Looks like I have just run into a new one!
About two weeks ago I plowed down some actively growing white clover and laid
out tomato rows mulched with black plastic. I know this would have been
better done several weeks earlier but my plans had not gelled yet and there
had been some scheduling problems. Last week I plugged a bunch of tomato
transplants through the plastic. Now I am noticing a number of the
plants fallen over. Inspection reveals that the stalks are rotting off
at ground level looking like typical damp off. It's fast approaching 50
% of the whole planting :<( . I've only seen this happen with newly
germinated plants in the greenhouse, not with month and a half old, one foot
tall tomato plants planted outdoors! Does anyone know what might be going on
here? There is plenty of undecomposed plant material still remaining in
the plow down under the plastic mulch. Could this be the source of the
problem? Also those plants had not been properly cold and wind hardened
between leaving the greenhouse and being set out. The stems were softer
than I like them for transplanting, the result of my being a little too
busy.
I'm getting ready to put out more transplants
into the same type of prepared ground. These plants sat outside in the
wind over the weekend so would be a little better hardened off. However
I'm still concerned that I may have a pathological problem in the beds that is
going to kill me regardless of what I plant there. But I still have a
lot of transplanting yet to do and I can't keep fooling around. Would
there be something I could dunk the roots in that would protect them from
further damping off?
Marlin Burkholder
Virginia