Thread: Fan Question
View Single Post
Old April 17, 2018   #10
carolyn137
Moderator Emeritus
 
carolyn137's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Upstate NY, zone 4b/5a
Posts: 21,169
Default

What is the purpose of using fans as so many do?

Most will say, and correctly, that the seedlings are more stocky,etc, and that is true.

This has been known for a long time, and yes, for tomato seedlings and here's some background info.

Cornell Ag agents where I used to live near Albany,NY would visit farmers,help with disease ID's, etc. And when grown in greenhouses to get the plants going,the aisles were very narrow and the plants growing next to the aisles were always better plants. And that's b/c as a farmer would go down those narrow aisles watering she/he would brush against the plants and make them better plants.

So the agents said to take a broom handle and pass it over all the plants and do it twice a day.

So better seedlings =thigmotropism

https://www.google.com/search?q=thig...&bih=815&dpr=1

Carolyn, who learned more tomato Dx from the agent who visited her field than you can ever imagine. I hadn't called to ask for one but I showed her one day a strange situation with my tomato plants still in the falling down Greenhouse.She was baffled and told me to call Dr. Tom Zitter at Cornell,who was a world expert on tomato diseases. He told me he thought it was due to an abberant strain of Early Blight and wanted me to spray spores of true EB on my plants and said he would provide the spores,I thanked him and that was that and told the agent I was not going to deliberately infect my plants and to tell him that..

I was going to say the same to M, Banadoura since he saw the lower leaves browning and falling off at the bottom, but he says he's solved the problem.

Here is Dr. Zitter;

https://pppmb.cals.cornell.edu/people/thomas-zitter

Carolyn
__________________
Carolyn
carolyn137 is offline   Reply With Quote