2019 Tomato Issues

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.

Cutting off stem for re-rooting.

dipping in the rooting hormone (which did very little)

Put it in water

Repeat

Repotting the plant for additional transplants

Tomato hornworm moth egg

Tomato Hornworm found on plants at night

The chlorinated pool

The thriving tomato plants near the pool.

After being splashed with chlorinated water

White spotting on the leaves

After the plants had grown for a little while

The leaves began to curl

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.

 

Time for the plants to go.

Taking out the roots

Put in more compost & try again

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.