tomatoes almost ready to go

It's time to swap over the beetroots to the tomatoes.  Unfortunately not many of the beetroots reached even "baby" size but I really needed to make the swap!

Once they were out I finally had to dump out all the dirt in this tub.  For the last two years I suspect that my tomatoes have gotten some kind of disease that's in the soil.  Which meant I needed to get rid of all the soil and I even rinsed out the tub with bleach.  I got a bit of a surprise when I pulled the tub away from the steps - a whole colony of snails!

Once the snails were dealt with I put together the wooden frame I use to keep the tomatoes in shape.  This year I got extra-fancy and fit cross-beams along the length of the tub too.  The soil is a fresh mix of potting soil and mushroom compost plus a sprinkle of some sulphate of potash and organic fertilizer pellets. 

The only down side is that I can't plant out my tomatoes just yet.  I was out of town this week so I haven't had the chance to harden them off yet.  But hopefully mid-week I'll be able to finally put them in their new home!

first fruits

My first tomatoes are ripe!  Three little broad ripple yellow currant tomatoes.  I only tasted one, it was pretty good for a first fruit.  The first yellow pear tomatoes last year were very mealy, then very sweet and delicate.  This one wasn't mealy and a bit more tangy, but sweeter then a red cherry tomato.

Unfortunately they definitely have some kind of disease.  More of the lower leaves are turning yellow with a bit of dying on the edges before dropping off.  Which means it's just a matter of trying to get as much fruit off of them as I can before the plant dies.

chillies, tomato spots and lobelia

I finally got a chili seedling.  I wanted a serrano but didn't end up finding one, so I got a hybrid called "firecracker" that's meant to be good for pots.  I just hope it's hotter than a jalapeno, last time I grew them they weren't very hot at all.

My tomato plants are powering along looking great ... except the bottom few leaves on the Oregon spring.  They're developing these little black spots and then turning yellow.  I swear tomatoes get more diseases than anything I've ever grown.  Here are the leaves so far, I've searched and searched and the symptoms don't seem to match anything except maybe bacterial speck.

I just hope it's a fluke, it's so early in the season!

To cheer myself up, here's a photo of the blue lobelia I'm growing in my flowerpots this season.  Such a carpet of colour!  I'm a sucker for striking colours.  They're actually a little darker than in this photo, and a bit less blurry too!

the downfall of the statice

I love my perennial statice (Limonium perezii) and I've spoken of them a few times.  I planted them almost exactly a year ago and they've been in bloom almost constantly ever since.  I've known from the beginning that they prefer full sun but their shady spot didn't seem to bother them, they've absolutely thrived.

Well.  Until now anyway.

A few weeks ago I noticed them slightly wilt.  I thought they needed water, which is a bit odd because they've never needed a drop of extra water.  Turns out they definitely didn't need water, they needed treatment for powdery mildew.  This is what they looked like at first, and what the one in the sunnier position still looks like:

The one in the shadier spot was looking much, much worse.

I'm familiar with powdery mildew on pumpkin and other vegetables but didn't realise it could hit perennials.  But a closer look under the leaves confirmed it.

In retrospect it's a perfect recipe for powdery mildew - shady, dense leaves, and when I took a look under the leaves there were layers and layers of dead leaves underneath.  Thick matted foliage like that keeps the air from circulating and encourages mold.

The plant in the shadier spot was so far gone that I took a punt and chopped all the leaves off - they were dying so quickly anyway. When it's that far along, fungicide sprays can only do so much.  So I hacked it back to this and doused the stumps in fungicide.  Let's hope its tough nature lets it bounce back. 

The second plant I decided to cut out all the dead leaves, the flowers, and several handfuls of healthy leaves too.  Each leaf got a spray on top and bottom and I'm hoping it will fight back.

Even if they die, I've decided I'll replace them with statice.  Next year in the summer I'll be sure to cut out all the dead foliage and I'll try using a milk spray a few times in the summer.  Milk spray puts "good" critters on the leaves that don't leave room for "bad" mildew.  It won't work after the mildew sets in but it could head it off next year.

RIP tomatoes

It's been less than a month since I diagnosed my tomatoes with fusarium wilt. In that time they've continued to ripen, I've gotten about two dozen rouge de marmandes (minus a few more with blossom end rot) and several cereal bowls worth of Tommy Toes.  But the plants went from this on January 17th:

To this on February 6th:

The poor things hung on for a while but once they started downhill they went down fast.  On Wednesday I picked another set of ripening Tommy Toes but the seeds inside were black.  That's when I decided they had to go, despite a few more fruit desperately clinging on.

But when I went to complete my diagnosis I was in for a surprise.  This is what the inside of the stem looked like:

Those white bits are perfectly healthy tissue.  With fusarium wilt they're meant to be discoloured brown, like this.  So now I'm confused and frustrated.  Did they really have wilt?  Should I have pulled up the plants or left them longer?  If it wasn't wilt what else could have made them cark it so quickly?  And how do I keep this from happening next year?

dreaded wilt

From a distance my tomatoes are doing really well.  Including the pot they're now as tall as me!

And the Tommy Toes harvest is going crazy.  Look at all these little beauties!  I made a great little tomato and quinoa tabbouleh with dinner tonight.  Scrumptious!

But look closer and not all is well with the tomatoes.  Ever since last week's hot spell, more and more leaves have started to die off from the bottom of the plant upward. They start out yellowing in blotches like this:

And quickly half of the leaf dies off like this:

Before the whole leaf shrivels and falls off.

It's the common and dreaded fungus fusarium wilt.  The fungus essentially clogs the pipes of the plant, starting from the bottom.  It chokes it of water and nutrients and there's no real treatments for the backyard gardener except raising the pH of the soil and prayer.  It especially thrives in warm temperatures (check), the plants can appear generally a bit limp (check) but appear to "recover" overnight (check).  This limpness causes gardeners to water them more (check), and the dampness just encourages the fungus.

The only symptom they're not showing is in the stems.  They're meant to show a ring of brown, dead tissue inside but when I checked one stem it's still looking healthy.  Perhaps the brown appears in later stages of the disease.

So now I'm just hoping I can get as many tomatoes from it as possible before it dies, especially my rouge de marmande.  There are now several that are a lovely reddish-orange but the shoulders are still green so I'm giving them another few days.

The mystery is how they could have gotten this disease.  It's generally soil-bourne which is why you're not meant to grow tomatoes in the same place two years in a row.  But they're in a new pot with new potting soil.  It could have come from my trimming shears, I don't sterilize them as much as I should.  Or it could have come with the seeds, which I got from another tomato grower.  And the fungus spores hang on for a long time, which means I have to throw out the potting soil (which isn't cheap!) and figure out a way to sterilize the pot before next year.  And maybe stick to a variety that's resistant to fusarium wilt.

hippo! and tomatoes almost ready

My garden got a Christmas present.  The bird bath is a bit deep for smaller birds like the thornbills.  You can just put a rock in the bird path but I had my eye on this handsome chappy at the garden shop, and after a little hint it was under the Christmas tree.  The splashes along the rim are evidence that a bird has already used the bath.

The tomatoes are almost ready for eating.  The first Tommy Toe is turning red!

I'm having a bit of trouble with the rogue de marmande.  It set a bunch of healthy fruit early on.  I've lost about 4 to caterpillars, and in the last few weeks almost every blossom has dropped instead of setting fruit.  And now, I've lost one to blossom end rot.

BER usually happens with inconsistent watering and I think that's the culprit.  The RdM is at the front of the planter, closer to the hot sun, and the plant often looks wilted.  I didn't want to over-water, since the Tommy Toe never looked wilted.  But after dropping blossoms and getting BER, I'm now pretty certain I have to keep the water up more.