Keeping tomato plants dry

[Rob23b]

So I've been growing tomatoes from 5 or 10 years. Pretty much every time you read a list of growing tips, there's a comment about foliage diseases and trying to keep the leaves dry when you water.

I happen to grow tomatoes right next to my house (south facing wall). There's one spot that happens to be covered by an awning so the plant I put there gets very little rainfall on the foliage each year. This plant consistently grows well and keeps producing very late in the season.

So I started to wonder, maybe it would be worthwhile to put a (clear plastic) roof on top of all my tomato plants to keep them from getting much direct rainfall.

This is the first year where I built cages out of wire remesh. I'm already liking them a lot. A side benefit of these is that they are very sturdy and it would be simple to build a small roof for each with cheap wood and 6 mil greenhouse plastic. These could be attached to the wire cages with zip ties and easily stored each year in my garage. They would shield the tomato plants from most rain. I could easily run an irrigation system to the plants, if necessary. I already have all the tubing and drip emitters set up for my potted fig trees, so it would be easy to just send some to the tomatoes.

I could also use a trench type system so that the runoff from the sided of the mini roofs still went to the base of the tomato plants.

Thoughts? Has anyone tried this? Is it worth doing or just a waste of effort? Will it increase yield and extend the season?

Rob

Maryland

[jmsieglaff]

If I could invent the perfect experiment: if you have two beds, do one covered, one non-covered. Plant the same tomatoes in both beds. Observe for a season or two.

Now that might not be a help for this year, but I wanted to throw that out there. But in general I think your idea is good and certainly works for those of us have smaller tomato patches. I like the idea of channelling rain water to the plants too.

[Rob23b]

This is a good idea. I'll have the think about how to design the experiment properly. I see a huge amount of variability in the tomatoes I plant. There are at least 4 variables that I think have a strong influence on the plants:

1. Mostly I use 4 inch square pots but I've tried using 4 inch hydroponic pots with all the holes in them (with little success). Certainly I could track this one better and adjust results for this factor
2. I don't plant mine all at the same time. I tend to plant over a 2 week period from May 1 to May 15. Sometimes the earlier ones do better and sometimes the later ones do better. I suspect that if I took the trouble to re-pot instead of leaving them in the 4 inch pots that the ones planted later would always do better. But I don't really have room to put all my plants in bigger pots and keep indoors for 2 more weeks.
3. I plant one row of tomatoes right next to my house. I suspect the soil is warmer and of higher quality here.
4. The soil is different in different parts of my garden. All of it is imported within the last 3 years. The soil that would be there if I hadn't brought in my own is hard clay subsoil. This is because my house was built 8 years ago and at that time they basically removed all the topsoil next to the house. This was terrible for trying to have a garden. But I brought in two different types of soil. I suspect that one of them has a large amount of what amounts to be mulch and is still taking much of the available nitrogen. Will probably be very good in a year or 3.

[Labradors2]

I think it would be an excellent experiment!

We have an awning, and I usually drag my container tomatoes under it whenever rain is forecast, but that doesn't stop the dew from dropping diseases on them.

It would be interesting to know if your tomatoes could survive fungal diseases with a roof!

Linda

[Johnniemar]

I am growing under a tunnl this year, actually it is a hoop house. Should tell me if it helps keep foliar diseases away.