Spraying safely..

[murihikukid]

Hi...I wonder if anybody has ideas or heard of a safe way to spray tomatoes ...I am thinking along the lines of a plastic or paper bag being g"dropped over" the plant with the bottom tied round the stem ??? rather crude but my plants are inside my house ..and I do not want to kill myself let alone my beloved cat....With a small opening where one could direct spray onto the plant ..... I believe each plant would have to be sprayed individually ...

Thankyou ...Ron

[PhilaGardener]

The easiest approach is to use less toxic sprays!

[murihikukid]

Hi...Perhaps the easiest would be to give up and destroy my plants...Thanks Ron

[Cole_Robbie]

A cartridge respirator is your best breathing protection:


I have used a mask like that when installing insulation. They sell them at home improvement stores with the tools.

You didn't mention the specific problem for which you are spraying. I think insecticides are more toxic than fungicides. I would be wary about enclosing anything wet under plastic.

[Worth1]

The cat cant wear a respirator and one of the reasons my house has spiders in it.
I dont want to hurt my beloved cat either.

Worth

[ddsack]

Could you carry them outside to spray? Let it dry and then back into your house?

In my opinion, I don't think it's worth trying to grow full sized indet tomato plants to maturity in the house. I have brought some large potted plants back into the house in the fall to finish ripening existing fruit, but smaller fruit stall out and never put on much added size due to low light. I have overwintered cuttings and they get spindly and never look as good as outdoors. Tomatoes are field crops, and not meant to be houseplants. They need strong full sunlight and lots of air movement to be at their best.

I can't say what disease you are dealing with in your other threads, but what I have experienced on some plants in my house as well as the greenhouse, is powdery mildew. I'm assuming it is because of a lack of good ventilation and unfiltered sunlight. While you can control it if you catch it early, it will be a constant battle to contain and will keep popping up. Some tomato varieties are more resistant. I have a regular leafed long hanging basket cherry now in my greenhouse that has ongoing problems, but none of the rugose leafed micro dwarf project plants have any signs. The micro dwarfs have been relocated into my house, and the cherry (with lots of full sized greenies left) is only being tended until I shut down the greenhouse for the winter.

My limited treatment for the white mildew for inside plants, is to use a cotton swab (Q-tip) dipped in rubbing alcohol to wipe over and saturate the white flecks as they appear on the leaves (or stem) on a daily basis. Of course there are spores elsewhere on the leaf that just have not grown visible to the eye, so I know I am not curing anything. I always use Bill's bleach spray once before moving plants from outdoors into the greenhouse. I think it does a good job of killing existing diseases on contact, and yes, you may lose leaves you assumed were healthy. Often the spores have already dug in before the disease is apparent, and those healthy looking but infected leaves will dry up. New leaves will come in healthy. I would not spray bleach inside a house or greenhouse, only outside. I know you had bad luck with the bleach spray. It could be that indoor plants are not hardened off like plants exposed to weather, and so have a weaker cell structure in their leaves. I probably would not use it on small seedlings raised inside under lights.

[Cole_Robbie]

Hydrogen peroxide should be great for mildew, too. At 1.5%, it's the safest spray I can imagine.

[murihikukid]

Yes...Well I do not want to offend anyone .....so I have to be careful what I say......I had a tomato problem and I was told it was gray mold and to use a bleach treatment ...which I did as per instructions ...at least I think I did ...or sure I did after converting US measurements to what we use here ....I used 1/4 of a cup of 4.9 % bleach to 1 litre of water..
Now I do not know if at present I still have a mold problem or if I have the aftermath of the bleach treatment so I thought it best to protect what tomatoes I have by trying to find Dactonil over here....Well I found it under another name Chlorothalonil 72...sold by Agro NZ but they actually rang me and told me not to use it but use carbendazim......Well after reading the PDF files on both of these ...they are serious fungicides and unless I could find a way to spray under control so that it does not go anywhere in my house apart from the plant ?? well its just not worth the risk...

Of course I have to be honest ..Everyone here I try to seek advice from just throws their toys at my mentioning bleach treatment ( are you mad etc ) I believe it must work as this is proven and I am in no position to dispute this..

I now hopefully have an expert from a NZ Company ( who want to help me ) going through my photos on my Growing Laterals thread starting at page 26 post # 390?????( I thought that was the easiest way?)...he wants to see what the original problem was...Whether he can identify it by my photos I am not so sure .....
What has also confused me is that I have Googled on Gray Mold ...looked at photos etc and I do not see what I had unless there is a NZ Gray Mold and an American one...in fact I had discolouring and turning of the leaves starting on the tip end leaf which working along my leaves on the branch and then the branch would simply drop off the stem ( no spots)...but after using bleach well IMO it killed so much of my plants I did not know what I had ....so at the moment I only have half plants cause the foliage round the bottom has either dropped off or I have removed it ....After many trips up a ladder I do have some slight discolouring on the top of my plants but is it a disease or the result of the bleach ...is it spreading ?? Well I dont think it is but again I could be wrong....I do not know so what to do...??? I am in the middle of growing my seeds and plants for the new season and I thought i have to try and protect my work ....Daconil (Chlorothalonil 72) .is supposed to be the real deal....and to be told not to use it just confuses me even more...Apparently carbendazim is not recognised in America as a fungacide for tomatoes...Both if I was to use either ..presents real problems ..its not like spraying copper which I presume is very mild as against both of these..
This stuff could go everywhere perhaps in my marmite and toast.....sure I could protect myself with masks etc but surely there is a much bigger picture...I still have tomatoes...Not the production I had hoped but I do have fruit and NO fruit has ever shown any sign of a disease..

I am working on my greenhouse but I get very tired and run out of steam too quickly during the day so its going to take a couple of weeks of work for me to get my new roof made and put up...There has been great weather here and its coming up Labour Weekend and its the traditional time to plant Tomatoes so I presume many have already planted and I think there was a late frost this morning so i wonder how many got caught out....??

I guess now I have to wait and see what Agro NZ say as I have asked them to provide answers to a couple of questions on the fungicides and then I am extremely interested in what the gentleman at the other Gardening company comes up with after seeing the thread photos....

Cheers Ron

[murihikukid]

Hi..Yes ..I though of trying to get them outside ....now there is only three plants ...but they are hitting the ceiling so even if i could lift them ..getting them outside would be impossible ....I continually look for any signs and now just clip any discoloured leaves off ....If it wasn't for the tomatoes on the plants I would ditch them now.... Thanks Ron

[ddsack]

Ron, I do sympathize with you! It's very difficult to know which internet advice to take and which to ignore. Everyone has their own methods which work for them but may not approved by others. Take all advice with a grain of salt and try to do additional research on educational research sites.

I think it's very difficult to tell, even with clear pictures, what disease a tomato plant has. So many look very similar. The good news is that the treatments are the same.

To throw another possibility onto your humongous pile of advice, I wonder if your description of drying up of leaf tips is the same as what we call CRUD. It is a bit of a mystery that attacks indoor seedlings by the time they get the third set of leaves. The leaf edges get dry and crumbly. The wispy leafed ones usually are affected worse.

Here are just a couple of old threads where it was discussed:
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=7702&page=3
http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=4633

Normally it is expected that seedlings will grow out of it when they are planted outside. But since yours are living inside at an older stage, it makes sense that it could continue to be a problem into later life.
Hope your local expert can shed some more light on your problem, please let us know what he says.

[Barbee]

What about those clear curtains they use to divide shops and greenhouses? Or, clear plastic shower curtains may work

[murihikukid]

DDSack...YES Your the Man....I have been trying for weeks to describe my leaves and you have got it...IE Dry and crumbly ...exactly what they did/do....it starts at the tip of the leaf and works round the edges and in /up the leaf ..I actually wondered if it was because the spray sort of accumulates on the tip of the leaf...and takes longer to evaporate so therefor the tip gets a disportionate amount of the spray if I am making sense ..the dry and crumbling moves round the outside of the leaf and up the leaf til obviously it is completely dead.....the lowest or furtherest away leaf from the stem is always the first one to show signs and it keeps spreading leaf to leave up the branch til finally one inspects ones tomatoes and there are branches lying in the dirt....thats what really alerted me that I had a problem...If thats gray mold well I had gray mold...

What made identification really difficult was being inside .......the cameras flash would go off and this gave photos a colour that no doubt made identification difficult....

I went through the middle window wiring my lights ???? So I have a cover of Alloy/plastic composite over it which I lower if conditions allow it and put my small pots out on it ..today is a beautiful day so it may be too bright but there is a small breeze coming from our next door neighbour ...i forget its name ?? Thats Right Australia .....

I have to go uptown now but i will certainly be doing some research on the two links you have posted later and I thank you for that...
Regards Ron

[Worth1]

I have to ask not out of anything but curiosity.
Do the measuring cups where you live have only metric on them or imperial and metric.
Ours have both and for most people the metric is on the wrong side for right handed people.
All of our canning jars have metric and imperial measuring lines on them.

Worth

[murihikukid]

Worth ..I have two cup sets.... one stainless steel and another plastic....both sets have a cup size and a ml size on them....like just about everything here probably both sets were made in China...Cheers Ron

[dustdevil]

In regard to respirators...there is one cartridge for particles and a different one for chemical fumes. Be sure to use the right one!

Don't spray on a windy or a wet day. IE: read the directions if there are any.

Keep pets indoors until the spray fumes are gone.