Growing Laterals...

[MissS]

Take a look at the pictures in this thread. Is this how your leaves appear close up?

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...985#post602985

[murihikukid]

Patti...I have just taken some more photos....Hopefully you can see the repotted plants..I think I should put some water on them as a final tribute....
Naturally I have been doing a lot of thinking also ...I recall in my first and second seasons after I got the automatic underwatering propagator I simply transplanted my seeds into my own underwatering system ...I will find some photos for you ...I had beautiful young plants .....So I am going to go back to doing that....

Clearly I have to start again IE Propagate a whole new lot of seeds ......

Now the seeds were propagated then transplanted into a small container....then later into a bigger container and thats when things started happening ???? I never saw a problem with the roots or the strength of the plants up to that stage..Was it the Plantmate or the ground oyster shell or my using diseased soil...(whats the plantmate for...I thought it was a fungicide)

Now once again I emphasise....The plants are not overwatered ....all the repotting I have done proves this...It was unfortunate my taking the Sungold out to the garden centre which as I have said must have been double watered......

It could have been the conditions inside IE not enough light but see that a lot of plants are surviving but again I do not see much growth ...so why is that...My guess is that its the same disease that hit my NBFT and to a lesser extent my TT's months ago ...all the symtoms are the same.....

I am going to suspend my repotting til I see any positives from the ones I have done....Its wasting my money and my time and I am better to re propagate seeds for the plants I have lost ....Clean everything in my house the best I can and concentrate on the tomatoes I have bought over the last week as a backup..which I have bleached and copper sprayed with no ill effects ...yet my seedlings clearly are not strong enough in my opinion for this treatment .......So I have to correct this and I think I can by watering underneath via a capilary cloth....

Regards Ron

[murihikukid]

Patti..Heres what I think are last years photos ...after propagating they were transplanted into foam cups then on to a capilary mat ...then transplanted into a bigger container again watered underneath via a capilary mat then they were moved outside into growing bags again watered underneath by capilary mat and then they they basicly all got wiped out with disease.....and that was when I joined Tomatoville seeking help...Although I had outstanding plants using underwatering for two seasons I wondered if it was this that created conditions for disease and so I decided to hand water ....I had some outstanding photos of them in the trays but they apparantly are gone as I have gone through all my camera photos and cannot find them.. Regards Ron

[murihikukid]

Patti..My plants inside my windows are basicly all diseased....apart from one.....its a TT lateral and appears to have been planted in a different soil....It appears to have no perlite in it in fact I have taken it outside to inspect it..It has no perlite in the soil and i cannot find any sign of disease??..I cannot remember what soil mix it is but I see no sign of leave degration....I have posted a photo of the plant and one of the container and my BFT that has had two bleach sprays and one of copper and is deteriorating..Meantime my Early Girl grafted has a whiteness (like a powder)on its stem and its lower leaves ...here again I can see it vividly but not in the photo...I do recall I saw the odd white spot on some leaves early on on this plant...I am just overwhelmed here and I am not feeling well which makes everything worse....I never thought it would end like this ....
Regards Ron

[MissS]

Ron please respond to posts 660 and 661 in detail while I go back to the beginning of this thread to find some answers.

[murihikukid]

Patti..I would forget it...My eyesight is so bad I need to take photos ....I have just come back from the gardening centre and they "do not want to sell me seed starting mix as I am only wasting my money....Throw that computer away ??your the only customer that is having all these problems ..give it away,its too late now to grow seeds"....
Ron

[MissS]

Ron, I am not asking for you to read much, I am asking for you to look at some pictures. NOW, if I have spent the past hour starting to read this whole darn thread from the very first page, the least that you can do is to help my by answering some questions and looking at some pictures....... I will not allow you to take advantage of me. You have to do some of the work too.

[murihikukid]

Patti..I looked at the pictures and the leaves do not have holes ...It seems to me that once one bleach sprays as I have done its hard to identify anything on the leaves..Thats what to me is the issue ...Identifying what it is and how to treat it ...You have mentioned various fungicides like Daconil and I have gone out and found where to get an equivilant here and then apparantly it was not suitable.....Now I have a bottom of a plastic drum that I use for mixing up my soil...and it has been sitting on my floor still with soil mix in it and Marley was sitting in it which raises issues.....
My plants are not over watered ...my watering may have been inconsistant .....clearly something killed my plants ...and the mold whatever that was on my plants several months ago has returned onto my seedlings ....are they connected I just do not know ....If I was too guess I would say no.....The weaker plants never survived the transplanting so I presume that was a mistake on my part...I worked til 3am this morning doing a completely new seeding in my propagator ...I used a seed raising mix that looks like broken up coal from the biggest Gardening centre here and I have to correct all my mistakes starting with trying to get the seedlings to grow with good thick strong stems ...

Now I transplanted some of my seedlings also into a new mix and setup a self watering tray for them .....so I hope to set up some LED Flour light tubes or grow lights today ...I am not going to use perlite anymore in fact if my plants survive I will have to use the soil from 3 years ago when they go into the drums...in the greenhouse if it ever gets finished...I know I am just rambling on so maybe I should just finish the thread ....Regards Ron

[murihikukid]

Patti...Marley has never been a problem inside and I know another cat sneaks in to get food but if I had not seen Marley in the mixing drum I would never have thought of this but it makes sense ..I understand that cats can contaminate soil ...Now I know that some plants transplanted seem to be surviving while others simply died .....could the survivers have been transplanted before the mix was contaminated and then Marley or another cat may have sprayed in the dirt resulting in plants dieing from that point on....If the soil had been wetted I would have noticed or smelt it but a spray may have been insufficient to show up...
I am trying to "smell" whats left of the mix ..and I "think" there is a slight cat odour ....but I could be completely wrong.....but it makes sense to me that something like this happened..cause IMO there are two separate issues ....the leaf mold which I think is due to my using soil from the earlier time .....and the
plants dieing in the way that they have ....You see I was convinced it was due to the transplanting but could not make out why certain plants and not all died ...so this ticks all the boxes for me if indeed cat spray would kill young plants ...i presume somebody knows if it does....Regards Ron

[imp]

Ron, in NZ, you do not have what would be the equivalent of our "county agricultural agent", some one paid by the government to help and advise farmers/gardeners about all things agricultural? From varieties to diseases?

If you do, that would be your best bet at this point, some one who is really knowing the local problems and such.

That or a very knowledgeable local grower who can advise you after seeing your set up and practices in person.

as for bleach spray and how to measure- you don't have to convert anything. Normal strength bleach ( roughly 2%) would be 1 part bleach to 9 parts water.

Because you said your bleach was almost double that strength, simply use 1/2 of a part of bleach to 9 1/2 parts water.

Hope that helps.

more unsolicited advice: If it were me in your spot, I'd rip out every plant that was sickly or even looked slightly ill, toss them and dispose of them else where, toss that dirt in the far far corner of my yard or in a rubbish bin to be taken off, bleach water the pots I would save to re-use and let them air dry completely.

I would also bleach water wash and rinse ALL my tools, stakes and the entire area the plants had been in, including walls. I would also use a non toxic white paint to paint my stakes or bamboo- both to help me see them better and to seal them from rot and most importantly, to help seal them from being a fomite that tends to harbor any bad things such as mold or fungus spores.

Perlite is not part of the problem.

Cat spray:

Cat spray is a marking agent and quite strong smelling- I suspect you would be able to smell it easily if the cats had been spraying in your dirt. Most cats like to either use the loose dirt to defecate in, or to lay in because it is soft and good smelling to them.

A cat spraying directly on a young seedling would possibly burn or kill it, but unless the soil is very saturated with cat urine ( think almost dripping with it), not likely to burn a healthy transplant.

Now, your transplants are not at all healthy, but I think it is a mold/fungus issue, not cat urine. Too much wet, too much opportunity for molds and fungi to thrive

[MissS]

Ron, I would not be blaming this on Marley. He is not the source of your problems. After going back to the beginning it is quite clear to me what the problem is. Yes, we can blame all of this one you. Back in the beginning, you listened to my advise. The problems were solved. You grew just a few plants well. Then you kept adding more and more plants so that they became overcrowded again. I suggested 1-2 plants per container, you wanted 4. Four plants would work for awhile until they grew up. Once they grew up, well they became crowded. Not only that but then you started more plants. Rather than giving the new plants their own space, you crowded them into a couple little refrigerator boxes that were already cramped for space. The only ventilation is a window opened during the day. None of the new fans are going on them. With all of those plants, the air can not move. Even outdoors, we plant our tomatoes 3-5 feet apart to leave room for air flow. Your plants are inside, an open window is nothing...

Here is your own quote from post #55 I realised that it does not make sense planting 50 - 60 plants producing a limited amount of fruit when with better management one can grow a few plants .look after them and get a lot more fruit..PLUS better tasting fruit...Of course it has not been a good season for me...although some locals tell me their tomatoes have been great ..others not so great....
I am learning so much now and I always have "tomatoville) for advice....I am afraid that I was told not to spray when my crop was young and that was bad advice ....If I had sprayed I may never have had the problems I had....also I have never mentioned this but I had an underneath watering system which I now regard as a hazard for spreading diseases and will have to be changed...Regards Ron

Well we are back at where you started. You have 40-50 plants, not in the greenhouse, but rather in the house which is even more crowded than when you started. 10-12 plants is enough and probably more than you can handle. Pick 10 of your healthiest plants and dispose of the rest. Then start taking care of them properly. No more overcrowding. No more over-watering. No more not pruning. It is too late to be starting more seeds. It is time that your plants should be planted into their permanent places so that they can grow and flourish. February is coming and that is the time for you to be taking cuttings to start your winter plants. Seeds should have been started 12-16 weeks ago. You are getting everything off season. Seeds now will not have time to produce much if little at all.

Yes Ron, and in your own words, your underwatering system is a hazard for spreading disease. There is nothing that is good about it. It is a mould factory in the making.

Your photos over in the disease forum clearly show extremely wet soil in the majority of the pots. Not all, but most. The perlite has nothing to do with any of your problems. If anything it would be better adding more... Some of your soil looks wet and compact. There is not any air in the soil. It is water-logged.

It is time for all of the plants to come out of the house and put into a protected area to harden off. Do you know how to harden a plant off??? Your growing season is on it's way and people there have their plants out in their gardens.

I know that you are probably mad to hear all of this, but if you want to grow these plants you must give them space,air circulation, keep them dry, prune and keep an eye out for disease.

Regards ~ Patti

[murihikukid]

PAtti..Thats it for me..you have barely got one fact right ....I am sick of seeing all these comments that have no basis ..EG Over watering ..clearly my word is not good enough .....then one day I am told to do one thing and a couple of days later its something else ....sure I made mistakes the main one being that I trusted the judgement of people who i believed would be able to help me ...I have not got the time to argue various points except I was told to get my seeds grown for my greenhouse .....Unfortunately events took longer than I expected due to bad weather and especially the winds and I have just managed to get a roof on and shift most of my plants outside..You should know who advised me to get seeds growing and now I am criticised for it.....I had to put them somewhere and because I was so busy working on the greenhouse it was not safe out there for them

I do not know if you have read my posting on the disease forum but I am sticking by points i made...its common sense in my opinion and if people want to reject points i make and put words into my mouth...well thats their problem not mine....Apart from the soil bagged from my garage rooftop I have used all commercially available mixes from reputable companies...including the Plantmate and oyster shell grindings... The plants that are not recoverable will be done away with including the soil ...I will make further enquiries about a decent fungicide product although people here tell me Copper Spray is a preventitive and a cure and thats what they use..

Finally I am not blaming Marley after all he is a cat...He is my only friend and I was fully responsible for leaving my mix bowl uncovered .....
Ron

[murihikukid]

Hi.With my green house now in a condition where I can put plants in it..I am at present trying to take the first of my most forward plants out of the drums inside and replant in new soil out in the greenhouse ..Immediately I see a problem ??Where are the roots ....it basicly has a root ball the size of a golf ball...Now I consider I used a good mix so what is the reason .It is a Tasty Tom from a cutting and was planted horizontally..It does have flowers and some fruit......Of course I used a panel heater worked via thermostat control to heat the air around the growing drums.. was it too hot....I know I have bleach burn and my next two plants that I plan to remove are a Black Cherry and a Campari ...Neither have flowers or fruit and unfortunately I cannot recall if they ever did...so I wonder about their root systems...One thing for sure its back to basics for me...
Cheers Ron

[imp]

Ron, sorry you are having more problems, but I really think that Patti gave you excellent advice and cannot add to it. Bill gave you a formula in the disease thread you have so I won't go there, either, as you asked in PM.

Best of luck and hope you can get it all sorted out and grow many wonderful tomatoes!

[murihikukid]

Hi...After spraying with bleach I have three plants ...a Black Cherry a Campari and a grafted Early Girl...that have produced nothing ,look disgusting and have grown to a height that to me is unacceptable yet they have grown quite healthy looking laterals at their tops..I am thinking of using cutting these off to see if I can get roots on them and basicly starting off again and getting rid of the rest of the plants which are really an eyesore ....I just wonder if they do get roots what would be the chances of them growing and producing fruit.. I presume its worth a try and certainly more interesting for me and more managable watching young plants grow ....Happy New Year to everybody ...Ron