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market-farming - Tomato transplants damping off-in the field!

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  • From: gleneco1 AT juno.com
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu
  • Subject: Tomato transplants damping off-in the field!
  • Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 18:13:28 -0700

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



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