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Old June 6, 2018   #290
carolyn137
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Upstate NY, zone 4b/5a
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee View Post
Future note to self....

Don't plant winter wheat as a cover crop for a tomato bed....
Apparently this is a good food source for thrips, and then they vector TSWV to your tomato plants even before they begin flowering.

The infection position has been somewhat variable with 5 plants replaced so far. I'm hoping the cycle is broken, and they are done infecting for the year.

Lee
Lee, that's the first time I've ever heard of planting winter wheat..
We had many acres of tomatoes on the farm where I was raised and after the first Fall heavy freeze my father and other farmers in the area would plow under the dead tomato plants,disc the fields just once and then holding a bowl of WINTER RYE seeds, scatter them over the fields and falling rains would put those seeds down a bit and there they would stay dormant until it got warmer in the Spring and sprouted and when those plants were about a foot high they were plowed under again and the fields prepared for planting out new tomato plants.

When my father was Dx with parkinson's disease a local farmer took over using our fields and he did the same with planting winter rye, and he did it at his place also, but behind the tractor he had this machine that spewed out seeds that covered 6 rows at a time.

Here is a link to suggested winter cover crops

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

You will notice winter rye being mentioned a lot within several of those internal links.

Carolyn
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