Tomatoes

[Kapohocat]

We had a great plant - it was huge with tons of yellow pear tomatoes on it. All of a sudden within 1 week it withered over 1/2 the plant. I trimmed it back, got additional soil on it (we thought maybe it had hit the lava rock) and now although there is still tomatoes on it is almost completely dead. This whatever it is hasnt affected anything other vegetables. One other symptom is light green viens like a slug trail but we havent seen any slugs or tomato worms on them. And no bites out of the leaves! HELP!

[sansei]

Not enough of a description to be definitive but some candidates are Fusarium and Verticillium wilt, the VF you find on the labels of nursery plants. You can find a description and some pictures at: http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/3000/3122.html

Plants that have the VF have been bred to be resistant and if you have one of those, a third candidate is Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Tobacco, tomato, peppers and egg plants are all members of the solanacae family and are susceptible. The virus is sometimes spread by smokers with contaminated cigarettes by touching a plant. If it is the virus, burn the plant or bury it in some out of the way place and don't put it is a compost pile.

A recommended practice is to group plantings of the solanaceae family and to rotate it to different places every season.

[olin137]

Like sansei says, rotate the site for planting
- I usually wait two years before planting in the original site again. Among the various nasties that build up in the soil are nematodes
- thus planting in the same spot is risking putting new plants into soil where the titer of the nasties has been building up. By alternating sites, the soil has a chance to recover.

As for general disease resistance, there are so many fungi, bacteria, viral problems it's best to both pay attention to the resistances bred into the variety you want to plant, and then plant different varieties and more plants than you think you actually need - better to end up with too many tomatos than by chance plant some that get wacked that year.

Olin

[Kapohocat]

I was so lucky that a landscape arch named Mitzy stopped by to get some of the cactus.... she said i had a "leaf miner" (well a bit longer name) and that my tomatoes were drought stressed! She told me usually the tomatoes can fight the leaf miner" but when already stressed do poorly. Gee I thought it rained a ton down here lately... but we are fixing the problem now. it wasnt amount of water but soil to hold it. So someone else said get newspapers, shred them around it and when watering, soak the paper thoroughly. Then it will stay damp and roots will have moisture....even when less rain.

-Cat

Edited by - kapohocat on 05/23/2007 12:20:02

[mella l]

I was wondering what are the best type of tomatoes to grow successfully. A year or so ago there was a post about the tomatoes being stung by insects which caused the centers of the fruit to be mushy. So what type of tomatoes are the most successful for you?

Mahalo,

mella l

[robguz]

The place I just stayed in Seaview had a large bush of sweet 100 cherry tomatoes. They were delicious and there were literally thousands on the plant.

[emorata]

when i was checking gardenweb, someone mentioned that romas were doable along with the cherry and the golden drop variety in hawaii....the larger heirloom and beefsteak are difficult unless you have a greenhouse to prevent the fruitflies/aphids, etc....i do see alot of romas at the makuu market so that tells me its workable......when i go to the makuu market in june, i'll ask some of those vendors if they use any special greenhouse or netting to grow those tomatoes....i don't think i saw any other types, but if i lived in puna this would be a fun thing to grow....we grow all different types here in sonoma and they are so easy to care of in our area.....i love all the old heirloom varieties and especially all the variegated varieties.

noel

[scuba_man7]

Leaf miners and aphids are the bane of my existence.

I've had pretty good luck with ladybugs as a control here on the mainland, but I don't know of the availability of ladybugs there.

Has anyone local used the ladybug method?

[Les C]

I can't speak to the use of ladybugs/birds here for aphid control, but I have seen them here. Orange and iridescent kinds. I googled "Hawaii coccinellidae" (the latter is the family name for these bugs) and came up with some interesting results. While there were no comments in my Hawaiian entomology book nor my alien species books about ladybugs/birds in the local ecology, there was a study that found that a species of ladybug/bird did eat the eggs of two genera of native moths, one of which has the uniquely carnivorous larvae (caterpillars). So, there is a possibility of impact on some native species.

I don't know about the success of other forms of aphid control, like "aphid lions", the larval form of lacewing flies, I think, or just spraying your plants with a dilute dishwashing liquid solution.

[mella l]

The grape tomatoes, sometimes called pear shaped tomatoes, very small, in red and yellow, are so popular in No. Cal. that they are the very first to be sold out at our farmer's markets. Does anyone grow this type of tomatoe?

mella l