tomatogeddon at the big box stores

livinonfaith · June 11, 2012

Okay, Tomatogeddon might be a bit of an exaggeration. Hopefully, this isn't the end of the tomato world.

But I went to two big box stores in town to find a nice hybrid tomato to put in a pot. Just wanted to have something else as it is looking more and more likely that most of my plants are going to go down quickly to disease this year.

Both of the tomato sections were the worst I've ever seen. Yellow, spotted, specked, and wilted leaves everywhere. Some of the wilt might have been due to neglect, but some looked suspiciously like photos I've seen of gray mold. most were already clearly diseased. Even some of the "disease resistant" varieties looked like they had, well, diseases!

I found it to be interesting which plants seemed to be faring the best, despite having been obviously treated to the same conditions the others had suffered.

Patio looked good at both stores. The midsized Cherokee Purple and Roma were also holding their own, at least better than most. At one store, there was a tray of Goliath that still looked healthy. (I grabbed one of those.)

There was one variety that claimed disease resistance that did still look pretty good. Unfortunately, I can't remember it's name. It was a determinate and I wanted indeterminate, so I didn't pay it a lot of attention.

At Wally world, there were some smaller beefsteaks that didn't look diseased, but had some kind of deficiency going on. They had a definite purplish cast to them, anyway. There were several of those in the clearance section for .57 cents, so I decided to give one of those a chance, too.

All of the rest were awful. Even the larger ones (covered with fruit) that looked like they had been taken care of had lots of yellow leaves with brown and black spots.

Is that normal? I don't ever remember going in and seeing so many plants so clearly diseased before. Most of these were Bonny brand, too, which has usually been a decent brand, at least for me.

June 11, 2012	#1
livinonfaith Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina Posts: 1,332	tomatogeddon at the big box stores Okay, Tomatogeddon might be a bit of an exaggeration. Hopefully, this isn't the end of the tomato world. But I went to two big box stores in town to find a nice hybrid tomato to put in a pot. Just wanted to have something else as it is looking more and more likely that most of my plants are going to go down quickly to disease this year. Both of the tomato sections were the worst I've ever seen. Yellow, spotted, specked, and wilted leaves everywhere. Some of the wilt might have been due to neglect, but some looked suspiciously like photos I've seen of gray mold. most were already clearly diseased. Even some of the "disease resistant" varieties looked like they had, well, diseases! I found it to be interesting which plants seemed to be faring the best, despite having been obviously treated to the same conditions the others had suffered. Patio looked good at both stores. The midsized Cherokee Purple and Roma were also holding their own, at least better than most. At one store, there was a tray of Goliath that still looked healthy. (I grabbed one of those.) There was one variety that claimed disease resistance that did still look pretty good. Unfortunately, I can't remember it's name. It was a determinate and I wanted indeterminate, so I didn't pay it a lot of attention. At Wally world, there were some smaller beefsteaks that didn't look diseased, but had some kind of deficiency going on. They had a definite purplish cast to them, anyway. There were several of those in the clearance section for .57 cents, so I decided to give one of those a chance, too. All of the rest were awful. Even the larger ones (covered with fruit) that looked like they had been taken care of had lots of yellow leaves with brown and black spots. Is that normal? I don't ever remember going in and seeing so many plants so clearly diseased before. Most of these were Bonny brand, too, which has usually been a decent brand, at least for me.