RKN Control Attn: Dr. Carolyn

[JackE]

UH OH!! I'm in trouble now!

Jack

[Worth1]

I think your gonna like this but now Im at the airport in Seattle. And I hate posting on this phone. WORTH

[JackE]

Back in the eighties, I tried to increase organic matter in a 1600 sq ft test patch with cover crops (green manure). I fertilized with raw chicken manure and compost I made myself. I planted elbon and standard rye, mustard and red clover, one after the other for two years - plant, mow, till - plant, mow till - continually summer and winter. I never could see one bit of improvement - same old coarse, sterile pine tree sand I started with!

After we tore down the old homeplace and built a new house here in 1991, my wife wanted a compost-rich organic garden in front of the house. So I built a retaining wall and constructed two 20X20 raised beds - 800 sq ft total. Then I filled it with composted pine bark - seven 14 cu yd truck loads - that's the real big dump truck with the 18 wheeler chassis - 100 cubic yards. The compost was three feet deep.---- And that worked! She adds to it every year, though. But that's how much it takes here to get decent soil! Hardly an option for vegetable production.

Jack

[Worth1]

Jack
What kind of tomatoes have you tried to grow in the infested soil?

And dont tell me round red ones.

Worth

[JackE]

Hi Worth - glad you made it home safely.

The variety that did the best is Amelia - a large determinate plant with big slicers. It is TSWV resistant. We had a problem with TSWV for a few years, but it's gone now. Good nematode resistance unless it gets too hot, and even then we got a fairly good harvest. The problem was, they did so much hybridizing to get the disease package that the fruit was of very low quality. Pretty in appearance, but it didn't ripen properly and had no taste at all. The customers complained about it - and our customers aren't very discriminating! It's pretty bad when people complain about FREE stuff! So Amelia had to go.

Bella Rosa also had TSWV resistance and was of much better quality - but vulnerable to RKN. Another TSWV variety, Top Gun, had some RKN resistance but it was so late to ripen that the RKN got to it and fruit quality was barely passable. Talledega was a good market tomato - exceptionally high quality for a hydrid determinate, but unacceptable levels of damage from RKN.

Several years ago, we found one that works pretty well for us - Solar Fire
developed by Harris Moran. It's extremely early - about 70 days and, late frosts permitting, we can start picking in mid-May and can go for maybe a month before the RKN damage gets too bad. It has exceptional quality and taste and very hardy. It's also a compact plant so we can get by with only two runs of weaving twine. This is our variety of choice. We've been keeping ahead of the RKN by breaking up new pasture - but I'm running out of cleared, flat land. Most of my place is pretty hilly and heavily wooded. I need to utilize the land I'm now fallowing.

I've planted many other varieties over the years, of course - all indeterminates, both OP and hybrids. For years I planted "Gurney Girl", an RKN resistant hybrid indeterminate from Gurney Seed Co. But I really want to stay with Solar Fire - a real good market tomato with lots of good properties - like a thick skin for shipping, allowing us to let them ripen all the way on the vine. They actually taste pretty darn good for a commercial tomato - plenty good enough for our purposes.

Just finished activating a well and installing drip irrigation on a 5000 sq ft patch - at least we can have a few tomatoes if it's still dry next year and we have no lake water again.

Jack

[b54red]

Jack, I'm with you on the lack of taste of Amelia which is now the most popular tomato for the commercial growers around here. They are big and pretty but not very good even when vine ripened.

Bella Rosa is much better but despite supposedly being fusarium resistant, it is very susceptible to the fusarium in my soil. I have not had major nematode problems with it though.

Big Beef is the best of the hybrids for production and good taste with a strong resistance to most diseases. Of all the hybrid tomatoes I have grown over the years I have had the most success with Big Beef. It has shown the best fusarium resistance and despite harsh conditions will usually produce for longer even when it does get sick.

[JackE]

Red, when they hybridize these cultivars, they have to give-up one desireale quality to achieve something else. At our veg stand, appearance is more important than taste - TO A CERTAIN EXTENT though. Amelia is a great, super hardy, highly disease resistant, pretty tomato except for one little compromise - ain't fit to eat!

In my paint trade it was the same - increase gloss and you lose hiding power; make it fast-drying and it doesn't adhere as well. There's always a price to pay.

Jack

[Worth1]

Ok Jack here are some questions and options for you to consider.
I take it you sell the tomatoes at the farmers market.
What will the market allow you to sell?
Have you considered blowing off tomatoes in the sand and growing something else there?
How would the people of your area accept alternative vegetables at the market?
What I mean by this is stuff they can’t get from the store.
I know that most of the people around your area are the meat and potatoes crowd and not receptive to new things.
Have you considered selling to an area more receptive to other crops?
The same goes for around here but it is changing fast.
I also know that the profit from your toils goes to charity at the church which in turn lets kids go to missions to other places to help people.
I also remember that you said you weren’t interested in heirloom tomatoes because of------ well you know what you said so even though I don’t agree we will just leave it at that.
Nematodes are nematodes and they don’t discriminate from tomato to tomato.
What I am here for are the people that your intentions are for to help in one way are another.
What I am saying is you should think about making money instead of growing tomatoes in an area that is difficult if not impossible to grow them in.
If you haven’t I would like for you to sit back and think about what the people of your area would buy.
Then think about what they can afford.
Think about what grows in the sand.
And then think about what won’t be bothered by the nematodes.
When you find the answer to these questions you will have a crop that will make you guys money which in turn will supposedly make other peoples life better.
I or my father or kinfolks have grown everything imaginable in the soil you mention with 16-16-16- or 13-13-13.
Peppers, corn, melons, peanuts, wheat, cotton, and tomatoes you name it and I or my family has found a way to get around the soil problem.
Just think way outside the box and you will find an answer.
Worth

[JackE]

Thanks Worth - I very much appreciate your taking the time to help us.

We don't have a farmers market in Tyler County - it's been tried, but no patronage. We have tried to join the Farmers Markets is surrounding counties but we do not qualify. We give-away our vegetables and that's obviously unaccceptable where people are trying to make a living. Fair play requires that each grower charge a fair price in a farmers market.

We distribute our produce from a permanent location in "downtown" Woodville - usually right out of a pickup. We have a voluntary donation can to help pay expenses. The church doesn't want to make a profit or to run this as a business - our insurance doesn't cover it and there's liability involved. Also, most of our members don't think it's appropriate for the church to be "in business." We use the donations for expenses and if we have any surplus we send our young people on a mission trip. Most years there is a surplus, depending on the tomato crop.

Although I am the manager of the Gardeners for Jesus project, I have two other growers who would have to agree with the changes you mention, as well as the pastor and deacons. They are not going to give-up the tomato crop because it pays the bills. If I express a desire to grow something else, they will simply find someone else to grow the tomatoes or cancel the whole project. I can't get out of the tomatoes, Worth! No Way!

Tomatoes is where it's at - that's the only veggie that brings enough donations to pay our bills. Without the tomatoes we would have virtually zero revenue. The tomatoes stop traffic on the highway if they are pretty and properly displayed, That's what pays for all the peas and corn we give away to the local welfare recipients, who get a half bushel of peas and put a dollar in the can. The highway driver stops when he/she sees the pretty red , homegrown tomatoes, takes 4 or 5 tomatoes and puts a $20 dollar bill in the can! Once in awhile, we get a $100 bill from some guy in a business suit driving a Mercedes or BMW with a guilty conscience. Our project would be nothing, zero, nada, without tomatoes.

I thought I was reading your mind as you flew from Seattle. Knowing that you were an organic type (who else would pull Johnson Grass by hand on a 100 degree afternoon), I was sure that you were going to suggest green manure cover crops, so I anticipated your answer with a post on that subject. I'll never make it as a psychic!

Thanks so much, Worth, for spending your long, lonely nights in the Arctic thinking of us. God Bless you and yours.

Jack

[Worth1]

Not the organic type at all, it has to do with digging up the rots and letting them dry out in the sun.

You cant use round up if you dont have rain.

I only have a small area of Johnson grass and wish to keep it that way.

I have put out a lot of weed killer this year and it has worked pretty good so far.

Sand eats compost and it would not be economically feasible to put enough out to run off the nematodes on an acre of land.

An option would be straw bale tomato growing where you grow tomatoes in a straw bale with nitrogen.
IF you could find cheap hay.

Look into Tomato Growers Supply or other fine sites listed here for the shortest season determinate tomatoes and give them a try.


This way you could harvest the main crop before the nematodes took over completely.

I wish I was there to help.
I love a challenge.

Worth

[JackE]

Look into Tomato Growers Supply or other fine sites listed here for the shortest season determinate tomatoes and give them a try. This way you could harvest the main crop before the nematodes took over completely

.

That's exactly how we get by, Worth. Like I said in my post to you on our varieties, we now have Solar Fire, an extremely fast, early tomato - in addition to being very heat resistant. It will make in 70 days. So if late frosts permits us to set the transplants in early March, we are picking by mid-May. As the soil heats the RKN kicks-in more and more, but we can often pick until mid-June.

You have to have water, of course, which we did not have this year - but we still got a little harvest from the Solar Fire - and then we shut-down completly. There won't be any mission trip next summer because it has to be planned in the winter and we have no money - and we growers didn't get reimbursed for our planting expenses either.

I don't know what's going to happen with our project next year. Everyone is discouraged by the drought - and getting older and weaker. With this little well/drip tape system I just got going, I can irrigate up to 1000 Solar Fire plants, set at 18" and 4' rows. (We usually plant at 24" with 6' rows to make it easier on the pickers - but these are hard times.

My biggest problem for 2012, other than nematodes and irrigation water, is to find someone with a young back to run the weaving twine - the kids that want to go on future mission trips will HAVE to do it. Period. I don't care what's happening on Saturday! Running the twine and wrapping each stake while walking stooped over almost killed us old folks last year -we were all eating ibuprofen pills by the handful like peanuts!! I cannot, and will not, ask our elderly volunteers to do that again, nor will I do it myself.

Jack

[JackE]

Red --

The Solar Fire we plant has excellent resistance to all three races of Fusarium. Big Beef is only resistant to races 1 and 2

Fusarium thrives on ammonium-based fertilizer and also likes a lot of phosphorous. We rotate our ammonium nitrogen with calcium nitrate (greenhouse grade 15.5-0-0). Some growers with severe F problems use calcium nitrate exclusively.

Cultivars with resistance to at least two races of F includes: (NOTE - ONLY SF IS RESISTANT TO ALL 3 RACES)

• Big Beef (races 1,2)
• Celebrity (races 1,2)
• Dona (races 1,2)
• Early Girl (races 1,2)
• Floramerica (races 1,2)
• Jackpot (races 1,2)
• Heatwave (races 1,2)
• Leading Lady (races 1,2)
• Mountain Delight (races 1,2)
• Mountain Gold (races 1,2) yellow fruit
• Mountain Spring (races 1,2)
• Park's Whopper (races 1,2)
• Pik Red (races 1,2)
• Solar Set (races 1,2)
• Solar Fire (races 1,2 & 3)
• Sunmaster (races 1,2)

Jack

[Worth1]

I dont blame you I will never plant bush beans again. At only 53 my back was killing me just to pick the things.,
It will do the kids well to work for their trip.

Worth

[JackE]

I'm inclined to say, my cyber-friend and deeply respected fellow Texan, Mr. Worth, that the kids today are lazy and devoted to immoral and frivolous pursuits. But, I am reminded of the Greek philosopher Socrates, who lived in Athens 300 years before our Saviour was even born, and wrote for posterity that.....guess what! - Socrates said that there was no future for Mankind because the young people of Athens were obviously lazy and devoted to immoral and frivolous pursuits.

Every generation, it seems, has always felt the same way about their kids. Here I am - lecturing young people at church on morality and the work ethic - ME, JACK! - whom my father once considered to be a worthless, lazy bum! And I learned from my paternal grandfather that he once considered his own son, my father, to be - drum roll--- a worthless lazy bum! So go figure!



Jack

PS by edit -- When I pick bush beans I sit on a five gallon bucket. I can get every bean off a couple plants and then scoot the bucket down the row. That bending over SUCKS! I can work on my knees for long periods of time, though - that's the way I finally did the tomato weaving - walked down the row on my knees. My back is arthritic but my knees are as good as ever.