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Subject: Market Farming
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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 22:52:06 -0700
The problem you discribe is very common in plastic mulched tomatoes in
my
area, we found its not a disease, but physical damage caused by the plastic rubbing the tomato stem, after planting we come back and put one good sized handful of soil around the stem of each plant sealing the hole and protecting the stem...Bob I have observed some of this problem on the first day I set them out. The sun came out shortly after I had set some and any whose tops had wilted as a result of transplant shock and had leaves touching the plastic got burnt. This mostly happened to smaller and weaker plants and only involved a few so I was not all that concerned. I use a 2 1/2 inch diameter bulb planter to make the hole and I usually put enough soil around the stem to keep it away from the plastic. What concerns me is that a good two inches of stem starting at soil surface and extending downward just goes soft and collapses over a period of several days. This does not look like damage caused by plastic touching the stem but rather something pathological in the top several inches of soil. I toss about a tablespoon full of high organic tomato fertilizer around the base of the plant before putting the final hand full of soil in the hole. My wife thinks this is causing the problem but I have done it this way for several years and never had anything like this happen before. I might agree if it was an "all chemical" fertilizer. I would sooner suspect outgassing from the plastic as it heats up in the sun, but it is intended for this purpose and I've plugged tomatos thru plastic before without problems. I'm hoping that planting better hardened plants in the rest of the area will help but the thought still makes me nervious. I wonder if dipping the roots in a solution of liquid copper or maybe lime-sulfur fungicide would be a good idea or maybe spraying the stem above the root ball would be enough? The thought of messing with the stinking stuff doesn't excite me though. And, if I'm not mistaken, use of both of these products is on the fringes of what is and isn't "organic"? Marlin Burkholder |
-
Tomato transplants damping off in the field,
gleneco1, 05/14/2002
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
- Fw: Tomato transplants damping off in the field, Bill Shoemaker, 05/14/2002
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