In This Week’s Newsletter …
Feeding Tomatoes – Part Five
Friendly and unfriendly bacteria.
Grow bags and pooling
What’s going on inside your grow bags?
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Feeding Tomatoes – Part Five
Friendly bacteria and other helpful microbes make a big difference.
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Grow bags and pooling
Avoid creating a hot bed of bad bacteria and toxic mineral build-up.
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Have your say!
As always, if you would like to leave a comment it would be good to hear from you!
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Bright Munthali
Here in Zambia, Central Africa, we are in the cold season. My crop of tomatoes 100 by 40m was badly hit by the cold. The flowers and the tops of the crop have dried up, meaning no future for the crop though I am still harvesting the fruit which is there. Is there a way of protecting the crop from the cold, apart from green housing? I am just learning to grow tomatoes. I am aiming to become a big tomato grower.
Nick
Hi Bright,
I don’t know the temperatures involved, but you may need to grow cold tolerant varieties during the cold season. In Spain they grow a lot of their tomatoes under plastic sheeting to help preserve moisture. You may need to think of ways to protect your plants by using a similar method (maybe fleece) or by laying black plastic sheeting on the ground to warm-up the soil and growing your plants through that.
Regards,
Nick
David Walters
Hi Nick, First of all just like to thank you for your ongoing newsletters,First class!
I have a question about my tomatoes (about 50) all of which without exception are grown in containers. The recent high volumes of rain seem to be having quite an obverse effect on them with some showing brown speckled lower leaves and most, apart from Gardeners Delight, showing signs of general distress, which I presume is down to waterlogging. After 2 days of 24hr rain we have eventually managed to get most of them under cover but what is the best thing to do now:- leave them to dry out some, feed them a little or keep them under cover for as long as possible? The first set of flowers are just coming to bloom on most of them. Any suggestions please. ManyThanks – Dave Walters
Nick
Hi Dave,
I would keep them under cover until the weather improves.
The spots on the lower leaves are either bacterial leaf spot/speck or perhaps one of the fungal spot problems – either way, if you can keep the plants dry they’ll have a much better chance of coping with the damp air and low light levels.
Remove some of the lower leaf branches to help air circulation around the plants and when the leaves are dry, give the plants a foliar feed with a tonic such as liquid seaweed, vitalink foliar, SP plant invigorator or a general balanced feed if you don’t have any of the others.
Some of my plants are struggling too … the weather has been so poor lately!
Regards,
Nick