Can I control Early Blight of Tomatoes?

Good Afternoon
I purchased two of your Mighty Red tomato plants about 2 weeks ago, as well as

two Apollo and two Grosse Lisse from another supplier. 

I planted the six plants - alternating - in a well prepared garden bed.

Yesterday, the Mighty Red plants had significant Early Blight so I have removed them

to the rubbish bin. The remaining 4 plants show no sign of any disease and look very healthy.
Is Mighty Red susceptible to disease - more than any other?

Your response would be appreciated.

Regards

Harold

Ouch!
Early blight is Alternaria solani (Alternaria of the Tomato family)

It is not a disease we regularly deal with on Tomatoes but it makes me lie awake on frosty nights. Our Pansies can end up looking not far off the pic above if we allow any water to sit on the foliage on cold, still nights. The chief form of prevention is regular doses of fungicide but I find managing watering more effective and more environmentally appropriate.

Why don't we see it more often on Tomatoes? Probably because we molly coddle them and hide them from frost. My guess is that our plants were either too soft from being kept inside too long or they didn't have a protective coating of fungicide to keep the disease out. I won't change our spraying policy but we have moved our Toms outside now to toughen them up.  Living on the edge!

We do find that our pansies will grow out of the Alternaria problems if the damage isn't too severe. It helps to have the plants growing vigorously, not hungry and stressed.

So why bare my soul? I'd rather know about problems than not, we want to supply only the very best plants. So if you have seen signs of Early Blight or any other problem that we need to take responsibility for please give me a call or drop me a line. If you have any tips on controlling Alternaria diseases please let me know.

By the way Mighty Red is a hybrid variety with excellent disease resistance and flavour.  

Why do my Tomato plants turn purple?

A tray of our Funky Fresh Kitchen Tomato pots, College Challenger I think.  Getting a little "hard" i know.

We walk a fine line at this time of year, we lost the first two batches of Basil before even sending them out. The demand is so crazy that we have to try to have them available but it doesn't take much to put them off.

I've also had inquiries this week about Tomatoes losing colour. Perhaps more accurately taking on the hue of a three day old bruise, purple and yellow. This colouring is a symptom of the plants being hungry. Especially for nitrogen and phosphorus.  Tomatoes are a great crop, we have significant demand and they are relatively easy to grow except for the fuss of staking them. There are two issues that we have to watch for: stretching and black spots (haven't seen any yet this year!). To protect the plants from the winter and early spring elements we hold the plants in a poly house. This ensures the plants can grow without stress but encourages them to grow very tall and skinny and if the foliage is too soft the black spot bacteria can infect the plants easily. We try to control this culturally by deliberately under watering them and by supplying only just enough fertilizer to keep them green but not enough to grow like crazy. Another trick is to use what is often called a 'native plant' fertilizer that is very low in phosphorus, this encourages strong cells and inhibits 'stretchy' growth.

When the plants get too hungry they start to change colour: yellow foliage indicates plants need more nitrogen and the purpling is a sign that a little phosphorus is needed. In fact in the nursery this colouring is quite a good sign because we know we can generally turn these plants around very quickly with a little extra liquid feed. But here's the down side, when we are managing plants so closely they can start to look very hungry very soon after leaving our loving care. Now that the weather is warming we can take a calculated risk and move plants outside sooner, this hardens them up naturally and allows us to start applying a little extra fertilizer. In the garden centre a weekly application of complete, liquid fertilizer should help maintain colour and shelf life but I understand that this is not always possible.

For gardeners, a little yellow and purpling is not at all a bad thing.  Once plants hit freshly prepared soil or quality potting mix they jump away, I'd suggest much more reliably than plants that go into the garden too soft. Just make sure it's purple shading, not small dark spots.

Hope this helps, please don't hesitate to call if I have only raised more questions.

Where can I buy healthy Tomato plants on the web?

Grrrrrrrr!
I walked into our local Supermarket and discovered these sad little stunted Grosse Lisse plants. They're fresh, no doubt. Growing vigorously, yes. But Healthy? This is supposed to be Grosse Lisse and it looks more like KY1. For those of us who handle young Tomato plants every spring Ky is a sprawly, spready variety, Grosse is a tall, quite muscular plant. Did the grower use the wrong seed? Did they get the labels wrong? Both of these can and do happen, we have to put a great deal of work into ensuring that they don't.

No I don't think that's the case.  These tall growing Tomatoes have no stakes. I think these plants have been heavily, really heavily treated with Plant Growth Regulators (PGR's). Plant Hormones. There's nothing illegal in this practice. PGR's are registered for use on all sorts of fruit and vegetables. I did notice shortly after seeing these plants a TV add promoting chicken (I think) not treated with growth hormones and I know from experience that gardeners feel the same way about PGR's. But that's not why I'm growling.

Will these plants ever grow out of this treatment? Or will the novice gardener who purchases and takes them home assume they have done something wrong? You know what happens then; we have lost another gardener.  Grrrrrrr! We infrequently buy young plants - "plugs" when we fall short from our own seed sowing. One draw back in doing this is the PGR treatment of the plugs that prevent the plants growing out the way we expect. If we can't get the result we want, what happens to the home gardener?

Why do nurseries use PGR's?  Shelf life. PGR treated plants stay more compact and hold a magnificent, intense green colouring so they look great on shelves longer and in the case of the plants in the photo there is no need to stake them, a very expensive process.   In the case of plugs, PGR's have the added benefit of evening up the plants size. Treatment at a very early stage is absorbed more readily by the largest, most vigorous plants allowing the smaller plants to catch up. This makes the trays look better and is valuable when transplanting robotically.

What are the alternatives to PGR's. Grow the plants longer and slower. Harden them off outdoors earlier and keep them as dry as possible, this creates a tougher, more resilient plant. Feeding appropriately also helps: not too much and definitely hold back on the sweeties (read Nitrogen and Phosphorus).

Got that off my chest, I feel much better.

Now, I promise I didn't set the two halves of this newsletter up this happened purely by chance.

Would you like to purchase healthy, fresh Tomato plants directly from the grower? (That's me)  Plants guaranteed not to have been treadted with PGR's and I can assure you they have had very little treatment with chemical pesticides.

I trialled posting Tomatoes last year, they arrived safe and sound and grew away very successfully. So enthusiastic am I about this little idea we have created a special web site just for this exersize. It includes an online shopping cart, very high tech. www.tomatopost.com.au That's us! Please give it a try. We have a selection of more than 20 varieties (when they're all available) including hybrids, heirloom varieties and hertiage Tomatoes like Grosse Lisse and KY1.  The plants are tough and well hardened and pulled from exactly the cell trays we use for our own production and for commercial vegie growers.

Cost? Around $1.90 each delivered to your letter box.

Please let me know what you think of our new project.