What can I expect if I do NOT spray for foliage disease

[fortyonenorth]

Looking forward to next year, I'm considering abandoning my Daconil/Copper routine. I'd like to reclaim some of my spraying time and redirect it to my children. They're 5 & 7 and still enjoy hanging around with me. I know that won't be the case forever.

So, those of you who do not spray at all...what can I expect? Can I live peacefully with EB, Septoria and the like, or will I regret the decision come mid-July when my plants are dropping like flies?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by fortyonenorth

Looking forward to next year, I'm considering abandoning my Daconil/Copper routine. I'd like to reclaim some of my spraying time and redirect it to my children. They're 5 & 7 and still enjoy hanging around with me. I know that won't be the case forever.

So, those of you who do not spray at all...what can I expect? Can I live peacefully with EB, Septoria and the like, or will I regret the decision come mid-July when my plants are dropping like flies?

There have been some years and some locations where I've not sprayed anything. And aside from any previous infections where splashback infection can and does happen, whether you get any new infection as spread by wind and rain will also vary, but you know best where you are if those new infections do occur from your own experience, and I guess they do or you wouldn't be spraying as you have been.

So infections from spores being shed to the ground by previous infections can still be a problem from splashback infection unless you turn over the soil deeply and try to bury them, and that means not just using a tiller.

As to new infections, again, it depends on the year and the weather, but since you've been bothered in the past I assume you'd continue to be bothered and the two most frequent ones would be Early Blight ( A. solani) and Septoria Leaf Spot in most areas, with Bacterial Speck and Spot being less of a probability in most years and places.

However, the two bacterial ones progress faster than the fungal ones so loss of foliage which impacts growth of the plants and maturation of the fruits is more serious.

Removing any diseased leaves ASAP can certainly help, but the time it takes to do that in a serious manner would also probably be about the same amount of time you want to free up to spend more time with your kids as I see it.

Hope the above helps. And it really is up to you as to what you want to do time-wise and is also based on the number of plants you're dealing with and considering spray time vs removal of diseased leaves time.

[Keiththibodeaux]

Originally Posted by fortyonenorth

Looking forward to next year, I'm considering abandoning my Daconil/Copper routine. I'd like to reclaim some of my spraying time and redirect it to my children. They're 5 & 7 and still enjoy hanging around with me. I know that won't be the case forever.

So, those of you who do not spray at all...what can I expect? Can I live peacefully with EB, Septoria and the like, or will I regret the decision come mid-July when my plants are dropping like flies?

Be sure to plant the most resistant varieties for your area. You'll likely sacrifice some flavor, but still have good eating.

[Mudman]

In the last eighteen years that I have grown tomatoes I have sprayed only once, this year. It seems to have slowed the onset of septoria but the last few years here have been wet and humid. Like Carolyn said it depends on the weather each year. Most years I have very few problems till near frost. And I bet when the kids are off to college or getting married you won't be thinking back with regret about the septoria outbreak of 2012.

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by Keiththibodeaux

Be sure to plant the most resistant varieties for your area. You'll likely sacrifice some flavor, but still have good eating.

Do you know any varieties with good flavor that are tolerant to fungal foliar diseases? I'm not aware of any. I hear this advice all the time, but the devil is in the details. Also, I just can't imagine going without Cherokee Purple and Earl's Faux.


To fortyonenorth,

I am curious how you are spraying for Daconil if it's taking so long that it cuts into time with your family. I used a pump sprayer for one season and it was very time consuming. Next season I switched to an Ortho Dial-and-Spray. Takes me less than 10 minutes to hit all 40 of my tomato plants, wash it out, and put everything away.

If you use a thick coating of mulch, pick off lower leaves, have good plant spacing, and use sanitary practices, you can keep fungal foliar problems relatively under control.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by feldon30

Do you know any varieties with good flavor that are tolerant to fungal foliar diseases? I'm not aware of any. Also, I just can't imagine going without Cherokee Purple and Earl's Faux.


To fortyonenorth,

I am curious how you are spraying for Daconil if it's taking so long that it cuts into time with your family. I used a pump sprayer for one season and it was very time consuming. Next season I switched to an Ortho Dial-and-Spray. Takes me less than 10 minutes to hit all 40 of my tomato plants, wash it out, and put everything away.

If you use a thick coating of mulch, pick off lower leaves, have good plant spacing, and use sanitary practices, you can keep fungal foliar problems relatively under control.

I couldn't agree more proper sanitation and spacing is the key.
then if you find a plant going belly up get rid of the thing, dont let it hang around in the garden to infect other plants.

Worth

[nctomatoman]

I just had a season where I did not spray a thing (I never do) - by getting the plants in a month earlier and using bleached pots and all new potting mix, I've experienced my best season in years - harvested fruit from everything I planted (approaching 200 vials of saved seed), and most of them still going just fine.

And I didn't plan my planting with any tolerant varieties in mind - just planted what was on my list to plant. And this is following a year when I harvested hardly anything from anything.

So it is doable....just not absolutely predictable (is it ever?)

[lurley]

In a normal year (this year is not one of them), I don't spray anything, not for disease, not for bugs. I always have plenty of tomatoes for fresh eating and canning tomatoes and sauce. I may have compensated for not spraying by planting more plants, so if production is off a little, like with our drought last year, I still have plenty, since I don't like to water either.

[Suze]

My general opinion/approach about spraying and when to is more or less this 1) if you are going to do it at all, it should be done as a preventative from the get-go based on your personal experience on what foliar diseases tend to be a problem in your area. This is because it's a heck of a lot harder to play catch-up and try to control something once it has gotten a foothold in your garden, and

2) My personal "critical mass" theory which works for me well here in Texas for the spring crop which is generally fairly short. Which is, spray early and often as prevention until the plants reach a certain stage then stop unless there is a specific need you see to continue. That certain stage/critical mass for me is when the plants are mostly to the tops of the cages and loaded with some decent fruit set. This is generally early to mid May for me, and I plant in mid March.

My rationale for this is a) lazy/other things in my life to do, don't want to spend the time continuing to spray or waste product and $$ and b) IME, a larger healthy plant can deal much better with foliar disease than a smaller plant trying to gear up to do its thing. IOW, if you have a few leaves on a larger plant that show some signs of disease, generally not the end of the world - but if you have a smaller plant that has not reached any sort of potential already showing signs of disease, this is much more likely to cut your season short.

Hope that makes sense.

[tjg911]

since you are in nw indiana, you are not in the deep south and are probably around the same latitude as me. now your conditions re diseases can be vastly different than here but i never spray.

i get yellowing and dying leaves (early blight i assume) but it's no big deal. i mulch with straw to stop splash back but as carolyn noted these problems cab be air borne too. i get lots of tomatoes and have healthy plants.

the only year i had problems was 2009 when late blight was wiping out much of the east and even that year my plants lived and produced for several weeks after having late blight. some died early some held on for weeks and some lasted until labor day which is very early to lose them but hey it was late blight and usually plants die in days! i bought diconil and sprayed it 1 time and then i switched to using fish milk. did that save my plants? well most did live until labor day and i contracted LB on 7/10 so you decide and it was LB. i have 99.99% of it still in the basement and i have no intention of using it again if at all possible.

personally i wouldn't spray anything but neptune's harvest fertilizer and fish milk but i don't seem to need to based upon my experience here.

tom

[Suze]

Adding a few more thoughts to this thread - of course, it is ultimately your decision whether to spray or not. But my point above was that if you tend to pretty much always see significant disease pressure in your area for foliar fungal diseases as I do, you might regret it later on if you skip your spraying routine, especially any preventative/early spraying you may currently do. I do not know your area at all or what you face, so hard to say.

And as feldon mentioned earlier, using a dial and spray is a significant time saver, if time spent is your primary concern.

Somewhere on this forum there are dial and spray instructions posted for Daconil, and well as instructions for Actinovate and Actinovate + Exel LG. Can link you to those instructions if you would like.

I don't use copper, but am pretty sure you could also do that using the dial and spray after doing a little casual math to find the rate.

[amideutch]

I think the big question is how much time did you spend initially on your tomatoes. Planting and growing your seedlings, bed preparation/container cleaning. Cost of soil/aggregate amendments and the tomato varieties you are growing.
For me as well as you, time is a valuable commodity. To me the time required to do routine applications of disease preventatives versus what I have already committed to get the plants where they are at now is minimal.
I've been in maintenance all my life whether maintaining avionics gear, communication equipment or broadband IT stuff. And "Preventative Maintenance" is the key to maintaining equipment integrity and applies to growing crops as well, whether it be fertigation or disease control. Ami

[feldon30]

After spending time and a fortune on building garden beds, bringing in good soil and amendments, growing seedlings, hardening them off, getting them planted, proper mulching and installation of soaker hoses, it's not that much more work to do that last crucial step of covering plants with sheets/blankets when frost is predicted or, in this case, preventative spraying of organic or other antifungals.

90% of my effort in tomato growing happens before any tomatoes reach the size of a ping pong ball.

[fortyonenorth]

Thanks Suze. As a matter of fact, I discovered that thread (with the Actinovate instructions) a few months back and that motivated me to buy the hose-end sprayer. I'm a bit daft when it comes to math, so it was very helpful.

Originally Posted by Suze

Adding a few more thoughts to this thread - of course, it is ultimately your decision whether to spray or not. But my point above was that if you tend to pretty much always see significant disease pressure in your area for foliar fungal diseases as I do, you might regret it later on if you skip your spraying routine, especially any preventative/early spraying you may currently do. I do not know your area at all or what you face, so hard to say.

And as feldon mentioned earlier, using a dial and spray is a significant time saver, if time spent is your primary concern.

Somewhere on this forum there are dial and spray instructions posted for Daconil, and well as instructions for Actinovate and Actinovate + Exel LG. Can link you to those instructions if you would like.

I don't use copper, but am pretty sure you could also do that using the dial and spray after doing a little casual math to find the rate.

[Keiththibodeaux]

Forgive me if I missed this earlier, but how often do you spray and with what tool? I have a fairly large garden, and spend maybe 30 minutes a week spraying, usually half that, about 15 minutes a week.