Humidity and disease - impossible to curb?

Hey everyone!

It's been over 10 years since I've been active here... long story. Anyhow, I'm in Houston TX and ugggh it is so unbelievably humid here. I have a raised planter box (it has legs and sits on the patio up high) 48"x24"x12" depth that I got all jazzed and planted a couple of bush/compact tomato plants in (April?). They stood up for awhile then some kind of blight set in - so I pulled those out and planted some new ones, I want to say mid-July. Those didn't even fruit! The leaf curl was awful, and no matter how much daconil/copper fungicide I sprayed (sorry y'all I felt it was a job for chemicals) the disease just flourished. My guess is whatever diseases I had there are in the soil now, so I need to toss/replace my planting mix before laying down fall veggies? There's no way to "treat" soil is there?

It's really nice to be back and gardening again. My yard looks beautiful - it's the vegetables that are giving me headaches :)

Kelly

Couple of things. Tomatoes won't set in high temperature nights, so in Fort Worth, I aim plant 6 week to 8 week old starts by March 15th, (prepared to cover if it frosts) fight the fugus hardest in May and June , and replace them all with something else in early July. I believe Houstonians start even earlier. I spray them with 4oz to 6oz plain bleach in a gallon of water Friday evenings in May and June and then with Daconil, etc Saturday mornings. The lowest, oldest leaves with the most fugus dry out and shrivel away, leaving the healthiest upper parts to keep going. Some of my practices and experience are listed in my "blog" here on Dave's. Good luck!

https://davesgarden.com/community/blogs/m/decherdt/

Augh!!!!! I am in Alabama and dealing with tomato hell. We always have a late frost in April so I have to set plants out mid to late April. I buy small plants and pot them up so they have big root systems when I put them out. They grow vigorously but no matter when I get them out I don't get much ripe fruit until July 4.

So they were doing great and we got a week or two of rain. Either rained all day or several showers each day. I plant 20+ plants and here is why. After those rains we had a break then several more days of rain. All my cherry tomatoes, Black Krim, Pink Berkley Tie Dye, Chocolate Cherry, Bumble Bee plants quickly got bacterial disease and croaked. Some like Bloody Butcher, Black Trifele, Cherokee Purple have some bacterial damage but they survived. Now these plus several hybrids that are more hardy have Southern Blight and are wilting. I do have a Celebrity,Beefmaster, Mountain Merit and a few others where the plant looks OK. But when I picked some of those fruit which looked fine the bottom of the tomato is rotting. It doesn't look like Blossom End Rot either. Even Mexico Midgit is having problems and it should be unkillable.

Any varieties that can survive this much rain and heat?