Fusarium Wilt

[AlittleSalt]

Rockporter, thank you.

I never once thought about growing so many onions, and maybe it would make a change for the better?

I have an awful fault that I have always had. I cannot sell things. All the years I worked - I felt bad about getting paid. I would rather give.

[AlittleSalt]

Sort of an update - I have noticed by not paying much attention that two of the last 5 tomato plants planted in spring are showing signs that the RKN is slowly killing them. What I have noticed is that fusarium is much quicker in doing a tomato plant in.

I have put gardening in general on the back burner for the next few weeks. We are going to do some minor house renovations, and this is the time of the year to do it. Summer in Texas is not the best time to garden, but it gives you time to do other important things. Yet, I have 15 new tomato plants growing like weeds, and 17 wanting to be planted out.

I want to research other plants that grow in fusarium and RKN soil. Reading everything above this post has me believing the FFF/N tomato plants have a better chance, and grafting of course. But I also want to grow other vegetables, and flowers.

[AlittleSalt]

The first picture is what the plants look like if you just let them try to grow.

The second picture is one of the 15 that looked good a week ago. They are growing/dying in the onion bed.

The last picture is of the 17 that want to be planted, but where? They say that The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Albert Einstein also said:
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/a..._einstein.html

[AlittleSalt]

There is one thing I meant to mention - I have gotten over the shock of having both Root Knot Nematodes and Fusarium Wilt 3.

It is to the point of expecting to see the damage - not rainbows and unicorns holding shot guns

Those 17 tomato plants will most likely get planted out in our backyard that has a lot of clay. I have read that RKN doesn't like clay soils - who knows? It's either plant them in an area I can drag a hose to or get rid of them. I would rather give them some chance at living.

If I had known we have Fusarium race 3 in our soil, I would not have planted the spring garden. I did not know it was race 3 until after I started the 17 plants - five of which are Big Beef VFFNTA...they need one more F in them. The rainy season is over here, so maybe they will grow in the clay?

Next spring, I'm going to try some FFFN varieties - if they grow well, I'll gain interest in tomato gardening again. If not, maybe we can go back to fishing and other hobbies. It never hurts to learn something new.

[greenthumbomaha]

I can't remember if you have tried growing in buckets, but it might be a refreshing change for you, Robert.

Personally I prefer in ground, but when I stop being stubborn and see how well our pro growers succeed with buckets , its tempting to try all methods available.

- Lisa

Can you use the same medium that your starts are in? They look great.

[AlittleSalt]

Thank you Lisa, it's the $17 promix sold at Walmart. I did try growing in buckets, but not the same medium.

I understand about that being stubborn part - so am I. I do plan on growing a few plants in buckets next spring. I do agree with you completely - I see gardeners growing tomato plants in pots sitting on concrete.

[Worth1]

Salt I have grown fantastic cherry tomatoes in used containers on old pallets with plain old black gumbo dirt I dug up.
Don't let anybody fool you into thinking you have to spend a fortune to grow a few tomatoes.
You dont.
The only expense was water the plants and fertilizer.
Worth

[AlittleSalt]

Worth, you know me well brother. You know exactly what I'm going to grow in those buckets. If we can afford it, I'll graft a few cherry tomatoes with FFFN rootstock, but I'll also grow some the natural way.

There are some HUGE changes happening in our lives that I have foreseen. Our first born may be moving in with his family as soon as tomorrow through the rest of July. Not in our house, but on the same property. Things will be changing.

More to come...

[SuntannedSwede]

Best of luck Salt, here's hoping it all works out

[HudsonValley]

Curious to learn about grafting, I came across an article in The Atlantic, according to which "you don't need to order those expensive rootstock seeds. Many hybrid tomato plants are bred with all kinds of disease resistance, like those Mountain Magic tomatoes that so captured my heart. In fact, the Mountain lineage of tomatoes, including Mountain Magic, includes some of the most disease-resistant plants there are. They make great rootstock." Here's a link to the article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...esults/251742/

I also read on this blog that Celebrity F1 also works as rootstock: https://www.tyrantfarms.com/tomato-g...loom-tomatoes/

I don't graft my plants, but perhaps those with experience can chime in. Those rootstock seeds seem awfully pricey.

Best of luck with the life changes!

[SteveP]

My tomato plants are also being devastated by fusarium. At this point I am just trying to get the tomatoes that set to ripen before I yank them up.

Out of laziness and ignorance I didn't clean up my garden after last year.
I left the plants to wither and die over the mild winter and did the cleanup this spring. Apparently that was a BAD mistake. I am not sure what I am going to do at this point. It's a bummer!

[jtjmartin]

Originally Posted by HudsonValley

Curious to learn about grafting, I came across an article in The Atlantic, according to which "you don't need to order those expensive rootstock seeds. Many hybrid tomato plants are bred with all kinds of disease resistance, like those Mountain Magic tomatoes that so captured my heart. In fact, the Mountain lineage of tomatoes, including Mountain Magic, includes some of the most disease-resistant plants there are. They make great rootstock." Here's a link to the article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...esults/251742/

I also read on this blog that Celebrity F1 also works as rootstock: https://www.tyrantfarms.com/tomato-g...loom-tomatoes/

I don't graft my plants, but perhaps those with experience can chime in. Those rootstock seeds seem awfully pricey.

Best of luck with the life changes!

Many on the board have grafted a lot longer than I have, but I remember feeling the same way about the cost. This is why I changed.

I had some minor problems with wilt. I wasn't sure what type of wilt, but a few full size healthy plants would just start wilting. I thought they just needed water but the wilting just got worse.

I knew because I grow in a wooded back yard that there was no way to ROTATE my tomatoes every year.

I found Big Beef seeds on sale and determined to "save" money by just using those to graft. Then I started to think: what if I go through all the trouble of grafting only to learn that I had the third variety of Fusarium and my Big Beef rootstock can't handle it.

At that point, I bit the bullet and ordered expensive RST-106 rootstock and paid their expensive shipping costs. Uggh.

I'm glad I did. Maybe it was the mild winter, but I've had more disease problems this year and my grafted plants are doing great. I'm glad I grafted and used rootstock that I could trust. Mentally, I can run through 20 other things that I've paid the same price for this past year that I wish I hadn't bought.

I'm reordering RST-106 this year. (Looks like some even better rootstock is being introduced soon.)

From looking at a couple different seed company websites, I'm not convinced that Celebrity is FFF or F 0,1,2. It's frustrating that different websites make different claims.

[AlittleSalt]

I found the site I was looking at - it was in my search to figure out why cotton isn't grown here anymore. This sentence got me,
"Control of the root knot nematode is important to managing Fusarium wilt caused by most genotypes (races 1, 3, and 8) of the causal fungus." HMM! 8?

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/r114100311.html

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

There is one thing I meant to mention - I have gotten over the shock of having both Root Knot Nematodes and Fusarium Wilt 3.

It is to the point of expecting to see the damage - not rainbows and unicorns holding shot guns

Those 17 tomato plants will most likely get planted out in our backyard that has a lot of clay. I have read that RKN doesn't like clay soils - who knows? It's either plant them in an area I can drag a hose to or get rid of them. I would rather give them some chance at living.

If I had known we have Fusarium race 3 in our soil, I would not have planted the spring garden. I did not know it was race 3 until after I started the 17 plants - five of which are Big Beef VFFNTA...they need one more F in them. The rainy season is over here, so maybe they will grow in the clay?

Next spring, I'm going to try some FFFN varieties - if they grow well, I'll gain interest in tomato gardening again. If not, maybe we can go back to fishing and other hobbies. It never hurts to learn something new.

Robert,I think it's good to remember that having FFF does not ensure resistance, what it does is to increase tolerance.No such thing as total resistance and I can say more if you want me to about that.

Carolyn

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by HudsonValley

Curious to learn about grafting, I came across an article in The Atlantic, according to which "you don't need to order those expensive rootstock seeds. Many hybrid tomato plants are bred with all kinds of disease resistance, like those Mountain Magic tomatoes that so captured my heart. In fact, the Mountain lineage of tomatoes, including Mountain Magic, includes some of the most disease-resistant plants there are. They make great rootstock." Here's a link to the article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...esults/251742/

I also read on this blog that Celebrity F1 also works as rootstock: https://www.tyrantfarms.com/tomato-g...loom-tomatoes/

I don't graft my plants, but perhaps those with experience can chime in. Those rootstock seeds seem awfully pricey.

Best of luck with the life changes!

It was Dr.David Francis of Ohio State who found that Celebrity was great for root stock. Again,not resistance,but higher tolerance

And yes, all three hybrids,Mountain Magic, Plum Regal and Smarty,which were bred by Dr.RandyGardner, had lots of tolerances bred in,especially the first two.

Bejo seeds were supposed to do the seed production for all 3,and there was one problem after the other,primarily weather,so Randy sent me 3 huge bags of seeds for all three so I could do a seed offer here at Tville, which I did, and those seeds were very popular for those who wanted to capture some of the tolerances.

I didn't ask him to send those seeds,he's still a TV member, but he wanted to get them out there for some folks to grow them, and I was glad to do that for him.I remember that Smarty ended up at Johnny's but don't remember offhand where the other two went for commercial distribution.

Carolyn