Spudakee

[b54red]

I have not found a tomato yet that has no problems with fusarium in my garden. Usually each year I have a few that don't show any signs of it through the whole growing season and end up dying from freezing. Indian Stripe seems to be one of the plants that is less susceptible to fusarium in my experience.

[b54red]

I picked my first two tomatoes off my Spudakee yesterday. I would have gotten three but the squirrels only left a little piece and the stem.

I am wondering now if I should have thinned my fruit some because they are fairly small. The plant still has 50 tomatoes on it. That seems like a lot of fruit at one time. Does anyone know what the average size or weight is for Spudakee tomatoes?

[dice]

Spudakee was 8-12 oz, a little smaller than Cherokee Purple, on an
unpruned plant in a warm summer.

I grew Spudakee from seed and the seedlings were killed by frost before I planted them. I reseeded direct in the soil where I planned on growing the Spudakees. After waiting a couple of weeks for the Spudakees to emerge from the soil, I planted German Johnson seedlings in the spot. The seedlings were large and started growing, blooming, and setting fruit quickly. After another couple of weeks, the direct seeded Spudakee plants emerged. I didn't remove them and they stayed alive in the deep shade of the German Johnson plants. The German Johnson plants have now been almost denuded by septoria and the leggy Spudakee seedlings are getting a lot of sunshine. They are growing fast and producing a few blooms. The German Johnsons are loaded with large, green; fruit. After the GJ fruits are fully harvested, I may remove them and let the Spudakee plants grow to maturity as fall plants. It should be interesting to see how they perform as summer and fall tomatoes. The optimum climatic conditions are past for Septoria and the Spudakee plants seem to be totally unaffected by it.

Ted

[brengolio]

B54red............ have you had fusarium set in your Spudakee yet?

Nope, no fusarium so far. My only problem this season has been the septoria. I'm pretty much accustomed to having septoria every year to greater and lesser degrees. If the transitional weather from winter too summer is extended with mostly cool moist days and nights, the septoria is worse. If the transitional weather is short, septoria seems to be localized to mostly the lower branches and leaves. Unfortunately, weather most conducive to blossom production and fruit set is also weather most conducive to septoria. For me, fall weather is more productive in total fruit set, but lower total production due to fruit size. Because of the lower fall humidity, septoria rarely pops up. It looks kinda funny, but some of my beds have tall tomato plants with almost no foliage while other beds look pretty much normal. The naked plants are loaded with tomatoes. I've had to put up shade cloth to protect the tomatoes from sun scald.

[b54red]

Brengolio, it has shown just the slightest hint in the last couple of days; but it seems fairly unaffected compared to most of the plants around it. It is still one of my healthiest plants that I set out in that bed and feel I will get a lot of tomatoes from it.

I have had a problem with what I think is gray mold. It is something that I have seen before on many of the black tomatoes like Gary O' Sena and JDs Special C Tex. I also had it on Green Giant and Gary O' Sena. I sprayed them with my bleach solution and it seems to have gotten rid of it for now. The Daconil has not stopped the appearance of this disease this year or last. If you leave it alone it will eventually destroy most if not all of the foliage on a plant because it spreads rapidly. It starts usually in the middle shady part and the leaves turn gray and just wither up. It was discussed last year and I believe Carolyn said it was gray mold.

[travis]

b54red, what is your ratio of bleach to water in your solution?

When I prune my Spudakee vines, I get 10 - 14 ounce tomatoes. Unpruned in cages I get twice the number of Spudakee, but they begin running 5 - 8 ounces as the load increases and the heat climbs.

[b54red]

Travis I usually start with 6 ounces of bleach added to a gallon of water. If that is not sufficient then I will add more to a max of 8 ounces added to a full gallon of water.
The 6 ounce solution only slowed down the gray mold so this afternoon I will move on up to the 8 ounces. That gray mold is some nasty stuff and it spreads really fast. It was so bad on one plant that when I cut off the affected leaves the plant had only a little foliage left at the very top and it has also affected several fruits on my Green Giant; but so far the Spudakee fruit look alright.

I think the reason my Spudakee are running a little on the small side is the fact that it has so many fruits on it at once and the heat is really intense along with the fact that we are getting no rain. I think the heat and dryness are affecting the size of all my tomatoes. We desperately need rain. I have even lost a 30 year old Dogwood tree to the drought.

[travis]

The same was true for me last year, small tomatoes due to heavy fruit loads followed by hot, dry weather. They just matured and ripened before they got to the normal sizes.

The reason I asked about the bleach solution is that at those levels, I seem to get leaf damage. Even though 8 ounces household bleach per gallon (8/128 x 0.0525) = 0,33% sodium hypochlorite, I got burnt spots on the foliage and some loss of leaves using even half that strength. However, this was when the plants were younger and with more tender tissue.

B54red,

I got the gray mold on my Black Krim this year. It went from being heavily foliated to zero foliation except for the growing tips in about two days. It's interesting because it shows no sign of a problem until the first branch is suddenly hanging on the plant wilted. Two days later, all the branches are wilted. I haven't noticed any damage to the fruit like you get with either early or late blight. How did your fruit damage appear? I first thought this would be a year with very light disease infestation on the tomato plants. Overnight, my tomato plants
went from zero disease to heavily impacted with septoria and now the gray mold. Even the Dwarf varieties are showing some signs, but later than the other varieties. I am seeing some signs of refoliation on a few plants with new shoots emerging from the main stems.
Ted

[cottonpicker]

Back to earlier posts...."spud"...a nickname for potato... refers to the tool used to dig the holes where the potato is planted. Spud= spade= short dagger.
LD

[b54red]

Ted, I too thought that this was going to be a banner year as far as foliage diseases was concerned. I really thought my only big problem was going to be fusarium which is always a problem in my garden. I had only had very slight signs of Early Blight and some army worms. Then this gray mold hit a bunch of my plants all within a couple of days.

This is a picture of my Spudakee after the second spraying with bleach and the removal of the worst leaves with gray mold. As you can see it has a few toms on it and I had to put up a shade cloth since there are so few leaves left. This plant is leafy compared to my Green Giant, Grubs Mystery Green and Gary's Pink. You can probably see some of the leaves affected by the gray mold. I already sprayed part of this plant with a milder solution and that was a big mistake. I should have sprayed the whole plant with the 8 ounce bleach solution the other day instead of just hitting the middle where it was starting to look bad. As you can see the gray mold has ruined a once beautiful plant. This was one of my best looking plants up til about 4 days ago. I've only found two fruits so far affected and they got a discolored soft spot that was beginning to rot so I removed them. I do have a few on my Green Giant that are already getting sun scalded.

I add 8 ounces of standard household bleach which is usually 5.25% to 6% sodium hypochlorite to a full gallon of water with a few drops of dish washing liquid. This is the strongest solution that I find doesn't give me leaf burn of any significance and is the most effective against foliage diseases. I usually start out using 6 ounces added to a gallon of water and if it is not effective then I ratchet it up. I almost always spray just before the sun goes down so that the plant is not exposed to the sun after spraying. On the rare occasions when I have had to spray in the morning I follow up a few minutes later by washing off the plants with plain water. I'll keep using the Daconil weekly sprays to help prevent things like early blight but I sure won't count on it to help with this stuff. If I am able I am going out this afternoon and hitting them all again with the bleach solution just in case I missed anything and hope it works. The way this gray mold has spread I'm not taking any chances.

Yep, Your plants with gray mold look the same as mine. I covered a couple of beds with shade cloth, but I'm not going to try covering all my cages. New growth doesn't seem as affected as old growth, so I'm just going to do all I can to promote new growth. It's interesting how septoria and gray mold choose some plants to attack and leave others alone. I do have some hybrid Super Fantastic and Big Beef in two different beds. Both varieties in one bed are almost naked. In the other bed they are not affected.

Ted

[b54red]

Ted I'm just hoping it is gray mold and not late blight. I haven't seen any stem lesions so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. This stuff is hitting my plants much harder and quicker than it did last year and it is spreading much faster. This is probably due to me planting too many plants too close together and not pruning enough foliage off of them to allow proper air flow and light.