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Tomato problem solver

Posted on August 8th, 2008 – 1:44 PM
By Jaime Chismar

This year I planted six heirloom tomato plants. Five are doing great, but my yellow pear is wilting from the ground up. I planted it in one of my new oak wine barrels. After it set fruit, the leaves started to curl, then fade to brown.

It was hot. The more I watered the plant, the worse it got. The fruit was fine, but now the new growth was wilting. I was stumped.

After several fruitless web searches, I stumbled across a great resource and let out a victorious “Whoo hoo!” The Tomato problem solver, a sweet little web application from the horticultural department at Texas A & M University, is perfect for us gardening newbies. You don’t need to know the name of the disease, you just match your suspicious fruit, leaves or stems to their photos. It’s super simple and super informative.

So what’s wrong with my yellow pear? A pretty bad case of verticillium wilt (which is common to some heirloom varities). My guess is that I didn’t drill enough holes in the bottom of the planter and accidentally drowned the roots. Grrr…

So how are your tomatoes coming along? Have you made a similar mistake?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Tomatoes, Peppers + Eggplant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

9 Responses to "Tomato problem solver"

Robyn Dochterman says:

August 8th, 2008 at 7:52 pm

Having rotted a couple dozen tulip bulbs in a barrel planter many years ago, that would’ve been my first thought. But the web site is great!

deb w says:

August 8th, 2008 at 8:52 pm

I have many little green tomatoes, not getting bigger, not turning color, just hanging there like some huge conspiracy to ripen all at the same time when I can’t choke down 12 a day. I am keeping an eye on them knowing that when the signal comes from whoever is the leader it will be war to eat / freeze / or can. There will be no prisoners just BLT’s and salsa.
I also am a fan of the heirloom tomatoes and feel for your plant loss.
I always mulch the devil out of them so the wilt spores don’t splash up from the dirt. Besides I feel vindicated to shred the junk mail trying to lower my interst rate or offers to join a buying club.

sparklegirl says:

August 11th, 2008 at 8:03 am

The exact same thing happened to my two Brandywines! I seem to remember reading something last summer about how the consistency of watering was more important than the quantity of water (in terms of preventing blossom-end rot), and in my attempts to be more consistent, I think I drowned them. :(

WorldCitizen says:

August 11th, 2008 at 11:12 am

Virtillicium wilt can be solved without chemicals. A thick layer of grass clippings on the dirt around the tomatoes shortly after planting the seedlings and trimming all lower branches (on a dry sunny day) as the plant matures stops wilt and other soil born diseases. Only use clippings before the lawn is treated with fertilizer and weed killer.

Mary Schier says:

August 11th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

My tomatoes are in the same condition as Deb W’s, lots of green ones, including many green yellow pears. The main problem I’ve had this year is blossom end rot with paste tomatoes. I may have planted them too early or been too uneven with the water (they are in a raised bed, and so need more consistent watering.) It’s disappointing.

Amy F says:

August 11th, 2008 at 8:41 pm

I have 4 Brandywines and between them, two green tomatoes. Maybe more will come before it frosts…

My romas are much smaller than I expected and all the first ones have had blossom-end rot.

I didn’t realize tomatoes were this hard to grow. I thought with 13 plants I’d be drowning in them.

Lorika says:

August 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

Thank you for the site Jaime! Just what I have been looking for.

And as for the greenies - I’ve got ‘em too. All my neighbors that grew from store bought plants have tons of ripe ones already. Well, at least I get more satisfaction out of mine - or something.

I also have 26 plants and should be swamped - but so far it’s only a trickle. I know, let’s have a late Fall this year!

Fiona says:

August 14th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

My tomato yield is way down this year, and my Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes are definitely smaller the plant is more “stringy” than usual. Maybe it is just a bad plant but it doesn’t seem the same. I know the cold spring and drought is an issue but this seems like a down year all around for my tomatoes, I’m usually trying to figure out if I want to do sauce or salsa by now and donating to neighbors. Overall not a great year for my garden, except my turnips, WAY too many of those!

Kristin says:

August 18th, 2008 at 4:49 pm

I always do potted tomatoes, and this is the first year I apparently had blossom end rot! Thanks for the link to the website as it confirmed my suspicion. My friend is a former greenhouse owner and said I needed to be more consistent in my watering. Once I started watering each day, my Mama Mia tomatoes that weren’t damaged seemed to do great. However, like sparklegirl, I also then developed the from the bottom loss of leaves and stems, but the majority of the two plants I have seem to be doing OK. I don’t get a lot of sun, so I spent the $$$ and bought Miracle Grow soil this year because I wanted the plants to set more leaves. Potted tomatoes are an interesting experiment for me each year. Does anyone have Mama Mia tomatoes this year?

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