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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: Homestead <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Tomatoes, to rotate or not to rotate
  • Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 11:01:39 -0500

While doing the garden tour this morning I mentally revisited my ongoing experiment with tomatoes and the question of whether it is better to move them each year to where they have not grown for several years or whether to keep planting them in the same places. Tomatoes being the most popular home garden plant and being such a strong part of our diets, there has been over the decades much controversy on this subject. "Tomatoes love to grow where tomatoes have grown." "You must rotate tomatoes each year to stop disease."

I have had less disease in my tomatoes than my various neighbors, those from a quarter mile through the woods to ten miles by road although only two miles in a straight line. My finest hour was when a stream of neighbors whose crops had failed came at my invitation with buckets which they filled and took home. If there are tomato gods, they seem to like me. It may be that my relative remoteness is a factor, and that the winds favor me. There are lots of thick woods around my clearing that can catch various wind-borne pathogens.

I have experimented. I used most of a compost pile one year but some material remained. Out of this a forest of tomatoes sprang as weeds. I let them be and watched them. To harvest was to don tall rubber boots and wade in. They were magnificent. The next year I paused, then let them be. They repeated, with no help. Again the third year. I changed the garden design and do not know how succeeding years would have looked.

I have rotated from one bed to another for five years. Still there was leaf browning on the lower plant parts. It is my common practice to prune off low branches as the plants get taller. This minimizes the effect of dirt splash onto the lower leaves, which spreads leaf canker and blight. I have never had enough problems to overcome my resistance to using sprays.

Many hybrids have been selected for their disease resistance. That is one answer. But if the gardener wishes to become seed-sufficient, there must be a combination of careful selection and propagation experimentation, to see what works best in the individual garden.




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