I have a few problems

[happychick]

I'm glad to have found this forum and am hoping some of you experts out there can help me, as I really need it! This is my first attempt at gardening and things are definitely growing, but I'm having some tomato problems, for sure. In one bed I have three plants that are all looking kind of pathetic. Two of them don't seem to have grown at all since I transplanted them a couple weeks ago and the leaf edges and veins on the undersides of the leaves look kind of purplish/dark. The other one is growing like crazy - straight up and spindly, with tiny, tiny leaves. It doesn't have the purple veins and leaf edges, though. So do you think I have some disease or is it just a problem with nutrients in the soil?

Two of the plants were in peat pots and I dug up the spindly one today and the roots still hadn't penetrated the peat pot at all. Is that normal? I broke it open, stripped the leaves off the lower shoots and buried it deeper. I figured it couldn't hurt anything, at least. Should I do that to the other one that's in a peat pot?

[pooklette]

I have two questions...

1. What variety is the wispy, non-purplish one?
2. Are you using any kind of fertilizer?

Purplish veins and slower growth are sometimes the result of a phosphorus deficiency. That's why I asked about fertilizer. Also, certain tomato varieties look kind of wispy or willowy by nature. I've heard it said about oxhearts and I've grown a few cherry toms that behaved that way in the beginning.

As for the peat pots, I tried them last year and the plants that were set in the ground pot-and-all took off much slower than the ones that were transplanted without the pots. I didn't dig up the slow-pokes and remove their pots though. The plants survived and produced just fine but they took longer to get going.

[happychick]

Thanks for replying. The wispy one is a yellow pear. They are planted in a mix of top soil, compost (mix of manure, "garden compost" from my nursery and a little bit of worm castings), and vermiculite with some greensand, bone meal and epsom salt. I just kind of haphazardly mixed it all up, so I could have easily not gotten the right mix. We're trying to do things organically, so what might I need to add?

[Granny]

happychick, if you are going to put stuff in the ground then you should have your soil tested before you add stuff to it. Your county Extension Service will do it - usually free, if not it is very low cost. After you know what you're working with you can start adding all that other stuff you listed. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

BTW, I have never had any luck whatever with peat anything or anything that says "Jiffy" on it. Every single seed I have ever put into a pellet has damped off.

[happychick]

Thank you. I didn't actually plant them directly into the ground, if that matters. They're in a raised bed. The soil here is so clay-ey that you can roll it right into a little snakey shape. I don't know much about gardening, but I figured there was no way I should plant anything directly into it without doing a lot of work on it. Since we're moving in a year (military) and will have to lay sod right back down over the top of it when we do (it's a rental property), I didn't think it was worth all the effort of attempt to improve the soil.

[lumierefrere]

I should wait for Suze to reply but I'll just say I had a plant go vertical (with the tiny leaves) like that last year and it was some kind of disease that required me yanking it from the ground immediately before it spread to the other plants. If you can take a photo of these plants and post them here, that's the best way to determine what's happening.

[dice]

Spindliness could be cucumber mosaic virus,
but it could also be an abundance of nitrogen
at that spot in somewhat low light.

The others sound a bit like they need some
fertilizer. The compost may take awhile to
break down and release it's nutrients, although
the earthworm castings and manure at least
should be fast acting.

You could test this theory by trying some earthworm
casting tea on these "non-growing" plants if you
have any castings left. Just put "some" (like a handful
of castings in a gallon of water) in water, let it soak
for a day, then water it in around the roots of the plants.
You should see visible growth in a couple of days.

If you have any manure around, you could try manure
tea the same way. One formula I read was a shovel
full in 5 gallons of water, let it soak for a week, agitating
daily, then water with it.

If the two smaller plants react to either of those with
a growth spurt, they just need some fertilizer (like
Espoma Tomato Tone, a good one).

If they don't react at all, my guess would be
that the soil pH is probably too high (alkaline soil),
and resulting chemical reactions in the soil are blocking
uptake of nutrients. But without a test, that is just
a guess from past experience. (I remember adding too
much wood ash to a peaty homemade planting mix and
seeing transplants that were growing fast completely
stop growing after they were transplanted into it. After
a month I decided that transplant shock was probably
not the reason.)