DFW, TX area people, how's everything growing?
 

Hi all! I have a small backyard garden near Fort Worth, and in the last two weeks or so, I seem to be having a lot of blossoms dropping from my tomatoes and eggplant. As I'm sure many of you know, there has been a lot of rain and cooler weather lately, and I'm wondering if these two things are related. My poor Pineapple plant has not set a single fruit yet :( Cherokee Purples are doing the best, but most of the new flowers are shriveling up and dropping. If this continues I will only get a few toms per plant! Any insight is welcome.

Are the flower stems turning yellow and/or brown and then dropping? Better yet, post a picture of some flowers that aren't going to produce fruit and are going to drop. I think you have something going on because in this cooler weather this spring, I would expect significant fruit set at this point.

My number one suspicion is thrips (western flower thrips). I say that because I am battling them this year like never before. I had a strong early fruit set, then none. Then I started the war and have had more fruit set, but, not as strong as it could have been under these conditions. I have tried several things, but, these guys are tough to deal with if that is what you have.

To check, go out when there isn't much wind, put a white piece of paper under some yellow flowers, then firmly tap the back sides of the flowers several times. Look closely because thrips are incredibly small, so small they are difficult to see. If you have them, they are responsible for your blossom drop. There are several things that treat them, but, I have at most managed to decrease their population so far.

Dewayne Mater

Thank you!! I will check for thrips as soon as the weather cooperates. The flower stem does often yellow, but not every time. I hope its something that I can fix. It makes me so sad to see them drop.

What are effective treatments for thrips?

None that I have found so far and chemical resistance is apparently a significant issue in control. I believe that botanigard, a product recommended on Tville that is a fungi has decreased my population, but, definitely not eliminated it. I have sprayed it twice and will use it at least 1 or 2 more times and then evaluate. If you want to become more of a thrip expert that you ever thought you might be, check out this article that talks about thrips and all of the possible means of control from chemical, to predaciuos bugs to fung to mitesi: [url]http://biocontrol.ucr.edu/wft.html[/url]

DM

[COLOR=black][FONT="Verdana"]I have been keeping up a fruit set count in my "2015 pictures" album. Except for the cherry types and saladettes, almost all of the fruit is set in the bottom half of the our vines, and none at all on our one Wes. Missed (dropped) a couple of big, eye level "generations" pretty much across the board, and I'm not even trying for Brandywines. I did have to treat a big flush of EB, wonder if it could be contributory to blossom drop? Don't recall having to deal with a FT. of rain and its humidity in a month before either.[/FONT][/COLOR]

Here in lower Johnson County, we are trying to teach the tomato plants - the backstroke. The National Guard is here today through the weekend just in case of major flooding.

Decherdt - nice graphics. Wondering about one of those tomatoes with 80 fruit set on one plant?

Well, I sprayed round 2 of bleach spray yesterday morning because, no surprise in all this rain, I spotted some gray mold on some black tomato plants. This morning, I had a substantial number of dying leaves that I removed, proving Bill in Alabama right once again when he says by the time you spot gray mold, it is already much more advanced than you see. I removed a bunch of leaves and hope I don't lose significantly more than I have already. This was all in containers.

Interestingly, my plants in the ground are not showing any dead leaves from the same bleach spray at the same time. I am attempting to prune them this year to a 2 or 3 stems and right now, they are not crowded at all, unlike the ones in containers. Anecdotal evidence that good air circulation is very good for suppressing disease.

D.M.

That's one of Ron's Carbon Copy F6.
7 or-8 ft tall, never missed a chance to set or lost a leaf to fungus. Beautiful deep maroon
1-1/2" fruits. The first 3 at the very bottom turned and split in a storm last week, saved the seeds from them. There's a couple on the table nearly ready for sampling.

[QUOTE=Rfdillon;473766]What are effective treatments for thrips?[/QUOTE]

Yellow sticky traps will reduce them tremendously.

Also if you are getting more humidity than usual from all the rain/heat combo, using an electric toothbrush on the blossoms will reduce the blossom drop a lot. The pollen gets sticky and buzzing the flowers with an electric toothbrush helps the pollen drop to where it needs to be. I live on the intracoastal waterway and have high humidity year round and if I don't do the electric toothbrush trick I get lots of blossom drop. Assuming other things are ok and the plants are healthy and producing blossoms, this is something that it wouldn't hurt to try. You can pick up a cheap battery powered electric toothbrush at a dollar store for a few bucks.

Watch the video below...
[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFzyIi6yn8Q[/URL]

Ginny

Well, my container plants continue to suffer from the bleach spray killing off the gray mold that was more advanced than met the eye. Of course, now they have been rained on all night and the temp is 56. I need to do something to try to prevent this stuff from coming back and will apply some daconil tonight if it stops raining at some point. Always a challenge! Every year is something different, this year with record setting rainfall that has been heavy and extremely frequent. Farmers must be the most mentally tough folks on the planet to deal with all the things you do every year that is beyond your control! R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Dewayne

This link is pretty good read on blossom drop, covering temperature, humidity, N fert, wind, and lots more. Touches on the best time range to hand pollinate, and how set spray only works (poorly) in low temperature environments [URL]http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/hs1195[/URL] I do have a 'letric toothbrush I use on tomatoes, and have seen some pollen puffs, but it has not helped this month.

This morning at 11:30am, the temperature has risen to a whole 58F...what an odd year so far.

I have noticed a few tomato varieties don't seem to mind it being so wet and humid. The three that have lots of blooms and tomatoes are Sungold, Riesentraube, and Yellow Riesentraube. The latter two are both Multiflora by what I've read and what this picture looks like. If I am wrong about the Multiflora part - please correct me so I'll know what it is called.

Ramapo, Black Krim, Black and Brown Boar, Carbon Copy, cherry types have all continued to set through it all this month, over here.

Salt,

You are correct about multiflora term for your Riesenstrube plants.

[QUOTE=decherdt;473847][COLOR=black][FONT=Verdana]I have been keeping up a fruit set count in my "2015 pictures" album. Except for the cherry types and saladettes, almost all of the fruit is set in the bottom half of the our vines, and none at all on our one Wes. Missed (dropped) a couple of big, eye level "generations" pretty much across the board, and I'm not even trying for Brandywines. I did have to treat a big flush of EB, wonder if it could be contributory to blossom drop? Don't recall having to deal with a FT. of rain and its humidity in a month before either.[/FONT][/COLOR][/QUOTE]

This is almost exactly what I'm seeing with my plants. My cherries are doing very well, but the others are kind of meh.

I do seem so have some thrip issues, too. My poor plants.

[QUOTE=Mallori;474465]This is almost exactly what I'm seeing with my plants. My cherries are doing very well, but the others are kind of meh.

I do seem so have some thrip issues, too. My poor plants.[/QUOTE]

What are the high temps there now?

Ginny

Our weather has been crazy. Very very wet with temps bouncing all over the place. Yesterday was hot and today was about 50* when I left my house at 11am

Thats what I got! The flower stems turning yellow and/or brown and then dropping.

What is this?

Ozone - could be thrips. Read the recent posts about this. They not only destroy flowers and future tomatoes, but, they are a very efficient vector for TSVW and if you get that, the plant is done .

Temps have been mostly in the mid 80's, hit 90 one time, 60 another time. Fingers crossed, I still hope & figure its plain old blossom drop related mostly to weather, and me trying to get 2 lb beefsteaks to yield on the [STRIKE]shoulder[/STRIKE] cusp of tornado alley. Any body else local get 50- 60+mph winds a couple of times? Drop happens at some time every year. The cherries and a few others are still setting. Mid June and July temps won't drop under 75 and I'll keep a row of cherries just or fun, pull vines and plant black eye peas everywhere else. Working up my list for next Spring, too. [I]Fewer, further apart, No tomatoes bigger than my head, etc[/I]

[URL]http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KNFW/2015/5/21/MonthlyCalendar.html?req_city=Fort%20Worth&req_state=TX&reqdb.zip=76108&reqdb.magic=1&reqdb.wmo=99999#calendar[/URL]

[QUOTE=Dewayne mater;474491]Ozone - could be thrips. Read the recent posts about this. They not only destroy flowers and future tomatoes, but, they are a very efficient vector for TSVW and if you get that, the plant is done .[/QUOTE]

Oh no. I will test when I get home.
What are you doing to control them and do thrips affect any fruit already set?

Oh, I have them and have had them that I know of for 3 weeks. I suspect I had them earlier because I started noticing blossom drop and then started looking for them. In the future, I'm going to randomly look for them and perhaps put out yellow sticky traps to get an indicator of when they arrive. As for fruit that is set, the answer is yes:[url]http://www.clemson.edu/public/regulatory/plant_industry/pest_nursery_programs/plant_prob_clinic/fact_sheet_folder/tswv.html[/url]
Also, they can give your plant TSWV, then its church. So, they are a serious pest.

Dealing with them? There are a couple of threads on that circulating now. The article I just linked points out the using pyrethroids, something I've done with permetherin (sp?) is bad because it wipes out their natural predators. I would say ideally, you would use natural predators and allow them to keep the balance, but, I don't have any of the known predators and haven't found a place to order them, yet. Some say the traps work to reduce the population. Neem - nyet. This year using a bactericide identified on Tville has reduced, but never got close to eliminating them.

Dewayne Mater

I got these evil bugs. Ugh!

This is what I got. I started to notice 2 weeks ago some blossom drop, not bad though and it seemed maybe because its been so cold and wet out. That seemed a stretch but I had nothing else to go on so I left it as is. I regret not knowing now. Im afraid I will lose it all this season.

[ATTACH]49327[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]49328[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]49329[/ATTACH]

I have had similar to the pictures above. My plants loaded up in the lower to mid levels, and now most are 4-6 feet tall, and not many blossoms. I either have thrips as suggested, or the fruit set is heavy enough to cause fewer blossoms? I am going to check for thrips tonight. Spider mites have already shown up, not sure why as it has been wet and cool.

Is everyone excited about MORE RAIN??? I was starting to get worried, it hadn't rained for several hours yesterday. Today more rain is forecast.

[QUOTE=Mallori;475977]Is everyone excited about MORE RAIN??? I was starting to get worried, it hadn't rained for several hours yesterday. Today more rain is forecast.[/QUOTE]

It's starting to sound like Florida during the rainy season there. I used to spend quite a bit of time in Quitman, Tx and the surrounding area in April/May/June each year taking horse photos and it never rained like that when I was there.

Ginny

[QUOTE=Mallori;475977]Is everyone excited about MORE RAIN??? I was starting to get worried, it hadn't rained for several hours yesterday. Today more rain is forecast.[/QUOTE]

I asked my wife to read this just so she could laugh out loud too :)

I emptied 2.5" of rain from our new rain gauge this morning. I have emptied at least 2.5 inches of rain 4 times since Friday the 22 through today Wednesday 27th. It has rained well over 30 inches down here on the Johnson/Hill County line this month.

[QUOTE=AlittleSalt;475985]I asked my wife to read this just so she could laugh out loud too :)

I emptied 2.5" of rain from our new rain gauge this morning. I have emptied at least 2.5 inches of rain 4 times since Friday the 22 through today Wednesday 27th. It has rained well over 30 inches down here on the Johnson/Hill County line this month.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, that is more than the typical rain in Florida during the rainy season or anywhere. Prayers and good thoughts to everyone with all the rain.

Ginny