Quote:
Originally Posted by GoDawgs
I do the same 3 year rotation of those three families plus alliums in my beds too. There are sixteen 4x18 beds and they get mulched during the year from a huge pile of leaves raked in the fall. Of course, the beds near a big pecan tree are rather self-mulching in the fall. 
However, there was/is some kind of wilt in the soil that affects only the tomatoes so for the past four years we've been growing them in 15 gallon pots next to the house but this year I'm also going to plant a few in the garden again "just to see".  |
That is a beautiful setup. What part of Georgia are you located in?
The only problem I see is that you have a pecan tree nearby. My backdoor neighbor had a large pecan tree in his backyard which abutted my garden and although it was around 50 feet from my nearest bed it sent roots into the bed. As the years went on they infiltrated further and further into the beds and required digging out with a shovel every season to hold them back some. Luckily five years ago the thing blew over in a high wind and the roots that were invading that side of the garden disappeared. Now I only have to deal with the huge live oak tree that is on the other side and the large pecan that is on the other side which only gets to the two lowest beds which are not used for tomatoes because of the shade.
Sounds like you have fusarium wilt. So far everything I tried to get rid of it did not work but I did observe over the years of battling it that a cold winter helped some. My trouble is we don't have cold enough winters to help much and we don't have cold winters very often so the problem only got worse as the years rolled on and more strains of it showed up making growing heirlooms terribly frustrating. Finally I gave in and started grafting onto root stock that was resistant to all three known races of fusarium and I have had no problems with it since then. You could try growing a couple of Big Beefs and if it gets the wilt then you probably have all three kinds but if it does well then you are only dealing with one or two types of fusarium wilt. Having one or two types is much better than having all three because some heirlooms will survive but if you have all three it is much more difficult to get a heirloom tomato to survive the whole season without wilting. You can also try some of the FFF hybrids and if they don't wilt while all the others do then you know what you are dealing with.
Bill