Given that I now live in a city holds a tomato festival in August each year, one would believe that I would have an easy time growing tomatoes. Unfortunately, my intermittent success (or lack of success) continues to follow me from Tucson. Though I started with what should otherwise be a very disease-resistant variety, here are a few of the problems that befell me:
1. I forgot to harden off a dozen plants, which got sunburned – which then became diseased from being weakened. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who forgets this very simple rule – because store-bought transplants are supposed to have come from outside – right?
2.
I put the plants in a plastic container to keep the roots from getting
dried out, but the wet roots weakened the plants and they died.
3.
I planted a few living plants into a good plot with lots of afternoon
sun. Then they got splashed with chlorinated water from the pool. This
burned the leaves and chlorinated the soil. Then the plants became
diseased. The disease slowed their growth until I finally decided to
pull the poor plants out. I transplanted new plants one of which
survived. However, the majority of the last transplants experienced the
same fate.
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Cutting off stem for re-rooting. |
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dipping in the rooting hormone (which did very little) |
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Put it in water |
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Repeat |
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Repotting the plant for additional transplants |
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Tomato hornworm moth egg |
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Tomato Hornworm found on plants at night |
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The chlorinated pool |
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The thriving tomato plants near the pool. |
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After being splashed with chlorinated water |
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White spotting on the leaves |
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After the plants had grown for a little while |
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The leaves began to curl |
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Growth was stunted |
I
also grew out a few transplants from some suckers, or offshoots, of one
tomato plant. The majority of my 2019 tomato plants were
store-purchased Celebrity tomato plants. Though I used to think that
Celebrity tomatoes were the very best tomato variety to grow, I’m
beginning to believe that in purchasing tomato plants I am unnecessarily
introducing foliar and other diseases into my neighborhood. Based on
what I have read and heard concerning the centralized way in which many
of these tomato plants are grown, I believe that the diseases that they
are presenting with are already in the soil or on the plant in the
transplant packet.
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Time for the plants to go. |
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Taking out the roots |
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Put in more compost & try again |
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I believe this was either the first or second try - in any case - more chlorine. |
Additionally,
I grew some tomato plants in baskets that were on 5-gallon buckets
inside of my wine barrel. They grew a few tomatoes before the plants
died off. I did end up harvesting a meager crop of 3-4 tomatoes from
one of these pots.
So
now what? If transplanting an incredibly disease-resistant cultivar is
not working, what should I do? Perhaps direct-seeding some tomato plants
would be a better approach. I believe I will try direct-seeding in some
pots and perhaps I can find some place in my yard where a tomato plant
might do well.
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