I should have pruned more.

[Stvrob]

We get like 0.1 inch of rain every other afternoon, then the plants stay wet all thru the hot night till the blistering hot morning sun hits. Spraying just seems so pointless. Im removing diseased foliage at the bottom faster than its growing at the top. And unless we get a break in the heat, (which isnt likely) Im not gonna get much more fruit set anyway. Aphids have attacked my peppers, vine borers are threatening my squash, and armadillos have ravaged my cantaloupe.

This is the most discouraging time of the year for gardening.

[Starlight]

Wanna trade gardens for a few days? I'll do your pruning and cleaning of your plants and you come clean up the nightmare I have waiting in the morning when I can see.

Did you just get any of that out of the blue, high wind and unreal rain? We just got power back a little bit ago. New shade structure I was building in now flat on the ground. Peppers look like they been trying to play the game twister. Okra is about flattened and my poor tomatoes.

We got enough rain in a half hour to fill a good size cereal bowl. Even with being staked most of mine are down and I picked up green tomatoes off ground.

And right before this pop up thunderstorm hit I was looking out the window at mine after reading about how you should have pruned more and wondered if I should do some more on mine. Since whatever you get, I am getting it too.

Before this nightmare mess, I was going to ask you, if you can look more or less through your tomatoes and see clearly what is on the other side, is that enough pruning or should I take off maybe a few more leaves?

Gonna be a bleach spray day at 6 am soon as it daylight . Hoping a mild dose will hold of and problems .

[Stvrob]

This is the perfect time of year to make a strategic retreat to a dark air conditioned space and wait till September.

[Bruinwar]

Holy smokes! And here I am complaining about rain. My plants are three & a half weeks in the ground. No sign of any problems yet & for that I am grateful. Good luck to everyone having problems.

Red, please keep us updated on how your progress.

Thanks,
Joe

[uzlaguzla]

Originally Posted by b54red

Well as someone once said "The chickens have come home to roost." After several weeks of dry weather with for us fairly low humidity my tomato plants were looking fantastic. Because they looked so good I didn't do my usual amount of foliage removal and they got really thick and bushy a state that I know only leads to disaster down here. A little over a week ago it started raining every day and for six straight days we had at least one good rain every day and most nights. Then the rain stopped 3 days ago and the temperatures which were already high jumped up to around 100 and the nights barely cooled off much. I could barely get out in the garden before the temps were in the 80's and by 8:00 am it was in the mid 80's and by 9 we are in the 90's. Yesterday afternoon when I went out to water at 6pm it was 97 degrees and while sweating and watering I checked my plants closely.

The disaster I knew was coming was here. Lots of gray mold on my black tomatoes, early blight really taking off, and other spot diseases showing up. I hadn't even seen any aphids a week ago and now some of my thicker bushier plants are infested along with a decent amount of whiteflies. I guess all I need now is to see spider mites to make it worse. Oh yeah, I found two more plants in my new bed hit with TSWV.

The Daconil and copper had not done such a good a job but then it is partially my fault for allowing the plants to get so thick and bushy. I'm still kicking myself. I know better but the lure of the beautiful tomato plant can even get the better of an old pruner like me.

Mixed up 3 gallons of diluted bleach spray at a rather heavy concentration due to the extent of the diseases and how fast they were moving up the plants and sprayed the heck out of them early this morning. I really had to soak some plants and may have caused some unnecessary healthy leaf damage with my aggressive use of the bleach spray. We will see in a few days.

If it cools off enough to walk outside this evening without fainting from the heat I think I will reapply Daconil and then check in the morning to see how extensive the damage was from the diseases and the bleach spray.

I only get suckered into this situation every few years because most years the early disease pressure caused me to be much more aggressive in my pruning. This year started out with the least disease pressure I have seen in many years and I fell for it again.

Bill

Bill, I am late reading your post about pruning, but am grateful for it . I too have been fighting the blight. This year I moved my rows 5' apart and have 24" between plants. I just finished pruning and expect wonderful results for it.
Thanks

[JamesL]

Bill,
Bummer reading this. Hope you can get things under control.

[HydroExplorer]

I'm a pruner too but I'm not overly dogmatic about it. If you don't want to prune your plants don't prune them.

If your canopy is so dense that red and blue light isn't getting to lower leaves, those lower leaves aren't doing photosynthesis. They are just a waste. The stoma will literally close until blue light hits them again.

If your foliage is dense and leaves are resting on one another they can form a vapor lock that causes the plant to stop taking up calcium. This happens because it blocks air movement.

I trim my lower foliage pretty aggressively and have found it to work very well. I never did it another way because this is the way I was taught so I certainly can't say it's better than the alternative. That's why I'm not very dogmatic about it

I primarily focus my pruning on eliminating foliage that isn't getting light and I always trim foliage that is near the ground because I have never had foliage near the ground that didn't get early blight if I left it there.

[b54red]

This week has been a pruning and spraying marathon for me and in terrible heat. I have only been able to go out and get anything done from about daylight til the temps get unbearable and for me that is not too long. I started the week with a diluted bleach spray of all my plants. The next day I started pruning the shriveling leaves and finally finished that yesterday morning. I got 8 or 9 lawn bags of trimmed diseased foliage toted out to the street yesterday by my youngest son. Man I'm glad he dropped by.

I applied a spray of Daconil one day after the initial bleach spray and then did a follow up bleach spray on the more severely affected plants on Friday. This morning I finished the week by applying a copper spray to everything in the garden including my peppers as a friend told me he was having problems with spot diseases on his.

My plants desperately need a good watering following those 100+ degree days but I really needed to get rid of some of that diseased foliage first so that has had to wait and of course that will not help fruit set letting the plants get so dry. My second bed of tomatoes which are single stem are also in desperate need of lowering the plants as most of them are now well over the bar and unsupported by clips but I'll just have to deal with that tomorrow morning.

On the plus side the fruit have been ripening very fast resulting in me getting quite a few tomatoes this week and pigging out on BLTs this week. I have eaten so much fresh salsa I should be able to speak Spanish. Man I love that stuff.

Below are a couple of pictures showing some of my tomatoes and the plants after pruning.

Bill

[HydroExplorer]

Some of those tomatoes are showing cat facing which is fine. It's caused by multiple pollination which typically happens if the flowers are wet when they pollinate.

Some of them look like they have blossom end rot. That can be caused by overwatering but it is often caused by too high of relative humidity in your foliage (lack of airflow or too dense of a canopy). It sounds like you just might have really bad humidity in your area. If your area doesn't have the humidity some pruning might help with the airflow to stave off that problem.

I'm told you can foliar feed milk to fix that problem too. I haven't personally tried it.

[digsdirt]

Bill - what variety(s) are the big heavily ruffled ones with the green shoulders? I can't read the initials on them. Nice collection.

I don't see any with BER and no catfacing either. There is one (right in front) from 2 fused blossoms and I see one with a very mild side zipper.

Dave

[b54red]

Originally Posted by digsdirt

Bill - what variety(s) are the big heavily ruffled ones with the green shoulders? I can't read the initials on them. Nice collection.

I don't see any with BER and no catfacing either. There is one (right in front) from 2 fused blossoms and I see one with a very mild side zipper.

Dave

Sorry Dave but I can't read them either and since then I have filled the table top with tomatoes picked in the last few days. I will upload a photo taken on the 17th and since then the table is completely full. I'm not sure which ones you are talking about because I have picked a lot of large tomatoes but no monsters like last year due to the heat and late start I got.

You are correct about no blossom end rot on any of them. I haven't had but one or two fruits show any blossom end rot since I started using TTF and that only happens when I can't keep the soil moisture even which sometimes does happen. The skins of many of my tomatoes don't look as good as usual because of the heavy rain followed by four days of plus 100 degree weather which always makes for some rather gnarly looking surfaces on some varieties. Kinda like it has done to my skin as I age.

Bill

[Starlight]

For all what you have been fighting Bill that's a nice looking haul.

[pauldavid]

Originally Posted by b54red

Sorry Dave but I can't read them either and since then I have filled the table top with tomatoes picked in the last few days. I will upload a photo taken on the 17th and since then the table is completely full. I'm not sure which ones you are talking about because I have picked a lot of large tomatoes but no monsters like last year due to the heat and late start I got.

You are correct about no blossom end rot on any of them. I haven't had but one or two fruits show any blossom end rot since I started using TTF and that only happens when I can't keep the soil moisture even which sometimes does happen. The skins of many of my tomatoes don't look as good as usual because of the heavy rain followed by four days of plus 100 degree weather which always makes for some rather gnarly looking surfaces on some varieties. Kinda like it has done to my skin as I age.

Bill

Thats a nice harvest Bill! I have had a lot of BER this year, more than I ever had. What varieties are you growing this year? Which has been the most productive so far?

[ricman]

Hello Bill,

Nice looking harvest and the tomato's look to be a good size.

Rick

[Lindalana]

Looking really good! and a nice haul! This is encouraging. Community gardens where I have my gardens are choke full of Septoria and EB starting. I have at least 8 weeks to go...