Varieties prone to foliage problems
 

Over the last few years where I have spent a great deal of time and effort trying to lessen foliage diseases and problems with fungicides, support methods and pruning I have noticed a few varieties that usually give me more than the normal amount of trouble.

Dester: Probably the worst foliage of any plant I have ever grown. Very Early Blight prone and susceptible to other diseases. Plant when healthy looks almost sick with curling and drooping leaves. Fairly early in the season each year the plant has to have lots of leaves removed. Despite this it is a productive large tomato with great flavor.

JD's Special C Tex: Like most black tomatoes it has a problem with gray mold but unlike most of the others it is more prone to it and loses more leaves faster than the others most of the time. It is almost always the first tomato in my garden to get gray mold and the most severely affected. Despite that it is also probably my favorite black tomato for flavor and size.

Zogola: Not really prone to more foliage diseases but spider mites love them. When other plants have a few stems covered with spider mites Zogola seems to get them from top to bottom. It is a great heat setting tomato if you can keep the spider mites at bay and very productive.

Red Barn: One of my favorite large fruited varieties that can produce and set fruit in very hot weather. It makes a huge healthy looking plant but is more prone to Early Blight than most and the fruit is the worst to get sun scald of any variety I have grown despite heavy vegetation. If one of the tomatoes sticks out from the foliage just a bit where the hot sun can hit it for a few hours it will tend to scald at least down here where the sun is very intense.

These are not just one time occurrences but rather a pattern that I have seen over and over no matter where the plants are in the garden. I would like to know if anyone else has noticed any regular disease problems with certain varieties more so than most other varieties?

Bill

Very helpful info! Thanks b54red

Dester: Just pulled a plant today, foliage problems.

JD's Special C Tex: Yes, the plant is easily overwhelmed by gray mold, even with your bleach spray.

Red Barn: only minor problems with Early Blight. It is a terrific plant, productive with very tasty tomatoes, rich umami flavor. Thanks for recommending it. Red Barn has become one of my top 3 favorites.

With all of the rain this year anything black took the swan dive of death. :lol:
Worth

I have seeds for all of those. I'm glad you wrote this Bill.

Have you tried Rebel Yell. I grew it in the spring garden and it did well. I'm growing it again in the fall garden.

Red Barn out of 3 years in a row got sick early twice. Leaves wilt and plant dies within few days or if I am catching it soon and trim diseased part of the plant one branch may survive. Wilted already this year.

Amazon Chocolate every year for me get diseased (wilt) by the mid-late July and is goner. Nothing helps. Not growing it this year.

I grew Azoychka twice few years ago, it got yellowing leaves early and did not recover. It has yellowing leaves this year already (3rd time).

Dester, first to get sick 2 out of 2 times. Fugeddaboudit.
JD's- same thing
Vorlon- ditto
Most years the dwarfs get sick here in humidity central. But I have had a few exceptional ones. Perth Pride is excellent. So is Fred's Tie Dye, and Gloria's Treat.

Obviously just my opinion,but foliage diseases can be seen on OP's and F1's and it really depends on which year and where,geographically,the spores of the fungal ones in the air that year, same for the bacterial ones,which way is the wind blowing as to whether they will arrive before or after rain, and so many more variables.

And are there more than one disease on the foliage of a single plant?Absolutely.

I was very lucky in getting hooked up when I was in the Albany,NY area with an Extension agent with Cornell University and she had learned all from a Prof at Cornell whose name I can 't remember right now but he was the infectious disease expert.

She brought interns to my tomato field,I had been asked to grow some F1's as well as my usual OP's so comparisons could be made, the only F1 I remember was Celebrity and I never grew it again..

Her interns would go down the rows making notes,with me following along with her,then critique what she saw as to what they saw.

I can tell you that I learned a lot that summer.

One reason why I don't usually participate in the Pest and Disease Forum here is b/c for many years at the original Garden Web,there were just three of us doing it all with litle help.With so many new members now at Tville over the years,there are others that can help with diagnosis and possible treatments..

Carolyn

Early blight is hitting hard here this year, Dester virtually unaffected I was surprised after hearing all the problems. There is always a chance its a NOT Dester....
Also a chance that whatever strain of EB doesnt bother it too much, or up north it deals better... Just a 2 plant sample....go figure.

[QUOTE=AlittleSalt;578525]I have seeds for all of those. I'm glad you wrote this Bill.

Have you tried Rebel Yell. I grew it in the spring garden and it did well. I'm growing it again in the fall garden.[/QUOTE]

I put it out in my second planting and it did okay but not great. I will certainly give it a try next year also. I also have two in my bed planted the last of May but it hasn't produced any ripe fruit yet but they do have decent fruit set I think. The only plant that has produced a ripe fruit from that bed is Pruden's Purple.

The last batch of a dozen plants that I set out on June 29 already has a few fruit sets. Guess which? Pruden's Purple and Indian Stripe PL. Those are definitely two of the best at setting in the heat.

Bill

Never seen a tomato die so fast of late blight as Gold Nugget. I mean, I always thought that pretty much all varieties I have have 0 resistance to late blight. Gold Nugget proved me wrong. Late blight barely started affecting the rest and Gold Nugget was already dead.
Galina and Tomatoberry are spider mite paradises. Tomatoberry is in the same pot with an Azoychka, leaves overlapping etc. Last year and this year the same, the mites are only on tomatoberry and the plant will probably die prematurely again. Galina is also rather prone to early blight.
Other than these haven't noticed huge differences in foliage resistance (I could talk about magnesium deficiency which also affects leaves, 'ahem Aunt Gertie ahem').

A Cherokee Green and half a Malachite Box were removed for a mold or bacteria. That was now two weeks ago and have had no occurrence. Odd that it was the only two green when ripe toms and they were rows apart.

Chapman displays the most leaf curl of any variety in the tomato garden, and with 6 tomatoes is the worst fruit setter.

And that's it, knock on wood.


*Zero problems on the 7 potato leaf plants, of the 30 plant total. I will be planting a majority of potato leaf next year.

So far in 2016:

Raspberry Viscount (Vikonte) has been very productive and suffered quite a bit of EB, taste = costco. Pretty orbs.

Sungold has been susceptible to EB, it doesn't matter.

Big Cheef proved to be a fungal staging ground, it doesn't matter as they taste fantastic.

Many others have fallen like Sonny Liston, although I won't name them until they go down a 2nd time.

I suspect the desiccant effect of my DE slurry has some marginal activity against a few foliage players.

Ricky, I have found that Chapman does not like a lot of fertilizer. If you back off just a bit, the leaves will straighten out and they will set fruit like crazy.

[QUOTE=Ricky Shaw;578747]A Cherokee Green and half a Malachite Box were removed for a mold or bacteria. That was now two weeks ago and have had no occurrence. Odd that it was the only two green when ripe toms and they were rows apart.

Chapman displays the most leaf curl of any variety in the tomato garden, and with 6 tomatoes is the worst fruit setter.

And that's it, knock on wood.


*Zero problems on the 7 potato leaf plants, of the 30 plant total. I will be planting a majority of potato leaf next year.[/QUOTE]

As someone who fights gray mold on my black tomatoes every year I found the only other type that were affected badly by gray mold were the Green When Ripe varieties. The bleach spray mentioned in the sticky is very effective treating it if used early and followed regularly by a copper spray. The trick to defeating gray mold is to fight it early and every time it shows. If you wait too long to treat gray mold the disease it can quickly become unstoppable.

Bill

Appreciate the advice and will go with your recommendations, thank you Mark and Bill.

Not that it was any worse than anything else, but I grew Peron Sprayless next to Early Girl and several other heirloom varieties a few years ago. I watched it closely to see if it got fungal problems any less than the other plants, and I could see no difference at all. It's a decent red tomato, though, taste is good. It just didn't live up to the name for me.

[QUOTE=Gerardo;578778]Sungold has been susceptible to EB, it doesn't matter.
[/QUOTE]

Is early blight common on Sungold? I grew 8 tomato plants from seed this year and purchased one, Sungold or Sunsugar (can't remember which), and it's the only one with any early blight or other disease. It looked ok when I bought it. They're planted in a new garden, so there's no existing disease problem, and I'm trying to keep it from spreading to my other heirlooms.

I'm reluctant to talk about varieties I only grew once, but several didn't get grown again (yet) because they were so prone to foliage disease in the greenhouse environment. Galinas Yellow and Anna Russian had major trouble with Early Blight and I was picking bad leaves off them all season long, for example.
In the blacks, Chernomor is one that I just don't want to grow in the greenhouse, it is so prone to grey mold in humid weather whether hot or cold. But I start some every year for my mother to grow outdoors. They do get a few moldy leaves but the stems are usually spared, and generally do much better outside producing very well in a marginal tomato environment, than they do in the protected warmer and more humid space.

I gave my in laws two tomato plants. Wisconsin 55 and Bear Creek. The W55 is hard hit by Septora. Bear Creek right next to it and even touching has very minor outward symptoms and it's been like this for a number of weeks making me believe Bear Creek is rather tolerant to Septoria.

Yes! But it is so robust for me that it keeps branching and setting out more fruit despite the eb traveling up the plant,

[QUOTE=Csross;579145]Is early blight common on Sungold? I grew 8 tomato plants from seed this year and purchased one, Sungold or Sunsugar (can't remember which), and it's the only one with any early blight or other disease. It looked ok when I bought it. They're planted in a new garden, so there's no existing disease problem, and I'm trying to keep it from spreading to my other heirlooms.[/QUOTE]

double post

The two years I did grow Sun Gold it had bad problems with EB but like was said earlier it grows and produces so fast that the EB didn't affect production much.

Bill

I have grown tomatoes in a garden in New York state (outside of Buffalo, in Rochester and the Hudson Valley) for 20 years. I have more time on my hands this year so I expanded and dabbled in heirlooms and even tried grafting.

Simple setup in 10' long raised beds, 1' spacing, everything is single-stem and vertical. I have followed the bleach spray regimen since some spotting on the lower leaves in May. It's been working except for 1 Abe Lincoln that is being trimmed almost daily. Odd thing is, the AL next to it is my grafted experiment and that one is blight-free. (I know, jinx) It's grafted to a celebrity root and has the thickest stem I have ever seen. I can't twist it around the vertical string, I am using clips instead. The leaves also are hugging the stem and draping down, not growing out like the others in the bed. I have eaten ripened fruit from the other ALs but not yet from the grafted plant.

Is it simply strange behavior? Vigor because of the graft? FrankenLincoln? I also think that air circulation is poor on that plant because of the leaves hugging the stem the way they are. I know there is no chance of sun scald there.

I have 40 tomato plants. I trimmed them up about a foot from the ground once they started growing. No mulching, daily drip watering.

What I do know is it the bleach regimen is working for all my plants. Thanks b54red. You da man!

Ralph

Destor here in Atlanta doesn't have the weaknesses that Bill sees in Alabama - but I have never been able to get a Malachite Box to survive to fruit. It is a big healthy plant, and then suddenly, BLAM. Three years in a row. I am done with it.

Cherokee Purple and Cherokee Green, on the other hand, are standouts, seemingly surviving anything.

My Malachite Box put off one set of fruit, then died. Gray mold, maybe.

Did your Malachite Box look like this? This may be Cherokee Green in the pic, it had the same thing. The streaky mottling up the stems, some is cage chaff, but also looking higher on the stem it's in evidence.

Maybe. Most of my plants have disease at this point. It's too much to even bother identifying. Leaf mold and septoria are probably most of it. I obviously need to get better about preventative spraying, but by this point in the summer, people are starting to get sick of tomatoes, and they are getting harder to sell. They hit 99 cents a pound during the last hour of market last Saturday.

I can understand the frustration of having your work cheapened, that's crazy .99lb. When they open up the fields in Pueblo at the end of the season, it's been .99 for pick your own the last few years. They're just hybrid determinates, canners and paste.

I was selling half-bushels of canners last year for $12, which is about 50 cents a pound. At the peak of summer, the produce auctions to the north of me price 25-pound boxes as low as $2-3. I live in mater country; it's supply and demand.

[QUOTE=Compuaide;579372]I have grown tomatoes in a garden in New York state (outside of Buffalo, in Rochester and the Hudson Valley) for 20 years. I have more time on my hands this year so I expanded and dabbled in heirlooms and even tried grafting.

Simple setup in 10' long raised beds, 1' spacing, everything is single-stem and vertical. I have followed the bleach spray regimen since some spotting on the lower leaves in May. It's been working except for 1 Abe Lincoln that is being trimmed almost daily. Odd thing is, the AL next to it is my grafted experiment and that one is blight-free. (I know, jinx) It's grafted to a celebrity root and has the thickest stem I have ever seen. I can't twist it around the vertical string, I am using clips instead. The leaves also are hugging the stem and draping down, not growing out like the others in the bed. I have eaten ripened fruit from the other ALs but not yet from the grafted plant.

Is it simply strange behavior? Vigor because of the graft? FrankenLincoln? I also think that air circulation is poor on that plant because of the leaves hugging the stem the way they are. I know there is no chance of sun scald there.

I have 40 tomato plants. I trimmed them up about a foot from the ground once they started growing. No mulching, daily drip watering.

What I do know is it the bleach regimen is working for all my plants. Thanks b54red. You da man!

Ralph[/QUOTE]

Ralph I have found with some of my grafts especially with some rootstock that they will be very late to put on fruit and ripen fruit but those are sometimes the ones that make very healthy large plants. Sometimes they never put on much fruit. This seems to be mostly with certain combinations of rootstock and scions. This year the difference between two different rootstock with the same scion in when they produced their first fruit was about two weeks so don't give up hope. I did have a few grafts over the last few years that never did produce more than a couple of fruits and I have no idea why. I just assumed it was a bad graft.

I'm glad the bleach spray is working out for you. You might want to use some Daconil or a copper spray the next day for the ones giving you persistent spotting troubles.

Bill