Tomatoes & Peppers: Growing Tomatoes, Season 2012, 0 by MaryMcP

MaryMcP wrote:
trock - you rock! Nice looking haul.

My tomatoes are suffering four things:

1. Sun scald - we're in the triple digits now. This one is easy to fix, yesterday we bought a 10x20 shade structure for a hundred bucks.

2. Somebody's eating my 'maters. Sucking holes. I thought it was birds but covering them has not stopped the problem. I think it's the milkweed bug. I'm going to spray some insecticidal soap this morning. I hope that does it. If it's not the milkweed bug, anyone know what might be the culprit? Image below

3. BER.....the Black Plum and San Marzano especially. Other plants, like Hungarian Heart and Cherokee Purple, in the same bed do not exhibit BER issues. I'm guessing some varities are more prone to it than others. I've read and read and read about BER and there seems no significant consensus. I'll add some of this powder the nursery sold me saying it will help prevent BER. It didn't when I added it a few weeks ago. I'll try again. Sure Start from E.B. Stone "Contains Blood Meal, Feather Meal, Bone Meal, Dried Chicken Manure, Bat Guano, Alfalfa Meal, Kelp Meal, Potassium Sulfate, Humic Acids and soil microbes including mycorrhizal fungi." IIRC, BER presents when the plant cannot uptake calcuim.....so I need to add something that allows that. Comments?

4. Branches drying up. Is it natural for some branches to die off as the plant matures? Do you folks trim and prune as the plant matures? I have been just letting them go - - let nature take its course, but am interested in what you tomato growers do.

Thanks for helping with this stuff - and sorry about this long post. This year is my first real push to get this tomato growing figured out.

This message was edited May 20, 2012 5:03 AM