Update: Tomatoes 7/7/13

So we've sorta been slacking on keeping up with putting together posts about our stuff.  We're going to get back on top of things with some updates about our crops, eggs, and chickens.  For our first update we've got some good and some bad to report on our tomato crop. 

The good is that we've got very good plant growth and some decent sized tomatoes coming along.  That means that we're doing something right as far as plant nutrition, and the pollinators are also doing something right.  In hot climates like ours, it is possible to experience blossom drop, where the flowers fall off the plants without producing a tomato.  To minimize blossom drop we plant heat tolerant heirloom varieties like Super Sioux and more early to mid bearing varieties like Black Krim that set fruit before the hottest weather arrives.  We don't grow the early bearing tomatoes like Early Girls because, frankly, we think they taste terrible.

Sungold cherry tomato

 

The bad is that we've got a disease outbreak.  We think we've got it narrowed down to either bacterial spot (the more likely culprit) or early blight, but we're not ruling anything out.  We experienced a severe outbreak of bacterial spot in the summer of 2011 because of the uncharacteristic wetness, as well.  That outbreak killed many of our pepper plants and spread to our beans and tomatoes.  Our neighbors also report having similar disease issues in their gardens, so perhaps it is something we should expect on a consistent basis. 

Diseased tomato plant

For treatment we decided on copper fungicide, an organic treatment that basically consists of copper.  It stops or slows the spread of bacterial and fungal diseases.  We sprayed it on our tomatoes and peppers.  Several tomato plants were looking like goners, so we figured they were nothing more than disease spreaders and pulled and burned them.  Our peppers weren't showing signs of infection yet, but we decided to treat them anyway because of their close proximity to the tomatoes and our experience in 2011.  With any luck we will have dry weather that will also slow the spread of the disease.

 

It would be nice if we never had to put anything on the plants, but that approach leaves more to chance than we're willing to allow.  Our hope is to create bacterial and fungal communities where beneficial and benign varieties keep harmful varieties in check.  However, it hasn't worked out that way for us in wetter years.  When we do feel we have to apply some sort of treatment, we don't take it lightly.  We choose the safest, most ecofriendly approaches and only apply treatment if we feel there is a significant threat to our crop.  Copper is an organic-approved fungicide and has worked for us in the past during similar outbreaks, so we figured that is the best approach.  Hopefully we can report in a couple weeks that we have big, beautiful tomatoes and healthy plants.

On the bright side of this whole ordeal, we get a great chance to determine which tomato varieties are most resistant to the diseases we will likely encounter on a regular basis.  So far the most impacted variety is Amish Paste, which is unfortunate because we had high hopes for this tomato.  Several varieties are showing no effect whatsoever, so perhaps a future post about resistant varieties may be coming in the future.