The first thing to do when you notice a not so healthy looking plant is to find out exactly what is going on, so that you can begin you search for the cure. Below is a list of symptoms together with possible causes to get you going on your quest to grow the best possible tomatoes. Try doing a Google image search once you get an idea of what your tomato plants are trying to tell you, and see if it looks like what you’re seeing on your own tomato plant leaves.

Discolored leaves

Yellow

As you can see below, a yellow coloring of your tomato plant leaves can be caused by many different things. The color yellow either covers the entire leaf, is limited to patches or limited to just spots, depending on the cause:

• A lack of nitrogen affects the lower leaves. It spreads to the upper leaves.
• A lack of calcium affects the upper leaves
• A lack of manganese is rare, but will result in dead patches on the leaves, ringed in yellow
• Wilt diseases can cause a shortage of nutrients, which will then result in a discoloring of leaves
• Fusarium Wilt affects older leaves
• Verticillium (Verticillium dahliae)
• Leaf spots (Early Blight or Target Spot)
• Root rot
• Mosaic virus results in mottling
• Aphids
• Spider-mites can cause a white-yellow speckling

Light green

• Too much nitrogen
• A lack of manganese

White

• A lack of iron
• Powdery Mildew results in powdery patches

Black

• Fusarium Crown Rot

Curling leaves

• A lack of potassium affects older leaves
• A lack of iron
• A lack of copper is rare, but results in blue-green flappy leaves
• Curly Top virus affects upper leaves and results in a purple-like color

Spots on leaves

Brown

• Early Blight or Target Spot (Alternaria solani)
• Late Blight (Phytophthora infestans)

Dark

• Bacterial Speck (Pseudomonas syringae)
• Bacterial Spot (Xanthomonas campestris pv vesicatoria)

Purple

• Late Blight (Phytophthora infestans)
• Tomato Spotted Wilt/Impatiens Necrotic Spot Tospoviruses

Wilting leaves

• Fusarium (Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici)
• Fusarium Wilt
• Fusarium Crown Rot
• Verticillium (Verticillium dahliae) can result in wilting at midday but recovery at night
• Bacterial wilt (Ralstonia solanacearum)
• Root rot
• Tomato Spotted Wilt/Impatiens Necrotic Spot Tospoviruses (TSWV or INSV)
• Nematodes causes the plant to wilt prematurely
• Walnut toxicity if the plants grow near a walnut tree

Drooping leaves

• Fusarium (Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici)
• Fusarium Wilt
• Fusarium Crown Rot

Flies on leaves

• Whitefly (1 mm), more often seen in a greenhouse than out in the open
• Thrips (1 mm), onion thrips (Thrips tabaci) and flower thrips (Thrips obscuratus)
• Fruit fly

Removing some of the leaves

If the problem is that you have too many tomato plant leaves then here are some tips on removing some of the leaves to provide the plants with more sunlight and oxygen:

• Single vine variety: All ‘suckers’ can be removed and staking should first be done after the first flowers appear to create a strong plant.
• Multi-stemmed variety: All stems should have the same size. Any side stems below the first flower cluster can be removed to create a strong main stem.
• Determinate variety: ‘Suckers’ below the first flower cluster can be removed.
• Sterilize knife or scissors between plants, or use your fingers to pinch of unwanted leaves and branches
• Remove branches during dry days to avoid bacteria getting into the ‘wound’ because of rain
• Remove sick leaves and branches to reduce spreading of diseases
• You can reuse any clippings – they will grow into new plants if you stick them into the soil!

Cucumber leaves

I haven’t been able to find any evidence saying that tomato plants can’t rub leaves with cucumbers. I think it’s a myth and more a question about space. Cucumbers grow big leaves, and they could overshadow a tomato plant if the plants were standing close.

While it should be safe to grow cucumbers near tomatoes, there are some plants that are even recommended companion plants for tomatoes, like French marigolds (Tagetes patula), because they deter nematodes. Other plants that act as pest control are:

• Basil
• Chives
• Parsley
• Onions

Source:

How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes by Lucia Grimmer and Annette Welsford

Photo by Linda N.
Linda got this raised bed kit from naturalyards.com. I find it interesting because if you look carefully at the lower corner you’ll find a pin sticking out of the wood and I assume that these pins are holding all the planks together in each of the raised bed corners. It’s probably metal pins of some sort. I also find it interesting because you would be able to make one by yourself because of the neat way the planks are joined in the corners. A cut has been made in the end of each plank and you could easily drill the holes yourself. Furthermore it would be easy to replace one of the planks if it deteriorated. It looks like the planks in the sides are joined in the same way. The raised bed is stabilized at the middle with two metal rods from one side to the other.

Photo by mazaletel.
These raised beds are deeper than normal and excellent for root vegetables. The trellis for plants looks nice and matches the raised bed. It would work great as a trellis for peas for example.

Photo by Linda N.
I still dream about building my own raised beds from cinder blocks instead of wood since the blocks will last for a lifetime with no maintenance. The disadvantages are that the cinder block pricing is higher than the wood pricing, and the weight of cinder block is bigger. Usually you plant something in the holes inside the cinder blocks too but in this case the top has been covered with smaller concrete edging blocks, and it looks nice. The trellis to the left is for cucumbers or beans.

(If you’re looking for trellis design plans you should check out my ebook called Bean Trellis Tips, that I’ll send you for free if you sign up for my newsletter in the sidebar to the right. There’s a bunch of DIY trellis pictures in it, to get ideas from.)

Photo by boboroshi.
This is a seriously deep raised bed with nice details on top of each pole. My guess is that the owner has problems with rodents hence the chicken wire along the edges, which ought to keep them from building nests in the bed and eating the root vegetables.

Photo by cogdogblog.
Here’s a combination of natural sandstone and cinder blocks to form a raised garden bed. The holes in the cinder blocks will be used for flowers to attract pollinators. The bed has been fenced off with chicken wire, probably to keep rabbits and other animals out.

Photo by Simply Vicki.
I like these beds because they’re simple to make. Big, raw planks – beautiful.

Photo by jeffmason.
You can also use smaller raw planks and just use two instead of one plank.

Photo by Baugher Webmaster Services.
Square Foot Garden (SFG) in a simple raised bed, with peas, radishes, yellow squash and Geisha Girl flowers.

Photo by JoePhoto.
Many people put down a layer of wet cardboard under their new raised bed. I believe it’s some kind of weed stopper to get your raised bed off to a quick start on top of the lawn. Or on top of whatever plants or weeds were there in the first place.

Photo by nickton.
I just had to add this one because it’s a beauty. I’m not sure if the wood has changed color because it got wet or if this is the natural color. After all, it is covered in hail, in March. Notice the planks on top of the edges which means that you can do the weeding while you’re sitting down on top of the raised bed.

Photo by treesftf.
These people really mean it when they say raised bed – what a comfortable working position! Your back will be grateful. This particular bed is for seedlings only so the bed sides are only half the height of a normal growing bed.

Photo by treesftf.
Who told you that you needed to go buy materials for a raised bed? Pft… Just go old school, with some sticks and large leaves and what have you. Although it has a perfect working height the bed was actually raised to protect the vegetables from leaf cutter ants.

Photo by treesftf.
This is how it all started: When you loosen the soil it will expand in volume and the vegetables will grow faster, bigger and longer. Unless you walk on the soil again, like the kid in the middle of the picture… whoops

A wooden frame around the bed is just to keep the loose soil contained.

(The students are from Rafaela Herrera.)

Photo by JAGwired.
Yeah, why not? Wonder what the kids would say if they found out? And they probably will, since this is a driveway salsa garden, with tomato and pepper plants.

Photo by styro.
Flowers out – vegetables in! Way to go Watch out for tomato thieves though. You have to admire the courage these people have to put vegetables right in front of the neighbors. “That’s not how we normally do things around here.” … and who told you normal is good, you stubborn…

Photo by mazaletel.
A few PVC pipes arched over your raised bed, covered with 4 mm plastic – and you have yourself a high yielding poly-tunnel. (shown to the right, in the back.)

Photo by Baugher Webmaster Services.
When you grow peas you don’t want the birds to eat them before you do, but a floating row cover will prevent just that.

Photo by espring4224.
What a cool way to keep the birds out Indeed cool, since the wind will blow right through the cover. Remember to let the bees in and out though to take care of pollination. Not optimized for a post peak oil world but a creative solution nonetheless.

Photo by USFS Region 5.
No special raised bed designs in this photo, but it just got to me. Handing over the kitchen gardening knowledge first hand to the next generation, helping the kids grow strong and prepared for the new world. Using raised beds for vegetable gardens might be an old trick, but it’s worth knowing about and hopefully we can keep improving the method to provide us with even more of that wonderful high quality food we deserve as human beings.

This ebook on how to grow tomatoes is written by Lucia Grimmer and Annette Welsford. Lucia has a Masters Degree in Plant Pathology and works as a technical nutrition specialist in the fertilizer industry. Annette has a partial degree in Horticulture. For me as an amateur grower this puts some weight behind the 37,000 words on the 73 pages. I paid $34.90 + $8.72 VAT to get the ebook in .pdf format down on my PC. You can get the ebook here: How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

It’s a very comprehensive book with many details so I’ll limit myself and only talk about the things that were new to me.

Definitions

A term I often see when reading about tomatoes is determinate versus indeterminate. In the book there’s a good clarification of what this means:

• Determinate types are the low ones, up to 1 meter. The tomatoes are picked over a few weeks in a concentrated crop.
• Indeterminates grow up to 5 meters and are picked over 12 to 20 weeks.
• Semi-determinates grow up to 2 meters and are picked over 2 to 6 weeks.

Water

There’s a lot of information on watering in the book but some things stood out to me because I realized that I have probably made a huge mistake earlier on with my tomatoes, and potatoes for that matter.

To water correctly you need to soak to a depth of 15-20 cm. So far so good. But you need to do it early in the morning, and only the soil must be watered. No water on the leaves, for God’s sake. If the leaves do get wet it’ll dry off during the day. That’s why you should water in the morning. The problem with wet leaves is that it will be a heaven for fungus and disease spores. If you have read about my 2010 tomato disaster you’ll know what I’m talking about. Drip irrigation, mulching to prevent soil splashing, and water in the morning. That’s the way to do it.

Reproduction

Pollination is still a confusing subject to me. I don’t know if it gets any clearer but apparently tomatoes are self-pollinating according to the book, because the flowers contain both the male and female organs. At least it’s beginning to make sense to me, why a heirloom variety can stay with one grower for a lifetime without outside DNA material. But then again, you wouldn’t want that with humans, right? Weaknesses would build up, but I guess tomatoes can handle that somehow.

And a good tip on propagation: Save your clippings and dip them in a seaweed solution or plant hormone powder. Then plant them in a pot, and you’ll soon have en new tomato plant. That’s easy

Fruits

The advice on the actual tomato fruits goes against what I believed you should do, but the authors recommend picking the fruit before they even have the right color. Thereby the plant will focus its energy on the remaining fruits. Makes sense. The picked fruits should be kept away from sunlight or they’ll overheat and ripen unevenly. Makes sense too. Green tomatoes should be placed in a warm location to ripen at 18 – 21 C (64 – 70 F).

Tips & Tricks

• One way to plant out your tomato seedlings earlier in the season is to use a ‘wall of water’. It’s a device with several vertical tubes filled with water surrounding each pot. The water absorbs heat during the day and releases it during the night.
• The book also has a tip on compost that’s new to me: Earthworms hate onions. So keep onion scraps out of the compost.
• If you use red plastic as mulch on the soil below your plants they’ll think they’re overcrowded and grow even more. I think it has something to do with the color of the fruits?
• In an organic garden you should consider using neem oil / margosa oil if you want to actively fight pests. It has been used in India for a long time against almost any type of insect.
• A greenhouse made from polyethylene has several advantages: Low cost, ease of replacement, high light transmission and good heat retention. I didn’t like the artificial look, but with all these advantages it’s quite interesting compared to traditional glass.

What I LIKE about How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

• It comforting to know that even the experts from the industry agree that the quality of supermarket tomatoes is very low these days (no flavour, few varieties, hard as apples).
• A chapter about biodynamic growing is included.
• Quote: “The advent of Genetically Modified Food is a revolutionary change to our food that offers no nutritional improvement, but increases the profitability and market power of global seed and chemical companies. Changes include incorporation of pesticides and weedicides within the DNA of the plant. If the ingredients and chemicals were properly labeled, like our processed food, some might be defined as pesticides!” Oh? And we’re supposed to eat that?…
• It comes with a huge online variety database
• The book covers the whole world and considers different growing conditions depending on location.
• Great info on heirloom versus hybrids.
• Easy to read and understand.
• Thorough nutrition problem key to use if you find sick looking plants, so that you can diagnose and treat the problems.
• Includes organic bug killing recipes.

What I DON’T like about How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

• Some of the text on the illustrations is unreadable.
• It’s important with references but I prefer to have all of them in the last chapter and not ind the middle of the book.
• Pictures and charts should have a higher resolution in the .pdf version.
• The book mentions that drowned snails can be tossed into the compost heap. I don’t think that would be a good idea as they would attract slugs that would eat the dead ones. At least that’s what Arion lusitanicus would do.

Who should buy How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

It’s a very comprehensive book and a lot of the information is not directly related to tomatoes but of course if you’re serious about growing tomatoes you would need to know all of that too. And the specifics about tomatoes are in there too, so if you want to build a business around growing tomatoes you’re all set. A complete beginner could probably do with half the price, half the number of pages and half the details. The fertilizing scheme alone makes my head spin, despite the fact that I’ve already grown almost 10 kilos of tomatoes.

I doubt I’ll ever need another book on tomato growing so if you serious, knock yourself out and buy this one. If you haven’t grown a single red one yet you could probably do with less.

You can get the ebook here: How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

I don’t think much have changed regarding gardening techniques – the instructions in the video could just as well be used today. But the battle for victory is different as I see it. It’s still a battle, but it’s for your health. Growing your own food is just healthy. Plain and simple. Exercise, sunshine, vitamins. It reminds me why I even bother writing this blog, but what it all boils down to is preventing muscle atrophy and depression and avoiding fast food.

Although the quality of the video is poor it still moves me. Young people doing meaningful work in the field – exercise, sunshine, vitamins. They even work with a horse in the garden. I can’t remember the last time I even touched a horse. (… no, Jim, not in that way.) Completely disconnected from nature. I think it’s unhealthy and dissatisfying. Look at the amount of vegs they pull from that ½ acre (2000 m2)!

In the video they talk about:

• Early vs. late crop
• Crop rotation
• Fighting pests (with some nasty looking spraying I doubt would be legal today )
• Crazy over-sized swiss chard (what IS that?)

And remember what grandpa said:

No work – no garden. Get what that means. No work – no spuds. No work – no turnip, no tank, no flying fortress, NO victory. Bear that in mind, all you victory gardeners, and work – for VICTORY!

… Your good health, that is.

A bed of leeks has been prepared this way:

When you have a layer of mulch the weeds have a hard time reaching the light and won’t take over your beds. This is my old cauliflower and broccoli bed, and as you can see the weeds are forced to grow around the edges of the bed instead:

And that’s just because I’m lazy – the weeds could easily be removed from the pathways.

In the strawberry beds the layer of mulch has been effective too:

The idea of mulching is something I picked up from Lynn Mentgen-Gillespie when I read her ebook about cinder block gardens.

Mulch also keeps the moisture in the soil but I don’t think there have been any problems with drought around here this year, in fact just the opposite, which is why the blight has been thriving. This is how it starts on tomatoes – small brown spots, growing bigger and bigger:

until the tomatoes are ready to be thrown into the thrash:

I just hope I’ll get a few ripe tomatoes this year, from 17 plants(!) but I’m beginning to have some doubts:

At least the cucumber plants are doing fine. I found this little guy taking a sunbath on one of the leaves:

Please leave a comment below if you know the species, or want to share your thoughts.

Luckily it seems that the leaves affected with blight just dries up and breaks off and don’t cause damage to the main stem of the tomato plant:

I removed the affected foliage and tomatoes and the plants are beginning to look healthy again:

Time will tell if they’ll survive long enough to produce mature tomatoes. As you can see in the picture above there are not many leaves left to do the work.

… which is exactly the problem with my broccoli and cauliflowers too – them caterpillars hungry!:

What I should have done was to grow these plants in a tunnel so that the mother of these caterpillars couldn’t have laid her eggs on the plants when they were small.

Oh well – I’m actually proud that the plants grew this big. Besides the damage done by caterpillars the plants look really healthy. Next year I’ll build a tunnel. And oh – we actually did harvest one broccoli, a real nice one too.

First of all most of the apples blew right of the apple trees before they had a chance to mature, due to the strong wind:

Fortunately my girlfriends dad cleaned up the lawn while we were away – thanks Peder!

This pile of rotting apples is a heaven for sugar craving wasps, but I managed to save some of the apples for jam. There are still some left on the trees so I think we’ll be able to make a decent amount of jam:

Before I left I wrapped my chicken coop project in a tarpaulin and it stayed on the coop the whole week, although the sharp edges punched a few holes in it:

I’m really looking forward to some dry weather so that I’ll be able to finish the project.

The rain water collection tank proves that the weather has been wet, wet, wet. 550 liters in a week:

It turns out that if bird droppings end up in a tank like this you’re likely to get a problem with bacteria if the water is standing still for too long. This can be a problem if you water crops which are not boiled before you eat them since the bacteria is carried into the kitchen.

My bean trellis took a hit by the strong wind and almost collapsed:

But the beans are have been growing fast and new ones are still developing:

My sweet corn plants have also been hit by the wind and one of the plants fell over. Not a pretty sight but hopefully we’ll get some fruits before the end of the season:

The squash plant didn’t waste any time – compare the fruits with my foot to the right:

The fruit near the ground is huge! But I knew that would happen. You need to check the size of your squash fruits every second day during the peak of the season. The same thing happened with my squash a couple of years ago.

Two different kinds of caterpillars in my broccoli?? Jebus… You guys must be hungry. It doesn’t even look tasty anymore:

The strawberry plants decided to grow all over the place:

and the tomato plants got hit with blight and the fruits are rotting… Sigh. :

I hope I can do a bit of damage control by removing wilted leaves and rotten fruits, to help the healthy tomatoes through the season.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a thriving cucumber plant with flowers and healthy fruit:

but my saved pea seeds looked far from healthy. I made the mistake of throwing the pods in a cardboard box with the lid on, so that the moisture couldn’t escape freely which resulted in mold, and some of the peas even started germinating! 2 x sigh… :

To finish off this crappy status, all of the potato fruits fell off and started rotting on the ground:

But then again – the flowers are nice:

I’ll leave you with a lonely bee on a white Cosmos flower:

and a video that show the fencing around my garden that is supposed to shield off against the wind, dammit:

That seemed odd to me so I jumped over the fence into the kitchen garden to check out the bumblebees nest which they so kindly built in the middle of the plot. Unfortunately I was on to something because I found three other bees walking or sitting on the ground about a meter (3 ft) from the nest:

I then checked the activity in the nest and found at least two bumblebees flying in and out of the nest like nothing happened:

It seems that the bees are still active living their life, but some of them are having a hard time at the moment. A few days later I found two of the three bees dead outside the nest. R.I.P.

I hope this a natural cycle for them and not caused by human ignorance. If you know what’s going on please leave a comment below.

The model is a Bosch PST 700 PEL, delivering 530 watts of work. (Apparently I have a thing about Bosch tools ) I comes with a laser aim, which I didn’t use, and it automatically blows away the saw dust before it builds up in front of the blade. It has some kind of pendulum technology, which I believe is causing the blade to not only move up and down, but also back and forth, which is a very nice feature – the tool is actually driving itself forward when it comes into contact with the wood. I’m not sure if this feature is related to the pendulum technology, but it sure is a cool thing.

I bought some blades too, but the tool actually came with the blade I chose for the cutting up the studs, a T144D blade:

The Bosch jigsaw worked like a charm cutting 3.8 cm (1 1/2 inch) studs into smaller pieces:

The process generated a lot of sawdust and a pleasant odour which is probably why this guy showed up out of the blue:

Maybe he thought he had discovered a sawmill and a new home

(If you know what species this moth is please leave a comment below).