mid season mess

[b54red]

I just finished a grueling weekend of pruning and removing diseased stems, leaves and some whole plants. It is that time of the season when the first bed of very productive tomato plants are now looking really bad. I had some with TSWV that needed removal, lots and lots of Early Blight and even a couple of grafted plants that were showing the advanced signs of fusarium wilt despite the highly resistant root stock and worst of all the ravages of spider mites that I think I have stopped or at least slowed down to a manageable level.

From that one bed that had thirty tomato plants I have now got six large black trash bags ready to go to the street. The remaining plants have been lowered and given a large dose of Urban Farms Vegetable formula to see if I can spark some renewed vigor back into some of them. Some look pretty hopeless and will probably soon join their brethren in the black trash bags if they don't perk up quickly.

I am not complaining because if I don't get another tomato out of that bed then it will have been a major success. All single stem plants that produced between 300 and 400 tomatoes but best of all at least 100 of them were well over a pound and wonderful tasting. They were for the most part the large fruited pink beefsteak varieties that don't do as well in the intense heat of mid summer down here so we were thrilled to get the quantity and quality that we did.

The biggest reason for cleaning up that bed is that the beds with younger plants on each side of it were starting to get some of the diseases and spider mites so I did a strong bleach spray to slow the early blight and gray mold that was spreading and sprayed every tomato in the garden for spider mites. Hopefully I did it before they spread too much. The only good thing about spraying for spider mites is the spray gets rid of a lot of leaf footed bugs and stink bugs which have not shown up in any numbers yet in my garden. I expect they will be making themselves known soon though I am thankful for their absence the early part of the season.

Now that the near 100 degree daily highs are here and the humidity is matching the temps it will be much less pleasant to work in the garden and the tomatoes will suffer in both size a health. Large fruits will be much rarer now and diseases and pests will occur with much more frequency and with greater severity. Under these conditions any fairly sickly or pest infected plant will just be removed to protect the others as fighting them is much easier on fairly healthy plants and the results are much better usually.

I am hoping to keep some moderate to light production going with the tomatoes as long as I can keep the plants relatively healthy. We almost have enough sauce put up and will soon be putting up some salsa now that we are starting to get jalapenos in fair numbers.

By 10 this morning I had changed shirts twice and the heat was too much to keep working. Sometimes if there is a good breeze the late afternoon will cool down enough to work and hour or so but lately it has been nearly dark before it was tolerable to go out there for me. So the pattern for the next two to three months is set so you get up and get slathered in sun screen and bug repellent and head out as early as possible because some days it is too hot by 8 am.

Bill

[Father'sDaughter]

Sounds like you had a very successful season up until now! I'm at the stage where I'm celebrating every developing flower truss in hopes of tomatoes soon. While I envy your harvest to date, I don't envy your growing conditions...

Good luck with the next round!

[brownrexx]

Wow, sounds like growing tomatoes in Alabama is a major challenge.

[ddsack]

Bill, you always manage to have a good harvest despite conditions that make many give up! I have learned a lot from you over the years, even though our growing areas are very different. You are a much harder worker than I am! As I get older, I find I can't tolerate hot sun as much, never used to bother me, though we rarely have the extreme heat and humidity you do. I thought about rigging up some kind of back/chest harness where I could suspend an umbrella above me to take my shade with me.

The best I can manage is to use a large portable beach umbrella when I'm able to work in one spot for a while. It's on metal tripod legs and easily pulls along the row with me.


It has a tilt feature that can help focus the shade where I need it.

[b54red]

I can't take the heat like I used to but I have found that if you gradually increase your time in the heat and humidity as the season moves along you get more acclimated to it. Of course down here there is just so much of it an old man can take. I just came in to dry off and change shirts and will go out for a short time again but I doubt I will last more than 30 minutes out there now. It isn't as bad as yesterday because there is a slight breeze and the humidity is fairly low at 73% although the temps are well into the 90s here already.

I have a garden cart like that one you have the umbrella attached to. It is great for picking beans and peas in raised beds but I can't find much use for it during the summer when all we have are a few cucumbers, squash, peppers and tomatoes. Mine is six years old and I am expecting the tires to blow anytime now. I don't have an umbrella on mine but under my shed I do have one of those high velocity fans which really helps when I take a short water break. Oh well, its time to get back to it.

Bill

[brownrexx]

I have a hose from my rain barrel to the garden and to cool off a bit I run water on my arms and just let them air dry. This seems to keep me a bit cooler when it is really hot and humid.

[rick9748]

Bill Up in South Carolina not @ 100* just 95+. July of 2017 had 17 days of +s 100* but that might be nothing where you are. Is your bleach application the best treatment to try to stop EBlight?
Any other info appreciated. Have heirloom "Big Yummy" potato leaf, trying to keep alive. I did copper, soap, canola oil now back 2 days later. ICU needed if any exist.

[JRinPA]

I can't imagine plants that produce 300 to 400 tomatoes each. Did I read that right? And 100 of them being a pound? So each plant produces 100 1lb+ and 2-300 more, before petering out?

[biscuitridge]

Originally Posted by JRinPA

I can't imagine plants that produce 300 to 400 tomatoes each. Did I read that right? And 100 of them being a pound? So each plant produces 100 1lb+ and 2-300 more, before petering out?

No you didn't read that right, he's say that out of that bed of 30 plants, he harvested 300 to 400 tomatoes total and out of those were 100 that were 1 lbs or heavier. There's no tomato plant in the world that can produce 300 to 400 large tomatoes in one season.

[JRinPA]

LOL okay. Thank you. I do see a bed mentioned. I thought maybe he had too much sun but it turns out that was me. I kept re-reading "All single stem plants that produced between 300 and 400 tomatoes but best of all at least 100 of them were well over a pound and wonderful tasting". I think it was Bill a few years back that had a "town plot" of Big Boys? that he took something like 600 tomatoes off of six plants.

http://www.tomatoville.com/showpost....1&postcount=36 correction it was TomatoDon with the other BB tomatoes, but Bill had posted in that thread. I always gave him credit for that in my head...sorry Don! I was thinking Bill regularly grew 100 per plant...but 300 seemed incredible, even for him. :bow

I had an Estiva F1 one year with great morning sun and mid-late afternoon shade that I picked well over 100, but they were tennis ball to raquetball size. I want to say around 138 total? That was a CRW cage allowed to sprawl and not a hint of disease practically the entire year. So I was trying to wrap my head around how much more sun/longer the season they get in Alabama to grow 300 per plant single stem!

[biscuitridge]

Originally Posted by JRinPA

LOL okay. Thank you. I do see a bed mentioned. I thought maybe he had too much sun but it turns out that was me. I kept re-reading "All single stem plants that produced between 300 and 400 tomatoes but best of all at least 100 of them were well over a pound and wonderful tasting". I think it was Bill a few years back that had a "town plot" of Big Boys? that he took something like 600 tomatoes off of six plants.

http://www.tomatoville.com/showpost....1&postcount=36 correction it was TomatoDon with the other BB tomatoes, but Bill had posted in that thread. I always gave him credit for that in my head...sorry Don! I was thinking Bill regularly grew 100 per plant...but 300 seemed incredible, even for him. :bow

I had an Estiva F1 one year with great morning sun and mid-late afternoon shade that I picked well over 100, but they were tennis ball to raquetball size. I want to say around 138 total? That was a CRW cage allowed to sprawl and not a hint of disease practically the entire year. So I was trying to wrap my head around how much more sun/longer the season they get in Alabama to grow 300 per plant single stem!

That's an incredible harvest,you had from that one plant, great job!

[b54red]

Originally Posted by rick9748

Bill Up in South Carolina not @ 100* just 95+. July of 2017 had 17 days of +s 100* but that might be nothing where you are. Is your bleach application the best treatment to try to stop EBlight?
Any other info appreciated. Have heirloom "Big Yummy" potato leaf, trying to keep alive. I did copper, soap, canola oil now back 2 days later. ICU needed if any exist.

Once EB gets bad it is really hard to stop if not impossible. I have found over the past ten years that Daconil seems to be the best preventative but once it gets going on the plant or if there is frequent rain it doesn't seem to work very well. I use the bleach spray to try to stop it as much as possible then remove as many infected leaves as possible without denuding the plant and exposing all the fruit to direct sunlight. I then use a copper spray with a spreader to help it stay on a bit better and to give it some protection from EB when it rains lightly. After a heavy rain I do the same pattern again and will increase the strength of the bleach concentration a little each time and only apply it late in the evening or at daylight. As a matter of fact I did just that yesterday after pruning off a lot of stems and leaves and will be applying a copper spray in a few minutes and if I see in the weather forecast that we will have at least five days to a week without rain I will go back to using Daconil to prevent new infections.

It doesn't always work as some varieties seem to be much more susceptible or maybe just some plants are more susceptible to Early Blight. It is not a perfect solution but one that has been fairly successful for me. If you are having spider mite or other insect problems it is also imperative that you stop them as much as possible as they seem to spread the problem faster.

I think I tried all the natural or organic products with little or no success down here in our humid hot weather. Carol frequently talked of using Daconil and I had to agree with her after using it every week from plant out. I tried using copper as a preventative for EB but found it was not as effective as the Daconil at least early on. Sometimes EB is just so bad and rainy weather makes it nearly impossible to prevent that the frequent use of the bleach spray is the only tool that is feasible as it can be applied frequently without negative affects if it is done right. It needs to be applied with a good sprayer that sprays a fine mist so there is not too much puddling on the leaves as that can cause some burning of healthy leaves but it isn't a big worry for me. I can live with some burned leaves as long as whatever disease I am trying to control is slowed down so the plant remains productive. Although the copper doesn't work great at preventing Early Blight it does seem to prevent and really slow most of the spot and speck diseases that if combined with EB can be disastrous. Unlike some diseases if you can slow the spread of EB it really doesn't affect the production too much and the fruit quality doesn't seem to suffer.

Bill

[b54red]

We had nearly a month straight without rain and the spider mites were awful and very hard to control. All of my spring planted big beautiful tomatoes are now mostly long stems with some green foliage at the top. There are still some of my last plants that I set out still putting out a fair amount of fruit but there is almost no new fruit with the past few weeks of nearly 100 degree days with no rain and spider mites to ruin the blooms. I do seem to have finally gotten the spider mites under control with frequent spraying with my new motorized fogger which makes short work of an awfully tiring task. It rained over a half inch last night and has rained a few tenths today and been mostly cloudy. Chances of rain for the next few days means the plants finally get a break and may set some more fruit for the fall if TYLCV doesn't show up this year. I am now thinking of starting a few seed for fall plants just in case summer ends early this year. A slim chance but it has happened before.

This has been a more than successful season and despite the heat and spider mites the tomatoes made a lot of fruit and disease problems almost disappeared with no rain to encourage them. The bell peppers are producing fairly well though a lot had sun scald and the leaf footed bugs have returned to try and mess up the peppers. Thank goodness for this rain because the peppers were really wilting every day leaving the fruits very vulnerable to sun scald. Hopefully these few days of rain will allow the plants to put on some more healthy foliage to protect the fruit better as fall approaches and down here fall is usually almost as hot as summer through September.

I know I will not plant nearly as many tomatoes or bell peppers next year as I did this season. I was trying out some new to me varieties and found some gems but it was just too much work taking care of that many plants. I ended up planting over 140 tomato plants and set them all up for lean and lower and also had over 50 bell peppers. Of course I lost a fair number of both to TSWV early in the summer and more to disease and spider mites this past month. I am going to have to start taking down the racks that supported the older tomatoes as soon as the weather permits so I can start getting a couple of beds ready for some greens and other winter crops.

Bill

[b54red]

I guess now I am looking at a late season mess. I have removed all the tomato plants from one bed and have four more beds with tomatoes still growing and putting out a few tomatoes now that we have had some rain the past two weeks. I am having a real hard time getting a viable eating tomato off my plants now due to the pecking of all my fruits as soon as a bit of color shows on any of them. I have never had birds ruin so many fruits in the past as is happening now. During the drought that just ended about two weeks ago they seem to have really developed a taste for ripe tomatoes which I foolishly thought would end when the rains came and water was plentiful for them. They are doing almost as much damage as rats would do but there are so many of them in my garden each day.

From inspecting my plants the last few days I see that the cooling affect of the rain has allowed a bunch of new tiny tomatoes to start appearing on various plants throughout the tomato beds. I have tomatoes on a couple of the oldest plants in the garden and some of the newest. I hate to do it but I just have to remove a lot of the plants to get room to start some fall crops. It is easier to just remove all the plants in a couple of beds to make it easier to prepare them for new plantings. I have cleared the plants from one bed and will start on another today then take down the racks that supported them. I really dread this part of gardening.

Bill

[JRinPA]

I am fortunate in that I've never needed to deal with much bird damage on tomatoes. Hang in there with the clean up and changeover.