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.