Quote:
Originally Posted by AlittleSalt
It has been a while since I last posted about tomato plant growth and development. A lot of what I've been posting has been going on in my family's lives, but I haven't forgotten the tomato plants I'm trying to grow. Out of 12 plants growing, only one Big Beef F1 VFFNTA is looking (Okay - is saying too much) The Fusarium3 has really distorted all the other plants including another Big Beef F1 and some other OPs.
It would be so easy to quit gardening, but I won't quit. I may need to take a year to see how FFFN plants grow in ground and of course some cherry tomatoes. Money is going to be extremely tight for a long time. I need for the FFFN tomato plants to grow and produce in ground.
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Salt I hate to tell you this and maybe I am wrong but growing the FFFN plants will probably be a huge disappointment for you. I grew quite a few of those plants like that a few years back and they were barely edible. The taste was almost the same as the ones from the grocery store but a little better because they were left to ripen longer. I did grow one that I believe was called Red Mountain that was a little better than the others but as far as good home grown eating tomatoes all the ones I tried were miserable compared to the wonderful juicy ripe rich flavors from some of the better heirlooms. That experiment is what finally pushed me into grafting heirloom varieties onto FFFN root stock. Buying grafted plants if you are planning on growing more than just a few is just so expensive and most are not available on a root stock that has all the resistance that I needed and that it seems you will need in the future. I know that grafting seems a daunting challenge and it can be at times but it is well worth the effort and in the end cheaper than all the so called remedies for fusarium and RKN.
I did find that with okra if you mulch it very heavily and water it very well that the RKN problem will be less. I found Cowhorn to be the best variety in my nematode rich soil. The sandier the soil that you grow okra in the worse the nematode problem will be so adding organic matter is a big help. I have also found that the heavy mulching helps slow the nematodes attacking my cucumbers and squash. I added a bunch of peat and pine bark fines to some of my beds this past season and it helped maintain a higher moisture level in the beds and I had almost no nematode damage on my cucumbers and squash for the first time in decades. I am hoping that wasn't a fluke because they have been a real problem forever and it was sure nice to have my cucumbers last so long this year. I set out some fall cucumbers a few weeks ago and they are already producing despite the unrelenting heat and whiteflies. I am hoping they can hang on until it cools off and the whiteflies thin out.
Bill