• LAVA Moderator: Shinji Ikari

Backyard Vegetable Gardening & Livestock Raising & Sustainable Living

question.

This morning I noticed that some of the smaller branches on the bottom half of my tomato plant were turning brown and dying, i also noticed white spots that kind of look like light snow on some of the leaves. Any ideas what this could be? My fruit are getting pretty big and would hate to lose them at this point.
 
Ya that wouldn`t be cool after taking care of them for this long. If you could take a picture of the problem, it would be easier to tell what it might be.
 
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It almost looks like someone lightly spray painted them. They are also curling and turning yellow/brown. I read about something called yellow leaf curl but everything I saw said the plant won't develop fruit, since i have a lot of fruit i'm not too sure.
 
white fly eggs. soapy water (with a mild like ivory soap) in a spray bottle sprayed everyday until they clear up. if not, then i'm not sure what it is. also neem oil works well. companion plants to draw in good predators is also a suggestion for the future.
 
white fly eggs. soapy water (with a mild like ivory soap) in a spray bottle sprayed everyday until they clear up. if not, then i'm not sure what it is. also neem oil works well. companion plants to draw in good predators is also a suggestion for the future.


I checked the leaves and the spots are actually part of the leaves, not eggs on them. Will try neem oil though, I have some leftover from my leafhopper invasion in june.
 
I think it might but not 100% sure yet. I trimmed all of the leaves that were dying and have been spraying, so far haven’t noticed any new damage but we shall see in a week or so.


I have two more tomato questions. I noticed blossom end rot on 1 of my tomatoes, I got rid of it but does this mean all of them will get it and die now?

I also noticed what looks like small scratches all over two of the large maturing(barely green, about to turn red I think) tomatoes, what could that be? I’m not really rough with them at all
 
No it doesn`t mean all of the fruit will get ber... You may or may not get some more. I had some on my "opalkas" this year but had plenty of good tomatoes as well. This has not really been a great garden year for a lot of people.

As far as the scratches? I can`t say for sure maybe the wind blowing foliage against the fruit or possibly growth cracks from inconsistant water. Which coincidently can contribute to blossom end rot too. Most of my tomatoes this year have some degree of cracking, and i`m growing 10 different kinds. There is always next year... Hope you have luck with the rest of this season too.
 
How do you go from grass to garden? I was told to "lay newspaper down", which doesn't quite answer all my questions. :P 'Cause I was told that if I want a garden next year, I have to pick a spot and "prepare it" this year.
 
making lasagna beds kept us from doing a lot more work in the future. the newspaper/cardboard smothers everything underneath them, keeping our weeding workload at a consistent zero
 
i know ruth strouts methods are popular, but i just tilled my grass under. It would depend on what kind of grass it is though. At least here in maine the grasses common found in lawns kill fairly easily. If i were to start a new garden here i would till, wait a few days, till again and add as much organic material that i could get my hands on into it, then plant some peas or something for a cover crop. Every year on my 1000 ish sq ft garden i plant dried whole peas from the grocery store and dried lentils. They grow just fine and protect my soil over the winter plus add nitrogen for the next crop. But that`s just what i do... Your milage may vary.
 
As soon as a spot it cleared of what`s growing i do. Unless there is time to grow a second crop. For instance where my peas were i tilled that up and planted corn. They are tasseling right now and i had peas around the 4 of july. When the corn is done i`ll till and plant my cover crops. They both will take some frost but die upon a heavy freeze. I have tried winter rye mixed in on another plot and it works good because the rye will take up some of the nitrogen and when that`s tilled in, will release it. A lot of people loath winter rye because it can be hard to kill in the spring. I didn`t think it was too bad.

The real reason i grow cover crops is that i`m trying to shade out weed growth and keep nutrients from leaching. And legumes use rock dust efficently and release it for the next crops.
 
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