Tomato advice needed.

[canadamike]

I have a dilemma like I never had, and I would like to get some practical advice from those of you with lots of experience with tomatoes.

I have always pruned mine as less as possible, delaying the harvest but getting great leaf coverage and lots of fruits. This year, with the weather, for the first time I was happy to see my friend Luc, the owner of the farm where I garden, come home with 48 5 feet high CELEBRITY and BIG BEEF plants (it usually pisses me off a bit)

These were already trimmed and pruned of course, and were put in the ground attached to posts.

We are talking about 2 pretty well disease resistant cultivars, but they are now attacked by mildew.

On the other hand, the 200 plants that I did not have the time to stake, except Grunt and Grungy's Guido which are caged in corn crib and a couple of other ones ( bush) with minimal small ordinary peony cages, all of them untrimmed, are doing remarquably well.

Not one litttle spot of any disease, it is a luxuriant jungle with plenty of flowers and ( late of course) fruits. But because of the lack of opportunity created by the constant rain and the extra work needed all over the place, I am now involuntarily using the sprawling method, and I wonder if I should let them go or step in and trim some or stake them, which always means breaking or hurting some when done at that stage.

There is about 60 different cultivars there, all heirloom or OP, and I can't keep from saying to myself if nothing has happened to so many different cultivars ( all of them can't be super disease resistant) some thing good must be going on, but will it last?

They are growing in last years tomato patch ( I know I know, I shouldn't), which was rich sandy loam brought over hardpan clay, well manured last year, and covered with 6 inches of mushroom compost which was turned in this year. I also used American gardener trick of making a deep hole in the clay with a metal rod and a sledgehammer.

It is my first time using mushroom compost, is there some disease fighting capacity in that stuff that I am not aware of?

Should I let them sprawl? Will I really promote disease by exposing tender tissues when braking or trimming stems?

It is getting to the point where it won't be that practical to harvest in such a jungle, the patch was not planned for that, and the maters might take over the beans if I do nothing... they are really huge for having been planted one month late, the stems of many have a girth over one inch, especially Martin's WISCONSIN 55 red and gold.

Some of you might be more used to the exceptional amount of rain I got this year, or have used mushroom compost before and know things about it that I don't.

Will this very thick mass of green turn yellow or brown if I do nothing?

Why is it healthy while plants better trained and trimmed to fight diseases and this wet mess ( as most people would say) are getting sick? And knowned disease resistant cultivars on top of it.

I never experienced much in terms of tomato diseases, except late in the season of course, so I am a bit at loss...but I never experienced such luxuriant growth either. I can see now the combo of tons of mushroom compost and AG's trick for the roots going deeper is having quite an impact...to say the least!

Here is a picture of tomato patch number 2 ( I got 3, number one is the sick ones, number 3 was planted even later, about 2 weeks, end of June)

I should have taken the picture from the other end... In front, up to the cages where the Guidos are, they are all bush and dwarf types. Even my EXTREME BUSH plants, apparently a dwarf, are big, none of my so called dwarfs would be much at ease even in a 5 gallons pail. You can see the larger indeterminate growth in the back.



Alan, the plants in the forefront are your ABSINTHE. I had forgotten to plant them and was going to throw them in a compost pile when I saw a little stick with their name on it. They were the last planted of all my maters. Sorry my friend, I will not do that to you again. I expanded my bed just for you, so you would forgive me Bah! You already know I love you anyway brother!!

[grunt]

Michel: For your mildew, a spray of diluted milk, or baking soda should take care of it.
I think the reason you are having disease problems on the staked and pruned ones and not on the sprawlers, is that you haven't been handling the sprawlers. Every time we handle the tomato plants, and especially when it is humid, we do some damage to the skin on the plants. I have noticed that I don't have any yellowing leaves on any of the plants, until I start to manhandle them to get them under control. Once I start doing that, I get yellow leaves, and ones that look like the edges have been burnt.
I think this year you have yourself in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemma. You can leave them sprawl, and hope for dry weather (which the weather folks say you aren't going to get), in which case most of the fruit that is in contact with the ground will likely be lost unless you pick it a bit less ripe than usual; or you can try and trim and contain the plants, which is likely going to introduce nasty things into your plants, because everything is too wet.
I think in your position, I would probably leave the plants alone, touching them as little as possible until the fruit starts to ripen. You probably won't see any disease until you start to harvest, and unless you do something to get soil on the plants, it will probably only be a few yellowing lieaves. And prey for dry weather.
Cheers
Dan

[canadamike]

I think that's what I'll do. I don't have much maters on the ground, luckily, the stems are so strong the plants sprawl but go up fast. And the ground under them, all that compost, looks more like mulch than soil.

As for mildew, I use your recommended tricks for powdery mildew, but do they work on downy mildew ( I think its the english name, but not sure) too? Never had it, so until this staked patch, I was a ''mildew virgin'' of some sort ;D

Yesterday, I sprayed my cucurbits against pseudomenorospora cubens, which has attacked some melons in its lightning fast fashion with sulfure, and I had enough to spray the maters too.

My friend buys each year some of these big plants, I was happy this year because we were sooooo late in the field, but they always are stricken with BER, so I gave them calcium.

The lady grows them in peat moss on 20-20-20, so by the time she sells them loaded with maters, the poor plants had nothing in terms of micro-nutrients to build up health, and they are always having problems. Luc bought some more for a friend, planted them there and they are already dead, killed by mildew. They are still producing here, but I spray them like crazy with seaweed extract . sonic bloom and so on, so they made it , albeit with problems. Its much harder to rebuild health on a large plant.

But shit, I spend more energy on 48 mater plants than on the other hundreds...