Fusarium Wilt

[BigVanVader]

I think that if you are going to grow in the same spot yearly, grafting is the best option. Then you don't have to worry about it. I've accepted that grafting is the only reliable way in my situation. For me, losing most of my plants last year was a rude awakening.

[Cole_Robbie]

Van, have you tried selling any grafted plants at market? I only get $2 for a non-grafted plant. I'm thinking I could probably get $4 for a grafted plant, if I could sell them.

[BigVanVader]

No, but I've had a few regulars show interest. I figured it up and the only way I could make a profit is charging around $8-$10 per plant. Just to much time involved. As I learn more I am realizing that many things just aren't profitable enough to bother. I see so many market farmers struggling to get by b/c they keep growing stuff that they lose money on, or they undercharge for fear of losing customers. I'm the higest priced vendor and still sell out tomatoes on the regular. I just keep stressing to customers that grocery store prices aren't a real gauge on how much produce should cost. Sorry this turned into a rant but it's painfull to see so many good people fail because of idealistic views or poor practices.

[AlittleSalt]

Originally Posted by ginger2778

Robert, I am confused. You said in your caption, that nematodes didn't do these plants in, yes to fusarium, 3rd strain.
I see large root galls = nematodes, and your long cut shows no darkened vascular tissue, = no fusarium. Please fix my confusion.

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

I do see darkened vascular tissue in the fourth picture, as well as the yellow leaves in the first one.

He did say that the third picture (with no darkening) did not show up right and that he'd try again, then said the fourth picture was better. I'm guessing picture number three failed to show the darkening he was trying to capture.

The second and third pictures just didn't show up right. I don't know why? I had already posted them and could not remove them, so I took the fourth picture with the printer paper background and edited it in.

What you see in the first picture is after I had removed the support system. The only thing left was the small cage holding it off the ground.

[Cole_Robbie]

Van, I'm going to give it one more year to see if I can graft my way out of my fusarium problem, but I am leaning towards not even trying to sell summer tomatoes any more.

I was trying to vaguely estimate the value of greenhouse space with tomatoes versus plants. Plants come out something like five times more profit for the same area, probably ten times considering they get sold and replaced in the same time one tomato plant would still be growing.

We live in a time where international competition has continually dropped food prices. I'm thinking it is more difficult to ship and sell live plants internationally than it is produce, which is why you and I both make more money with plants.

[AlittleSalt]

For those who have lost a garden to Fusarium, RKN, or both - did the tomatoes not taste right?

I think ours not tasting right/good could be due to having a problem with stink bugs and leaffooted bugs. Add in too much rain washing the flavor out. Also RKN and fusarium choking off nutrients and water must play a role in what a tomato tastes like.

If I was basing this on just how I think they taste - I could say that the failing plants has effected me psychologically. But I'm not basing how they taste just to me. My family and friends don't like how they taste either.

The second part to this is the rest of the garden. The okra planted grew to about a foot tall and stopped. The same happened with the pepper plants of all types. That garden will no longer be a garden. It will be a 45' x 45' chicken pen.

[BigVanVader]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Van, I'm going to give it one more year to see if I can graft my way out of my fusarium problem, but I am leaning towards not even trying to sell summer tomatoes any more.

I was trying to vaguely estimate the value of greenhouse space with tomatoes versus plants. Plants come out something like five times more profit for the same area, probably ten times considering they get sold and replaced in the same time one tomato plant would still be growing.

We live in a time where international competition has continually dropped food prices. I'm thinking it is more difficult to ship and sell live plants internationally than it is produce, which is why you and I both make more money with plants.

Exactly. I mean here I can buy heirlooms for $1 lb wholesale, so in reality all emotional ties aside, I'd be better off just re-selling them. I very well may end up doing that at some point, but I want to see how much I can profit once I get my HT grant and graft all my plants.

Next year I will be doing 50/50 GH hybrids & grafted heirlooms. I used to scoff at the R&R guys but they still sell those tomatoes & in large part those hybrid det's took almost no time. Plant & pick & sell. Plus here you could easily get 2-3 crops of Det's. It sucks that the public is unwilling to pay for a premium product, but the market sets the demand and my affinity for heirlooms isn't going to do much to change that.

[Cole_Robbie]

Salt, a lot of my plants have only put out a handful of tomatoes before dying of fusarium, but the flavor has been excellent. I had an Utnyok that made one tomato then died. It was my best flavor of the year. So I don't think fusarium has a bad effect on flavor. If anything, it would make it better by limiting the plant to just a few fruit.

[AlittleSalt]

Cole, I guess we just got too much rain at the wrong times. The smaller tomatoes we grew like Gargamel and Brad's Atomic Grape tasted good along with the cherry tomatoes. It was the large ones that were mealy and they tasted acidic.

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Salt, a lot of my plants have only put out a handful of tomatoes before dying of fusarium, but the flavor has been excellent. I had an Utnyok that made one tomato then died. It was my best flavor of the year. So I don't think fusarium has a bad effect on flavor. If anything, it would make it better by limiting the plant to just a few fruit.

Same here if what I have is really fusarium (some will still insist it's not possible this far north...).

[b54red]

I figure my cost of producing grafted plants comes in somewhere between .40 and .50 per finished grafted plant. The reason for the cheap price is I reuse everything and heirloom seeds cost me virtually nothing. I may get anywhere from two to four grafts from one root stock seed over the entire grafting season which for me starts in late January even though seed are started in December. I bought 500 root stock seed and haven't used but about 100. So far this year I have produced around 300 grafted plants. Even using a root stock seed per plant the cost per graft with overall success rate would still be not much over 50 or 60 cents apiece. Of course the cost would go up considerably maybe as much as a dollar a finished graft if my success rate was as low as it is right now in the summer heat.

I went from nearly 100% success rate the first of the grafting season down to between 25% to 40% depending on the weather and using suckered root stock. Using suckered root stock made from suckering the tops cut off the first root stock seedlings really drops my success rate once they get tall and I have to graft onto old tougher stems. The biggest cost is the root stock seed price and buying in bulk makes that reasonable once you get your success rate up. Buying root stock seed in very small amounts and paying the shipping on them can get pretty pricey. I do run the risk of the bulk seeds going bad and having poor germination before I use them all which could raise my cost some. The second biggest cost is the large grain DE which I use for the healing process. I now reuse a great deal of that and it has helped cut my cost. I also reuse most of my grafting clips two or three times at least.

When I first started and was buying lots of new stuff like clips, healing chambers, DE, root stock seed in small amounts, and cups my cost was closer to two or three dollars per finished grafted plant. Part of that was due to a much lower success rate than I now average and part was not reusing things like DE and grafting clips. The fact that I was setting out between 70 and 100 plants over the course of the entire long season we have also reduced my cost per plant. Once you get good at grafting and have all the stuff needed and reuse most of it the cost goes down considerably.

Bill

[Cole_Robbie]

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

Same here if what I have is really fusarium (some will still insist it's not possible this far north...).

If you can get some seed for Esterina F1 from Johnny's, they claim it has a high resistance to verticillium wilt. My Esterina had no resistance at all to the wilt I have, which is what leads me to believe it is fusarium. I still don't know which of the three F races, though.

I potted up a plant each of RST-105 and Estamino yesterday. I am excited about growing them out for seed and trying to stabilize an OP root stock variety that works in my garden.

[Cole_Robbie]

Day 3 and everyone still looks good. The wet perlite seems to be working nicely. There is a film of water on the inside surfaces of the plastic box. It looks like a lot of light in this pic, but I removed the black plastic from the top of the container to take the pic.

[AlittleSalt]

Today was our 32nd anniversary. We woke up to an inch and-a-half rain happening on July 1. The temperature was in the 70s for most of the day (Unheard of cool temps for 7-1) We spent the day being 21 again. We ate lunch at a locally owned restaurant which was very quiet even though there were many people there, walked around at our favorite lake, bought an orange meated watermelon roadside from a man who was very friendly and honest. Went to the fireworks stand and bought some excellent fireworks at below cost (We have known the owners for decades and have helped each other out many times. - lot's of family ties along the way....4 generations.)

So what does this have to do with the Fusarium thread?

At about 8pm, my wife started reading to me about how others fight RKN. This was her search on her Galaxy tab and hit me out of the blue. My wife listens to what I say about the gardens, but it always turns to talk about anything other than the gardens. But tonight, she talked about garden rotation, solarizing, and planting cereal rye. I reminded her that I have already done that. I pulled the last tomato plants today.

She kept reading from her tablet. "You need to plant some RKN resistant varieties of vegetables." There is one vegetable that I have read about at every site that RKN does not like - onions. I figured out that a 45' x 45' garden could easily grow 675 onions. Why, I don't know, but...

Does Fusarium effect onions? And here I thought I was going to raise some chickens.

[Rockporter]

Happy Anniversay Salt. I wanted to wait until the day and now I am a day late since it's almost 1 am on Sunday.

It's nice to find your spouse is actually hearing what you say about the garden. I can't answer the question on RKN resistance of onions but I'd love to plant that many, lol. Sell them at the farmer's market? Plant them Texas Sweets we all love so much.