Squirrel, I imagine you have a good number of green tomatoes growing in size by now.
I currently have one plant with a drooping top and curled leaves, and a few others with tops that look slightly wilted. I had it on several plants last year too. In my case I think it is due to sustained high temperatures and humidity followed by a sudden change in weather (2 days of cloudy skies and heavy thunderstorms). Around the same time I noticed this problem, one of my brandywine plants dropped
every single flower that bloomed this past week when we went from nightly lows in the 80s for weeks to two nights at or below 60 degrees. Yet, another brandy 10' away in stock tank #1 (and from the same batch of seeds) didn't flinch and is putting out huge potato leaves bigger than my hand. Some of my pepper plants dropped flowers too.
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Originally Posted by biscuitridge
FONSECA- can you share with us what soil mixture your using and also are you strictly organic?
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Long post warning!
I am organic, but am not opposed to using a chemical spray to fight infestation when natural methods fail. Especially when the plants are in the vegetative stage.
Fortunately that hasn't been an issue for me since discovering cold-pressed Neem oil with 3000ppm Azadirachtin. It kills everything eating my plants and doesn't harm beneficials. The solvent-extracted stuff available in garden centers doesn't compare. The downside is I have to apply it weekly when there are active larva. Skip a week when they are still hatching or adults are laying eggs, and they do a lot of damage.
I used Malathion on all my fruiting plants in 2013 when I had a massive aphid infestation, and could not sufficiently control them. I did not use use it on lettuces or brassicas though. I try to minimize my exposure to such products.
My soilless mix and amendments are organic. I try to keep the worm population happy and reproducing, which means I need to maintain healthy soil bacteria. So organic fertilizer and compost tea. They also like a several inch layer of uncomposted spent coffee grounds as a top dressing before applying mulch. I don't often top-water, so when I pull back mulch I can see hundreds of holes in the coffee ground layer after a few weeks, along with a healthy amount of fungal activity, which I will break up if it looks excessive or becomes "tough". The worms are processing the nutrients and making them easily available to the plants. I believe this is beneficial to my system. I aspire to utilize the effective processes found in nature, based on my limited understanding of soil ecology and experience growing in the ground for two decades. Not sure if hobby or obsession...
Worms do a lot of the work for me, breaking down dead roots and creating easy paths for air and new roots, although my mix is pretty light and I can shove my arm down to the elbow with little effort at this time of year. When I pull up a bit of mulch on my stock tanks or buckets at night, I expect to see several worms retreating. If I don't see any, I often notice my plants will appear stressed a day or two later, meaning I screwed something up or conditions are bad. For instance, a nutrient tea that was too strong, or I haven't checked the reservoir in a few days and they blew through 20 G already. I think of my sub-irrigated containers as a system, and try to keep that system cycling.
I mixed my 4th batch this year on June 13th. This is a mix for sub-irrigated containers. If I was top-watering with drain holes underneath, I would include coco husk chips at 20-25% or some other material to avoid shipping cost, and possibly use less vermiculite.
I like to start with the centuries-old recipe of one third each animal, vegetable and mineral matter (such as: sedge peat, decomposed granite and rotted manure), which is supposed to age for several years, and then an equal portion loamy soil is added, sometimes including a small percentage of pigeon manure at that time.
I don't have years to wait, but I do add an equal portion of spent mix after the new batch has sat for a few weeks.
Ingredients:
3 cu ft canadian peat (compressed, ~6 cu ft expanded) - 1/3
4 cu ft coarse vermiculite + 2 cu ft coco fiber - 1/3
2.5 cu ft mushroom compost, 2 cu ft composted cow manure, .5 cu ft castings,
.5 cu ft composted chicken manure, .5 cu ft spent coffee grounds - 1/3
Amendments:
Dolomite lime - 6 C (could use 12 C if no other CaMg sources)
Alfalfa meal - 6 C
Fish bone meal - 6 C
Crab shell - 6 C
Kelp meal - 6 C
Neem seed meal - 6 C
Soft rock phosphate - 3 C
Azomite - 6 C
Glacial rock dust - 3 C
Rich Earth (humate) - 3 C
Diatomaceous earth (w/ 40% bentonite) - 3 C
MycoGrow soluble (watered in with compost tea after 1 week) - 1 oz
Makes ~18 cu ft / 134 G.
I consider this a hot mix especially with the composted chicken manure, and the alfalfa breaks down extremely fast. This mix will burn tomato seedlings planted in directly, more so if not aged. I added to this initial mix 100 G of year-old spent mix that was used continuously for different crops.
Most of went into 5 G buckets for pepper plants, and a few individual plants to see how they do, like roselle, ashi-taba (not supposed to have hyphen but plant name is censored on forum), malabar spinach and a few varieties of chard.
In the photo below are some of the products I have available to me locally. Items like neem seed, fish bone meal and glacial rock dust had to be ordered online. I am trying different fertilizers this year, so I will have to wait and see how things turn out.