in the Undercover forum. I'll probably post some from this year sooner or later. My current tomatoes are going strong and about a foot tall. They laugh at the 40 degree nights!

[neeld]

I'm on the central coast North of you just a couple of blocks from the ocean (just 15 miles west of Structure above but very different climate). To say that tomatoes are tricky here is an understatement. The weather is better in spring (less fog) but temps at night are usually in the 40's and days in the 50's and 60's. When it warms up inland we start getting a fog that comes in and often stays most of the day. Nighttime temps barely break 50 and the fog durring the day is the kind that causes everything to start dripping.

Most people here seem to plant tomatoes in April and they do great until June when the fog arrives then it's a gradual downhill slide. By August, if you're lucky you might have a couple of tomatoes to harvest off of the diseased skeleton of what was your tomato plant.

Looking at the plants in the community garden and sadly my own backyard, it seems to be a trifecta. Early blight, bacterial speck (pseudomonas) and russet mites. If you can survive that then late blight often seems to peak it head up towards the end of summer but it's not as omnipresent as the other three.

The first thing is location, move somewhere else. If that's not feasible then give your tomatoes any shelter from the fog that you can. Plastic high tunnels, wind blocks, anything is better than nothing.

From what I can tell, the nasturtiums here seem to host the bacterial speck and they are everywhere so I'm not sure if there is any avoiding it. I've had great (well as great as you can have when your weather is marginal on the of best days) by using a copper spray weekly and after any rain event to control the early blight and speck from the day the tomatoes go outside.

The mites seem to be controllable with pyrethrum which also seems to need to be regularly applied or they come right back, not sure what's hosting them but they seem to be plentiful. Unlike spider mites, these mites are invisible to the naked eye but the stems of the plants start taking on a sickly greasy bronze color.

I know this might sound excessive, but come september I'm usually the only one I know with reasonably healthy plants.

[venturabananas]

Well Neeld, that's not the most inspiring of advice! But it does make me feel better -- misery loves company! Seriously though, I do appreciate the tips. You definitely have more challenging conditions than I have, though they are pretty similar to what I have here, just a bit cooler and more foggy.

Sounds like there are couple of votes for hoop houses, or something similar, but I just don't have room in my little backyard for that.

Thanks again for the suggestions everyone.

[habitat_gardener]

Originally Posted by venturabananas

Sounds like there are couple of votes for hoop houses, or something similar, but I just don't have room in my little backyard for that.

I haven't done it myself, but in the community garden I've seen other plots with hoops over the raised beds. They basically install some larger-diameter white plastic pipe a foot or two high along the edges of the raised bed, get longer lengths of white plastic pipe that can arc over the beds, and connect them with a piece of rebar. The arcs are removable when not needed, and plastic is placed over the hoops as needed, secured with clamps.

So if your tomatoes are grown in a rectangular area that's wide enough to accommodate the bending radius of your plastic pipe, and the tomatoes aren't taller than the top of the arc, you can build a hoop structure over the tomatoes.

It'd mean fewer tomato plants, unless you made a structure with vertical walls. Someone else at the community garden made a frame with white pipe connected with elbows and tees, but they haven't ever used it for anything. I was guessing they wanted to create a shade structure.

[venturabananas]

Originally Posted by habitat_gardener

So if your tomatoes are grown in a rectangular area that's wide enough to accommodate the bending radius of your plastic pipe, and the tomatoes aren't taller than the top of the arc, you can build a hoop structure over the tomatoes.

The area I have around my raised bed is really too narrow, and I find those structures (which the commercial growers of raspberries around me use extensively) fairly ugly, so I'm going to pass, at least this year. With increased plant spacing and some pruning to increase airflow, plus spraying a bit of this and that to combat the fungal diseases, I hope to manage to do well enough. And I may follow the suggestion of planting more than once, so as the original batch of plants start to fail, I put in new, vigorous ones. We'll see. I'll report back.

Thanks for the help, all.